Job Hunting in UK Higher Education I: Overview

The first posts I'd like to make in this blog is a series of commentaries on the process of applying for job vacancies in UK higher education in 2010.

Although I am lucky enough to have been employed in a job I (mostly) enjoy since 1998, I have spent much of the last four months job hunting. The post has always been entirely dependent on external funding: the LSE's main budgets pay for none of my time. It was something of an achievement that we've always managed to keep the post fully funded - until March 2009. Since then I've been part time, between 1.5 and 4 days a week: hence the job search. I've found the process itself surprisingly frustrating: much less Internet savvy than I'd expected. Especially considering that the LSE post was one I found through a web site twelve years ago; things have changed rather less than I feel they should have done since then.

I searched for jobs on 12 weekends, considered about 30 posts in some detail (looking at the job and person specifications), made applications to 6, or which was offered interviews for 2, and pulled out from consideration for 1. The jobs I was looking for were academic or academic related (my post at the moment is research, but is academic related, so I'm interested in both) in computer science and IT generally. I was not considering posts which paid more than £15K less than my current salary, and was only looking in southern England and Wales. I list these constraints because some of my comments may not apply elsewhere.

I haven't precisely planned how many posts I'm going to make, but I'll at least include:

• a comparison of two job search sites, one I think is good and one I think is poor, with mentions of some of the other sites I also us: split into part one | part two
• some comments on other job sites 
• a critique of the job specifications I tried to fit myself to, as someone who is not only a potential applicant but who has been involved in the appointment process from the other side
• a roundup of how I think the sector should manage the process and application methods in general
• a discussion of a specific web application used by several universities to manage the process

By the way, I am now back full time at the LSE, so I am staying where I am - for the time being.