Professional development means continuing to gain new skills throughout your education, employment and beyond. It will include taking structured courses; learning in your own time, taking certificates, attending talks and workshops and even watching short videos on how to do something new – essentially, any activity that expands your knowledge or skill in a certain field is ‘professional development’. You can engage in professional development through your study, extra-curriculars or through courses you take to supplement your learning – as well as work experience, internships, and employment.
Some professional development activities are structured and/or mandatory (academic skills sessions, learning specific skills for your degree or paid courses) but others are self-directed and led by you and your preferences. For example, you might want to learn how to edit or create digital images for a blog you are writing or learn how to create stand-out presentations for a pitch you are giving.
Professional development is lifelong and is important because it increases the opportunities open to you for career progression, excelling in a personal passion or changing direction. Professional development can be supported by others, but ultimately it is your responsibility to engage with it.
If you are interested in learning more about your current skills, you can evaluate your skills using the ‘Skills Discovery’ tool, accessible via your CRSID.
Professional development activities to support progress
- Cambridge University Air Squadron (UAS)
- Cambridge University Officers' Training Corps (CUOTC)
- Cambridge University Royal Naval Unit (CURNU)
- Coding & Programming Languages - formal course
- Coding & Programming Languages - professional projects
- Coding & Programming Languages - recreational projects
- College telephone fundraising campaign
- Consultancy projects and competitions
- Employment - leadership role
- Hackathon
- Internship at the university
- Internship with external organisation
- Networking - building formal connections
- Organising your own event
- Public speaking
- Skills course - learning a language
- Skills course - programming
- Skills course - technology & software use
- Skills workshop - application & interviews
- Skills workshop - career development & planning
- Skills workshop - further study
- Skills workshop - networking
- Skills workshop - personal branding
- Skills workshop - recruitment & job searching
- Year in industry
Core skill areas developed in professional development activities
- Digital, technology use and technical skills
- Interpersonal, communication and social skills
- Learning, thinking, and reasoning skills
- Leadership and management skills
- Presentation, negotiation and influencing skills
- Writing, analytical and reporting skills
- Planning and organisation skills
- Self-management skills
Specific skills that can be developed in these core areas
- Achievement orientation
- Active Listening
- Asking the right questions
- Autonomy
- Building networks
- Career management
- Coding skills and languages
- Collaboration
- Communication
- Computational and algorithmic thinking
- Critical thinking
- Developing relationships
- Drive change and innovation
- Empowering others
- Engaging with society
- Event management
- Goal monitoring, adjusting and evaluating
- Grit and persistence
- Information seeking
- Inspiring Trust
- Learning to learn
- Managing up
- Organisational Awareness
- Programming literacy
- Project management
- Recognition of assumptions
- Resilience, stress tolerance and flexibility
- Self-awareness
- Self-confidence
- Self-development
- Self-motivation
- Storytelling and public speaking
- Synthesizing messages
- Technology design and programming
- Technology use, monitoring and control
- Working with accuracy
How to find opportunities in Cambridge
There are many ways you can develop skills that can be useful in a professional context (by this we mean specifically for work or work-related projects, career planning and career development). Here are some ideas to get started:
- Register for events with Cambridge University Careers Service. These cover a wide range of themes, sectors and skills. See the What's On page for more details.
- Use LinkedIn learning for short and in-depth courses on a variety of topics including networking, working collaboratively online, AI, cyber security, excel, giving presentations, marketing, coding, programming, image editing and so on. You can use your CRSID to log-in to LinkedIn to link it to your account to access it for free.
- Access training courses via the University of Cambridge training directory to access courses to support your development on a range of topics, search by your interests or helpful themes.
- Ask your college about their fundraising campaigns and how you can help organise and run them
- Take part in the various consultancy projects that happen around Cambridge, such as iTeams, Cambridge Consulting Network, 180 Degrees Consulting, Bridges for Enterprise, CamStart and activities at Cambridge Zero – just to name a few.
- Ask in your college or department about any career talks, speakers and workshops being held.
- Ask in your college about structured skills and career development programmes you can be a part of (for example: Homerton Changemakers, Pathways at Hughes Hall, Gateway programme at Murray Edwards, LEAP programme at Pembroke, Girton Skills Programme).
- Access the University of Cambridge Careers Service and attend talks and workshops from employers, careers fairs, skills workshops, career planning sessions, access job listings, connect with Alumni, take part in career festivals and access psychometric tests and self-reflection tool-kits.
- Taking on a leadership or project planning role in a society or committee
- Attend networking events across the Careers Service, societies, college and via employer events around Cambridge
- Take part in Hackathons – this might be through a course, department (yours or another), colleges (yours or another) a society or via an employer event through the Careers Service
- Organise an event – your own, with your college, a society, your May Ball, with a charity
- Undertake an internship with your department, an employer or start-up
- If your course offers it, undertake an internship or year in industry in your holiday or as part of your programme (your department may have specific connections)
- Undertake an internship with an employer (perhaps finding help via the Careers Service via events and job listings)
- Undertake virtual internships via Forage (Law, banking, finance, software engineering, consulting, marketing, accounting, data, security)
- Engage with entrepreneurship programmes at Judge Business School
- Become a mentor – look for widening participation programmes across the university where you can help others
- Become a mentee – look for a mentoring programme in your college, department or find a professional mentor to support your career planning or professional development.
- Attend open lectures, exhibitions and talks on a range of topics via the university ‘What’s On’ pages
- Learn a new language with Cambridge University Language Programmes (CULP)
- You can search the UIS training library under the theme ‘Artificial Intelligence’ to see the range of self-guided courses available.
- Access resources from the professional body linked to your subject of study or your professional ambitions