Help I am going to be made redundant?

[Elephantofsurprise]

I am a university lecturer and I am at risk of redundancy. As all universities are in financial trouble it is a sector wide problem and there are no jobs equivalent to mine to apply for.

What should I do? I have lots of qualifications but they are very niche. I have a social science phd so could do something research based. I love the teaching side of my job and I have a PGCE but I haven’t worked in a school for such a long time that I don’t think I could go back to it very easily.

I have 2 young children so can’t move and retraining would be hard.

I am panicking quite a lot.

FE college, rather than school? Market research?

Once you know you are being chosen they should help you with training, time out for interviews coaching etc. they will usually aim to redeploy as many as possible. Redundancy is expensive for them. Fingers crossed for you

Perhaps join the Civil Service, e.g. the Government Social Research profession?

This is a possibility. Do you know anything about the civil service? What background do they look for?

Could you work for a life science organisation? There are some really good well paying employers out there

I don’t have a life science background.

I am considering applying for the TA job that is going at my child’s school but that pays half my current salary.

Yes, but the jobs planned for cuts are likely to be those that can be automated as opposed to highly skilled professionals, which if anything will increase to meet increasing demands.

The sector looks for lots of experts as it’s very wide ranging - for HE employees go into it a lot

Tutoring ?
sixth form college teaching?
If it's social science then possibly policy research jobs in local govt/public sector/charity sector but yes they are facing job cuts too sadly

What do you lecture in? Your skills and expertise could be transferable to policy roles in the charity sector - pay is circa £40k and there are a fair few remote based roles that come up check www.charityjob.co.uk

i work remotely in this sector and that level of flexibility plus the cause I work for, suits me.

fingers crossed for you

Might be worth looking at the various analysis professions in the Civil Service. All have different eligibility criteria, but the social research criteria is below. Lots of people join from academia.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/gsr-social-research-scheme#experience-route-eligibility-criteria

You could also look at wider analyst professions, but these generally do more quantitative analysis, or things like occupational psychology, depending on your degree subject. A social science background could also be useful for policy jobs, etc, though opportunities have generally reduced due to financial constraints.

https://analysisfunction.civilservice.gov.uk

You can either apply to one of the professions directly, or apply for specific jobs on the Civil Service jobs site. Many jobs look for transferable skills and there are roles across UK.

I too was going to ask what do you lecture in? What specific areas/skills?
Get your CV up to date and put yourself on the many search engines for jobs to see what is around.
-A colleague does proof reading for uni and secondary students as a side in specific areas, but does monitoring for a research company day to day.
-I agree with looking at civil service roles
-Clinical research roles, depending what you lecture on

I also suggest tutoring. This can be done online which may fit in with your own family better. Or you could have the pupils in person.I wish you all the best and I hope you are not made redundant.

Thank you that actually looks like a possibility.

The Civil Service is going to be culled back with massive redundancies. We have over 100,000 more Civil Servants now than before Covid. The thing is everything takes longer now than it did before. Passports take so long to arrive and DVLA say they have not received things then 2 days later it arrives in the post, so they must have received it at the time of the phone call. WFH should mean people work their full hours. Not collecting their kids from school or loading the dishwasher etc.

It is psychology. I have looked at educational psychology or clinical psychology but that would involve doing another phd.

I feared that the civil service would be having cuts. There are some jobs that I could potentially apply for at a similar salary.

I think it would be hard to make a decent living from tutoring and AI can proof read better than people now.