Advice for University support staff interview

[Teeturtle]

I have an interview coming up for a position in a University. It is a support role not an academic role, however the role reports to a member of academic staff and I will be interviewed by that person plus two other professors / doctors.

I have always worked in the private sector in business. I am generally fairly confident going into interviews, but I have never had an interview in the education sector or for any public sector type of employer.

Is there anything I should try to prepare for in terms of the structure of the interview? For example is it likely to follow a very rigid structure, be competency based, a more general discussion of my CVvor could it be just about any format?

Any tips to help me prepare would be gratefully received.

At our place we have quite a structured interview process. To sit on an interview panel you have to have attended or have updated the relevant training within the last two years

The panel members ( usually 3) divide up the applications and individually go through scoring each essential criteria in a set form that has to be returned to HR. They have to meet before the interview to compare their ratings and to discuss who they are selecting for interview and why also which questions they will ask in the interview and usually who will ask what. When agreed they stick to the questions and are not allowed to ask anything else .

Sometimes there will also be a discussion about an appropriate task set which you would be told about when invited to interview.

The panel usually has two people who may be working with the role and one from a completely different part of the university as an outside view.

The questions will all be formulated to help gain more evidence on the criteria but the people who are not asking the question take notes. Everybody gets asked exactly the same questions that were agreed at the selection meeting . You can't decide to ask one candidate something different or to change the questions after one interview .

All notes have to be submitted to HR after the interview day. In the interviews I've done we usually have 15 mins between each candidate to discuss what we all thought and if there were any areas they did well/ not so well and if there is any disagreement at that point. After the last interview we all discuss the candidates and record who we want to offer the job to and why; second and third choices are also recorded if possible. The panel chair then calls to offer the job to the first choice and if necessary to the second choice . This is usually done the same day or the day after. Unsuccessful candidates are usually informed by email a few days later.

That is what we do but I suppose other universities might do something different

The uni I work at follows the same process as @bumblingbovine49 and so did the two other south coast unis I've worked at.

@bumblingbovine49

Thank you for your response, that is very helpful. Your process sounds a bit like I had thought it might, although I was hoping to be wrong and be told it was more informal. 😊

So to prepare, perhaps I should take an educated guess at what criteria they may have and then think of my working examples of how I have and can fulfil that criteria?

I have not been set a task so far and the meeting has been put in my calendar, scheduled to last 45 minutes.

If you revisit the job/person specification and base your examples around that you should be fine. Try to fit in something about equality & diversity and team working as they generally always crop up.

[quote Teeturtle]@bumblingbovine49

Thank you for your response, that is very helpful. Your process sounds a bit like I had thought it might, although I was hoping to be wrong and be told it was more informal. 😊

So to prepare, perhaps I should take an educated guess at what criteria they may have and then think of my working examples of how I have and can fulfil that criteria?

I have not been set a task so far and the meeting has been put in my calendar, scheduled to last 45 minutes.[/quote]
Yes you should prepare as many specific examples as you can that show how you meet each of the job criteria. You shouldn't need to guess the criteria though as they should be listed in the person specification which usually comes with the job description.

Hmm. Unfortunately I applied for this role ages and ages ago and had assumed I had not been selected (I am used to things moving more quickly) so no longer have the specifics. I only have very high level information now, hence my needing to guess…

Great advice above. Though I would consider carefully. I worked on the university sector for a couple of years and it was awful. Not enough work for any of us to do, all incredibly overpaid for the work we did, and the boredom meant that most of the staff (non academic) spent their time strategising each other’s demise. Interesting from a sociology viewpoint but definitely the most boring years of my life, particularly if you’re used to private sector.

Lovely as it sounds, being overpaid for doing nothing is demoralising after a while.

I would probe very carefully into support staff turnover, how many in the role before you and where they have gone on to.

Does it sound odd to anyone that they would be interviewing me after all this time? The role is definitely not being advertised for any more.

That sounds like they are having trouble filling the role. Maybe they have re specified the role and went back.to your application. That does sound a bit odd though . I personally would go back and ask for clarification as it was so long ago . I'd definitely get another copy of the person specification

Once it's past the closing date you'll not see the info on website anymore. It wouldn't be unreasonable to call or email HR and ask them for a copy of the person specification for the role. As said upthread, I'd expect the interview to be looking for evidence of these criteria.

