Why have a mentor? Wherever you are on your career journey, from starting a PhD to your first permanent academic post or to taking those initial tentative steps as a manager, other people have been there before and are often willing to share their valuable advice and insight. They understand…>
Academic Careers
What You Need to Know About Widening Participation
One of the most important government initiatives of the last few years is the Widening Participation agenda. As an academic jobseeker you will have to show that you know a great deal about the job you are applying for, not only about the institution where it is based but also…>
Writing Meeting Minutes
So you have been asked to take the minutes of a meeting? Here are some tips and techniques to do this effectively. 1. Before the meeting If the meeting is one of a series, check the previous minutes for the format expected. Most professional minutes are now in ‘short-form’, with…>
Collaboration, Co-operation and Contribution
Collaboration, cooperation and contribution are the necessary ingredients for a recipe of enriched learning, knowledge consolidation, and active participation in further and higher education. I often reflect on the ever-changing world of learning. Our educational institutions have become somewhat vast yet empty; popular yet disfavoured; necessary yet peripheral. Too often,…>
Report-Writing: Some Questions And Answers
Is the report really necessary? Not always. Could the report be replaced by a long-ish but informal email, by a phone conversation followed by a summary email, or by a short oral presentation at a departmental meeting, recorded by ‘bullet points’ in the meeting minutes? You may not have the…>
Seven Top Tips for Resilience
When faced with adversity, how do you cope? Do you adapt, spring back to action or feel stuck? Resilience means ‘bouncing back’ from a difficult experience, as defined by the American Psychological Society. In this article, I have selected for you seven resilience boosting tips. These have been tried and…>
International publication standards
Publication standards differ for international academics from country to country. This article will explore some of the trends to observe and the differences to be aware of.
Introducing our inaugural event: Careers in Asia 2019
Earlier this year we asked jobs.ac.uk visitors whether they’d like an opportunity to meet with senior representatives from Asian universities here in the UK, to discuss their career opportunities. We found out that 89% of our respondents were interested in attending this kind of international networking and recruitment event. Because…>
Teaching From the Podium – Part 2
I am confident that we all have had a certain teacher or lecturer that made a huge impression on us. Perhaps it was their energetic approach, their eccentricity, their vast knowledge base, charisma, or their enthusiastic personality. In most cases, and unknowingly, these professionals were skilled at teaching from the…>
No Time to Think? Time Management
Time management is a fast-growing trend. Most of us have been to time management courses before, read books, and listened to YouTube videos on the topic. However, we have not really cracked time management just yet. The problem with time management is that we are trying to cram in more…>