UKCGE Supervisor Recognition Award - worth pursuing for future jobs?

[wigletswiglet]

I'm a social sciences post-doc and am thinking about next steps for when my contract ends next year. I'd like to stay in academia but given the bin fire that is is at the moment, I'm also looking at external options like the civil service, local government and charities etc.

I just wondered whether it was worth me doing an application for the UKCGE Supervisor Recognition Award? I currently have a PhD student who I co-supervise in a team at the moment. On one hand, I was thinking it might look good for both academic and non-academic jobs as I know papers/journals won't really translate outside of academia. Is it worth the time or am I better off concentrating on papers and non-academic things to boost my CV for all eventualities? If so, what are the things I can do to boost my non-academic CV? Really want to make sure I make the most of my time atm!

I’ve not come across this before but it seems like quite a niche academia thing. I would focus on other stuff if I were you. Interested to hear others’ views as to what concrete things have appeal for non academic jobs

I don't think it would really help you outside of academia, no.

As someone who has interviewed people with PhDs and post docs for various roles, my observation is that they are often not very good at articulating how their transferable skills might relate to the world beyond academia. It is likely that you will have lots of transferable skills, but you need to learn to package them up in a way that seems relevant to the job that you're actually applying for.

You may have all sorts of skills such as communication, teamwork, data analysis, project management, people management, bid writing etc, but the key is to present those skills in a way that is meaningful to your prospective employer - unless it is directly relevant to their field, they probably won't be interested in the detail of your research so focus on the skills that you gained in the process of doing it rather than the actual research itself. If that makes sense. And be prepared to talk about those skills with simpe, accessible examples.

I'd not heard of it before and wonder if it's like the HEA teaching award which I never found to be useful in practice but we all had to do it for our CVs.

The more I sit with it, the more I think I do want to get out of academia/HE to be honest but I'm struggling as it's all I've ever done and it's a huge part of my identity and I wonder if all jobs/sectors come with their problems. I just really don't enjoy teaching, the isolation of it all and how long it takes to get anything done. As long as I can do research and policy work for a good chunk of my time and have some stability and security, I'd be happy as I just hate how unsettled I've felt over the last decade of the PhD and various post-docs. But I think the expectation is that I apply to/go onto a lectureship as I'm on a competitive Fellowship so feeling a bit stuck now about next steps!

I do not think it would be terribly useful even for academic jobs. Yes, maybe in some contexts, all things being equal, the panel will have a preference for a candidate with such qualification vs without - but this is a highly hypothetical situation because in interview panels you rarely have perfectly "equal" candidates. I have recently left a HoD job and sat on a few panels for junior positions, and PhD supervision experience was something that I don't remember ever coming up. What universities are most interested in particularly these days is not whether you have the ability to supervise a candidate but rather that you can attract candidates - either through raising scholarship money, or through developing enough recognition that candidates will want to study with you even if self-funded. Both things take a few or several years to develop and so I don't think they would be reasonably expected of any junior candidate, even in the current competitive climate. I would suggest you would be better off by developing some 4* publications or major research grants/felllowships. The assumption for junior lecturers is that they'll do some co-supervision with experienced colleagues so that they are ready for when they start attracting their own students as above.