I've also had/given tests (they should tell you before if this is likely?) - either typing up minutes (if that's part of the job) or summarising information or answering queries from a particular speciality that I was being interviewed for. If minutes are part of it, then have a look if there is a house style for them on their web site (some do, some don't). If the job is in a student facing area (student admin, registry and even school/dept admin) they might want to know that you know your way around database systems, even if not specifically student or their one, and that you're confident with picking up new systems.

In universities, they tend to use the term "professional services" staff rather than "support staff", for example for finance, HR, research office, or administrators or technicians (not by way of telling you off just to make you sound like you fit in more! hope you take it the way I mean!). If you give us an idea what the role is, can maybe give more specific suggestions.

On the time thing - financial year for many universities ends in August meaning and with covid... well many have been thinking long and hard about recruitment and may well have flip-flopped. There could also be internal changes that meant they waited until someone else in place before interviewing... all sorts. You could ask this too of HR but I wouldn't hold my breath for an answer!

I had a support role in a university earlier this year and I was taken aback by how informal the interview was. It was over in 15 mins and it was mostly just a chat, getting to know you kind of thing. I knew straight away it would be a piss easy job and it was! (but paid £30,000 a year!)

My experience in relation to waiting to hear back about university job applications is that many HR departments are overworked and there are often departmental restructures taking place. Staff who are in the redeployment pool get first consideration and guaranteed interviews even if they are a poor fit for the role.

Thanks for all your comments, I have appreciated them all, it will definitely help me. And I would rather be over prepared than under prepared so I am going to go with the working assumption that it will be a highly structured interview.

The role is pitched at something like £50k, I am hesitating to say exactly what it is as I am paranoid somebody recruiting might recognise it if I do. But that will hopefully give some idea of job level and actually maybe a better idea than I have as I have no idea of university pay scales, I am sure they are very different to private sector.

I'm an academic and many of the professional services staff I know are very much overworked and underpaid - and underappreciated as some academics seem to view professional services as being very much below them.

I moved from the private sector and absolutely do recognise what the poster above was talking about - universities are very different. Just wanted to stress that it's not always a case of having nothing to do. I would hate to be some of my colleagues who have more and more added to their list every year for feck all money. On the other hand at that pay grade you're more likely to have an interesting, challenging job and hopefully a bit more appreciation from the academic side.

I just wanted to add my experience I took a job at a university after the private sector. The interview was very brief and questions were closed and not competency based eg. Have you managed budgets? Have you organised events? Can you use twitter?

My experience at a university is so different to the private sector. There aren't any processes and it can take months to sort out something that should be easy. I didn't have a probation period with objectives and training and I've never had a performance appraisal.

However as a pp said it's well paid for what I do and it's low stress. It's just taken a long time to get used to the different working practices.

My brief experience was also same as mentioned. Highly structured and very fornal behavioural interviews including a panel interview, get asked the same questions in multiple interviews which was annoying as have to try to remember what I had said before.

I’ve worked at a university at that sort of level. I think if you are reporting to a researcher your job will probably be interesting and certainly won’t be stuck trying to find things to do.

I’ve had a variety of interviews and they’re not much different to the private sector. Usually a panel chosen in advance and questions heavily based on the job spec. When I’ve done interviews, we ask all the candidates the same questions and give them a score and notes for each.

I would definitely email to try and get the job spec and description, have some examples prepared in STAR format, if you’re provided with names of interviewers look them up in advance. Also, have a look at the most recent papers of the researcher who will be your line manager just so you’re aware. You won’t need to understand it all though and they won’t expect you too!

I also just wanted to add, although all the university interviews I’ve had have been fairly structured, they have usually been friendly and not trying to catch you out. They’re also fairly informal too in my experience. My manager is a senior group leader and wears leggings and flip flops to work everyday.

Good luck

I must find myself one of these low stress, overpaid professional services roles - not my experience at all! However I find my job very interesting and fulfilling. Good luck!

Our interviews are as described above. Rather than being rigid about identical questions we are allowed to tailor questions on a theme to the individual. One common question for professional services is “ give an example of dealing with a difficult person”. I would say that some academics are allowed to get away with behaviour that would be unacceptable elsewhere - rudeness, refusing to conform to procedures, just not doing things. The title professor seems to confer a level of self-esteem that isn’t always helpful in a workplace!

