Academics with caring responsibilities: What is life like outside the lab when you're a carer The lives that academics live outside the lab or lecture theatre became suddenly more visible after the recent pandemic-related shift to remote working – and all the boundary-blurring and curious-toddlers-crashing-Zoom-call moments that followed. Under pressure to deliver consistently excellent teaching, research, and publications in a competitive and often precarious professional context, many academics have opted to keep the nature of their caring responsibilities low-profile – or even hidden. This ..read more

What is the most important part of a job listing? Useful tips for anyone working in recruitment The answer is more straightforward than you would expect. It’s the job title. Does that seem obvious? You would be surprised by how many job listings we receive that simply say ‘Lecturer’ at the top – or perhaps ‘Assistant Lecturer/Lecturer/ Senior Lecturer,’ or sometimes just ‘Technician’ or ‘Research fellow’. That is not enough to catch the right attention. The title at the top of a job listing is key, because internet search engines, and particularly Google jobs, are designed to look for categor ..read more

Factors for credibility in Human Resources a group of people working One of the things Human Resources are constantly battling with is developing and maintaining credibility, especially with the operational functions in organisations. It is a continual background tension that sits behind just about every HR department and everything they do and contribute. Creating credibility and developing influence in an organisation isn’t easy for anyone, particularly a support function where the work isn’t always seen by others in the organisation as being ‘productive’. It turns out however that credibil ..read more

Working from home and how to make your home environment work for you. Did you suddenly find yourself working from a cramped bedroom or kitchen table a year ago, as the pandemic changed working practices across the world? Employers’ duty of care has long protected many from the risks of a harmful physical working environment. But the scramble to set up new work-from-home stations almost overnight has left many working in woefully less-than-ideal situations. For many fortunate enough to have work, life has become a round of endless video calls and blurred work-life boundaries, leading to even l ..read more

Let’s not sugar-coat it: the search for your next academic job can be exhausting and painful. The thrilling moment when your offer finally arrives will hopefully make all your efforts seem worth it. But staying motivated mid-job hunt is incredibly tough. You may well find yourself investing hours honing your CV, tailoring your cover letter, rehearsing answers to likely questions, prepping your presentation, and following up after interview – only to hear ‘You were not successful this time’, or nothing at all. Job hunting consumes time. Applying for jobs can hamper the progress of the ver ..read more

Once you begin your job search, finding a new role will probably involve several job applications. You may end up sending quite a few applications before you find the right match for you. Keeping track of this process is very important. University recruitment and selection processes are thorough and often take many, many months, so you need a way to remember deadlines, which roles you have applied for, where you stand with each application, and what you need to do to complete and follow- up on applications. As soon as you decide to send in your first application, it is time to creat ..read more

Those of you who have worked with us for a while already know our views on job listings that do not include salaries; our data shows that job listings without salaries attract fewer candidates and we feel that leaving salary details off a job listing is disrespectful of the time and attention of our worldwide academic audience.  It’s a bad idea. Let’s think for a moment about the messages you are sending to candidates when you write ‘Competitive’ in a box that should include a salary. ‘We’re waiting to see what your previous roles have paid to decide how much you are worth’ ‘We don’t kn ..read more

Taking an editorial scalpel to your own work can be painful. After days, weeks or even months producing it you may feel far too familiar or attached to be objective about the quality of what you’ve written and how to improve it. You may well also find that the pressure to submit, an excessive workload or exhaustion makes you reluctant to spend any more time on it. Getting a pair of fresh eyes to check a near-final version is key, but the ability to edit your own work effectively is a skill to master if you want to make progress against your career goals. So, what’s the best way to get over th ..read more

The flashing light and wailing siren of an ambulance are designed to alert us to an emergency. As they race past, we are all too aware that first responders like paramedics see trauma and catastrophe daily, for which they have our profound thanks and admiration. They also have access to specialist training, support and therapy, because trauma doesn’t only affect the individual subjected to it. It can transfer, rippling out to those who witness it. In some cases, this can lead to vicarious trauma or secondary traumatic stress, described by the American Counselling Association as ‘the emotional ..read more

The lives that academics live outside the lab or lecture theatre became suddenly more visible after the recent pandemic-related shift to remote working – and all the boundary-blurring and curious-toddlers-crashing-Zoom-call moments that followed. Under pressure to deliver consistently excellent teaching, research, and publications in a competitive and often precarious professional context, many academics have opted to keep the nature of their caring responsibilities low-profile – or even hidden. This may particularly have been the case for post-holders from under-represented groups, as they f ..read more