None academic roles in a University- any experience?

[2andadog]

I would love viewpoints from people who work in a uni currently.

I currently work in a corporate management role, and a vacancy has come up at a university which sounds super interesting, and would suit my professional skills. It's a non academic role, and would involve being in a senior role in the more corporate side of the university.

I am looking to change jobs as have fallen out of love with the industry i've been in for the last 14years.

Has anyone got any insight or experience in being in a university in that sort of role? Any positives or negatives from moving from the private sector into such a role?

It will very much depend on the role and your skills. I'm an academic (teaching-only), my husband is academic-related in a senior role concerned with the technical systems within the university. My understanding is that lots of people in his area come from industry with highly specialised technical skills, both above and below his level.

I also have two friends working at director level within the marketing/communication departments of Russell Group universities. They previously worked in similar roles in industry.

So if the industry skills are directly transferable it can be done fairly easily and the people I know are happy with their roles.

But, anything involving managing academics can be a bit like herding cats. There are also industry-wide job cuts. Academia is like any other public sector organisation and there can be a feeling that people who 'know' academia are a better fit than a crossover into academia. From what I've seen if an industry transplant comes into academia expecting to 'shake things up in a stale business' it often goes badly wrong for them personally and I'm aware of several cases where director's contracts haven't been renewed or have been terminated early because of the ill-feeling they can generate. All the way up to votes of no confidence at Vice-Chancellor level.

I am not saying don't apply. I would just caution that you google the hell out of the institution first.

Thank you, this is really helpful. I shall get googling!!

My skills are related with international business/negotiation etc in a pretty fast paced industry, I have been warned the pace of Academia may be frustrating, but I am happy to have difference challenges to fight with ha!

Thanks again, appreciate it.

I worked in admin for a Russell Group university until recently. If you get a permanent job you will have regular pay rises and a good pension arrangement.
However, you would find that many of the senior staff don't really live in the real world and there's no urgency to actually get things done. Endless woffly meetings that could have been dealt with in an email.
It depends what you want from a job. At one time it was a job for life but many universities are feeling the pinch so they are looking at staffing cuts. There are still a lot of well-paid staff who you wonder what they hell they do all day.
If you're a driven workaholic who wants results NOW, the world of academia is not for you!

I work in a professional role in a Russell Group.

Agree totally about the pace, most things need a meeting to happen and meetings can be difficult to squeeze into diaries because of other meetings and part time roles. Also write off December for stuff getting done... It just doesn't. Be prepared for emails out of term time to get a flurry of out of offices then everything comes back at once...

It's probably a bit different between working in a professional role embedded in one of the colleges/departments or in central services, Estates or similar.

Very heavily unionised sector, pension is very good at senior grades and the role can either be very varied or pretty siloed depending on what you end up doing.

I really like it, it gives me an opportunity for an interesting role which is part time with a culture that is open to being part time, but there are frustrations about the speed of getting things done. I'd say that a University is a bit like an oil tanker/mega container ship, doesn't change anything quickly but is ploughing on the path it is on at the speed it was doing. Some people prefer the glacial analogy...

Hugely depends on which university, and predicted financial health over the next 5 years. There will be wildly divergent working environments emerging as some have lots of money and some scrabble to stay afloat

if it’s a financially healthy one, this sort of role can be really fun

A hundred percent, yes.

I work in a lower grade professional service role. My university is a bit of an octopus as far as structure goes, but a large part of it was an old technical college. It does a lot of teaching, but little research. There wasn't much money before the latest crisis and currently it's being squeezed till the pips squeak. No money for training. No regrading so you can't move up, no matter how much your role has changed.

It's been on the vanguard of exposure to the marketisation of HE for the last 10+ years. Marketing are one of the few (only?) teams who reliably seem to get investment.

The 'doing more with less' ambition remains, so at this point in professional services we're stuck doing a lot of things very badly. There are nice people here (and, um, interesting ones). It's just very tiring and worrying.

But I guess being in professional services here on a senior grade would be a bit better as experiences go. Well, it would mean being paid a lot more.

All that said, I still broadly like my job and my relationship with my university is love/hate rather than hate hate or boredom, so... [/shrug/] I think for me a job in the public sector or the weird private/public space UK universities occupy will always be preferable to the private sector.

Dh moved from SLT in schools to a high-level admin role in a university (not quite what you're looking at, I know). Even though he was desperate to quit teaching and should in theory have been relieved to move to a less manic environment, he's actually bored and frustrated by the unbelievably slow pace at which anything happens. He can't believe how many people the uni employs to do so little and so slowly, how much time is wasted, and how obstructive people can be!

I think this sums it up perfectly. I've seen people move into a role in university and almost tear their hair out in frustration.

That really resonates @AllProperTeaIsTheft

I work in an academic-related professional service role at a large RG uni. I was a teacher for many years and although I would never go back into schools, I am so frustrated with slow pace of change and immense amount of 'busy work' that happens in my team.

They're lovely people but I nearly spat my tea out when one complained about having to teach for 6 hours one day (as a one off).

Honestly, my job is easy and relatively stressful free but I do miss the professional satisfaction of operating in a slightly higher pressure environment.

There was a thread recently started by someone who was considering a move into a senior University professional service role from the civil service (for transparency, I was on that thread) - not sure if it is helpful?

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/work/5101302-corporate-role-at-a-university-vs-civil-service

I spent the first 6-7 years of my career in industry and found moving to a professional services role in HE extremely disorientating. I moved out of the sector for a year and then back in again, and only really committed mentally after doing an internal management training programme which gave me the bigger picture and helped me appreciate the contributions made by people in very diverse roles.

To repeat what I said on the other thread - it's great, but you have to really want to do it!