advice for applying for lecturer position for the first time?

[petiteHBB]

Hello, I'm in the late stage of my postdoc training (in biology) and would like to apply for a lecturer position in the UK. It doesn't seem to be a lot of vacancies at the moment. Should i contact the department/universities I'm interested in or wait for more vacancies to open? I would greatly appreciate it if someone can give me some advice or share the experiences on how you get your lecturer job? Thanks a lot!

Hi there
your timing is a bit off for this year, academic jobs tend to be advertised earlier in the year for a sept start which is why you may not be seeing many. Plus Uk universities are going through a pretty brutal funding crisis and redundancies. It might be worth contacting Unis directly, you may be able to pick up some Associate lecturer work, or maybe you might be lucky and they may need someone at the last minute.

good luck

Career paths in the Sciences are very different to Arts and Humanities. I don't know about Biology, however in the Physical Sciences:
i) Associate lecturer positions are typically not a thing and teaching fellow/assistant positions aren't a standard route into a traditional 'permanent' (research and teaching) lectureship.
ii) Even before the current financial crisis, advertised 'open' lectureships had become less common at many UK institutions, with long-term fellowships (e.g. Royal Society University Research Fellowship) being a common route to a 'permanent' position.

I'd advise someone in my field to try and get a long-term fellowship, and work on demonstrating their independence (i.e. leading projects) and improving their visibility (e.g. talks at major conferences). However it's very field dependent. I'd strongly suggest talking to people in your field, and looking at the career trajectories of people who've recently got lectureships.

In addition to @xxuserxx 's excellent advice, ingeneral terms, the ways into a lectureship are:

• a postdoc on a Principal Investigator's (PI) project which might involve some supervision of postgrads, and teaching of undergrads, and then moving into your own projects
• a postdoc like a Marie Curie Fellowship (EU funded) or UK research council funded - google UKRI
• hourly-paid teaching work, as and when university department budgets allow. In my department (arts & humanities), we prioritise our own postgrads for this work, but such work can give you visibility in a department. Such jobs won't automatically lead into a full-time post
• apply to jobs as they are advertised ( jobs.ac.uk is good). You'll need teaching experience, publications, and a research trajectory that has evidence of, or potential for, raising external research income

The job market is very tight, although STEM subjects seem less constrained than HASS subjects.

You'll need to be prepared to relocate, take up fixed-term contracts, and meet some quite high expectations of publication & research funding. (although those expectations aren't very different at all from the expectations on early career academics when I started out 30 years ago).

For biology, you don’t need any teaching experience. A bit of supervision of Msc students if possible. What you need is MONEY and a plan to get more MONEY as soon as possible. I have a biology lab that costs £7k per month to run.

write a list of all the fellowships you are eligible for (Royal Society, wellcome trust, bbsrc, mrc, leverhulme). Work out which ones you want to target first. Find people who have one to talk to you about it (they usually won’t mind at all a cold email asking for a zoom call). Write a one page pitch featuring a) your resesrch plans b) your funding plans c) who would collaborate with at the department d) which courses you could teach on and send it off to departments you like. Ask them to sponsor your fellowship and ask that if you are successful they give you a proleptic lectureship.

this is how 90% of biologists get jobs, especially in RG universities and especially on the more biomedical side

This is probably excellent advice for arts but not for STEM. Hourly paid teaching will probabl count against you rather than for you, being completely honest. They want someone who will bring in £2million for a new microscope and animal research room

Fair enough, @bge ! I know the money is important wherever. And it's still very unlikely that someone will land a full-time, continuing (ie not fixed-term contract) lectureship in STEM in the UK without a post-doc, I should have thought.

Getting a postdoc post is an indication of your ability to bring in money.

Yes - postdoc essential.

I am only speaking of research-intensive universities though OP. If you’re applying for teaching only posts everything I say is wrong

@petiteHBB are you based in the UK? or elsewhere? That can make a difference.

And I'm surprised that you're not getting useful information, or models of how to do this from the research team you're already working with, your PI, or your supervisor. They should be your first port of call.

Thank you so much for the information and excellent advice! Really helpful.

@YellowAsteroid Yes, I'm in the UK. You're right and I'm also frustrated that no relevant guidance/advice was given by my PIs (I have two and both are super successful). I've asked and the useful piece I got is "you need to network..." None of the previous postdocs I've heard of managed to get a faculty position in the UK or in Europe. That's why all the information I got here is valuable, very much appreciated! I had EMBO and Marie Curie fellowships(both finished though) then I took almost a year of maternity leave. Now it's more manageable for me to plan my next move :)

@LCM001a Great to know the timing, I was not aware of it. Will definitely contact a few universities. Thanks a lot!
@bge @xxuserxx Yes, I did notice that many postdoc went for the fellowship pathway. I agree money is the key! thanks for sharing the running cost (we use mice and I was told that housing them is expensive).

Their point about networks is a good one. What are your networks like? What conferences do you go to? How do you develop collaborations?

Do you have a big idea for an ERC Starter grant? That’s your next step after a MSCA Fellowship.

If you’ve had those fellowships you are an excellent candidate for more funding. You are being quite badly advised / not advised by your Pi which is poor, so I would approach your university resesrch office who should have resources you can use

And you need to develop networks and mentors beyond your supervisor/PIs. Are there simpatico colleagues or peers? Or other senior people outside your current institution. For someone who’s had a MSCA and other fellowships you seem surprisingly naïve or disconnected from how the profession works. It sounds as though you’re a really high flyer so you need to get a bit more savvy about the nuts and bolts of how HE works! That’s why I asked if you were based in the UK.

Thank you very much for your reply! @YellowAsteroid I do have some ideas for a bigger grant based on some preliminary data, but my network is poor. You are spot on, I'm quite disconnected and don't know the system well. My postdoc PIs always tell us that papers are the most important so I was ignoring other aspects which now I know is silly. We are discouraged to attend conferences before the paper is submitted, to minimise the chance of being scooped. Also when i was applying for the MSCA fellowship, my PI told me not to do it because they had enough money for my salary and I should spend the time on experiments. But I applied anyway. Not meant to be resentful, but i do think my postdoc training is poor.

Anyway, it's more clear for me now about what to do and how to plan it, thanks to all of your comments and advice. I have one more question if you don't mind, maybe a naive one again: How long in advance should I contact the potential sponsor for grant applications? For example, the deadline of ERC this year is in Oct, is it too late if I haven't found a sponsor? Many thanks!

Thanks a lot for the suggestion! @bge I'll ask our research office for more support for sure. and it's good to know having those postdoc fellowships put people in a strong position. I didn't get any positive feedback about it from my PIs which made me feel it's no big deal.

Our lectureships tend to go to folk we know well - either internal candidates or those who have a great track record with some initial grant capture, strong REF profile and ideally some impact from their postdocs. Basically people we want to keep or people we want to poach from our competitors. It is rare that we have money for a permanent position and there is a truly open advertising round. Lecturers are hard to lose again so universities want certainty that these rare ‘investments’ will be able to generate more income

Yes too late for October now. Approach with a solid plan in September ish for the March / April deadlines

Ditto. Our internal sift for EoIs was early July.

Contact your Research Office or talk to your Department/Faculty Director of Research. You really need to connect with institutional structures and support.

OK, thanks a lot for the information, very much appreciated! @bge @YellowAsteroid