So many variables here that it’s hard to give answers. But I spent 10 years in HE support, working both for the ‘centre’ and for faculties/departments.

£50k is quite high paid for university support staff, so it’s either quite senior in the hierarchy with a team to lead, or quite niche. If it’s under £50k less so, but over £50k is reaching the top of what general university admin can expect to be paid.

As for the recruitment process. In my experience universities do follow a process that is similar in general to other public sector organisations. So you should prepare STAR answers etc. But having said that, I have seen a wide range of interview panels, some where process is followed to the letter, some that are more ‘off piste’.

In general working for academics is preferable to working for ‘the centre’ in terms of interest, autonomy, general well-being. But some academics are quite nutty and unpredictable and some can be quite unpleasant to work for. And in that case you are generally less protected because e.g. the whole department may be suffering under a tyrant. There are certain jobs I’ve declined to apply for for this reason. That said, my very favourite jobs have been directly for academics and they have been enormously rewarding.

You will have the same general issues with moving from private to public sector, generally lack of defined processes, timescales that drag, hand wringing (especially in the university centre). Bonkers decision making.

But universities are fun places to work.

I also wouldn’t necessarily read too much into the delayed timescale, in my experience academics don’t always plan their recruitment well - typical to advertise for a role with the closing date right before they go away for a month etc.

That's very well paid for university support.
Have a look online or in your downloads for the job spec otherwise ask HR for a copy. Then prepare answers using the STAR technique.

Yy to the ‘describe working with a difficult person’ and ‘dealing with difficult customers/feedback’ - these are code for ‘some of the people you work with are going to be arseholes and what do you think about that?). In my experience, in general, the further you are towards the hard physical sciences the more arseholery you are likely to encounter. But some of my individual favourite academics to work with are physicists and engineers, so it’s not an area to avoid per se. Just the actual bastards I’ve worked with tend to be from that area.

Do you know the field of the interviewers? Broadly speaking? Because they do vary, e.g. when talking to an external party the scientists will think nothing of signing an NDA, but the social scientists would be less willing to do so. In general.

Yes also look at university pay scale overall - most general uni admin will be around £25k with a pyramid upwards, over £35k is less common, over £40k niche, over £50k rare as hens’ teeth!

I've worked in a variety of professional services roles, primarily at one leading central London university, for the last decade. You will be able to find the pay grades online and then that should give you an indication of what they're expecting for the money. In my department, the "minimum" salary for the lowest grade of professional staff is mid 30s. The vast majority of my colleagues earn high 40s/low 50s so I don't consider it to be "high", if I am being honest because we work very very hard, there are a lot of senior professional staff who are paid higher and the academics are rewarded too much for doing very little.

As has been said, you'll likely find that you're asked a lot of questions relating to dealing/managing difficult conversations/colleagues and how you move forward with your role despite lack of engagement from others around you. This will most likely mean from students and (primarily academic) staff. You will likely also get questions on prioritisation, time management, managing expectations and anything specific related to the role such as your experience (if any) with relevant software systems etc. In the teams that I have worked in we would be unlikely to hire anyone who didn't have direct experience of the role in a HE environment because that's important to us as we want someone who understands the HE landscape that we are operating in, including the terminology etc because we don't want to spend time teaching it every time, however there are other roles where this would be less important. That said, if you were coming from a non HE background then it'll be important to show that you do know the HE/uni sector and it's challenges as an indication of why you want the job, as it were. All of the interviews that I have been involved in have been structured similar to bumbling said above.

I love my job and department although there are departments within my university (and at other universities) where I would not apply for jobs due to what I have heard about the culture and how it's ran, but I imagine it's the same as any other industry in that respect. We are treated very well and I work with a lot of lovely people. The academic community can be a challenge, particularly when individuals have complete disregard for anything they consider to be "admin" or "student" related taking them away from their research and you will find yourself wondering how someone can be so highly paid/respected internationally yet have zero idea how to be a decent colleague by replying to emails etc. However by and large, you can't tar everyone with the same brush and I also have some lovely, very very high profile academic colleagues who are very generous with their praise of how hard we work behind the scenes.

@IamJuliaJohnson

Yy to the ‘describe working with a difficult person’ and ‘dealing with difficult customers/feedback’ - these are code for ‘some of the people you work with are going to be arseholes and what do you think about that?). In my experience, in general, the further you are towards the hard physical sciences the more arseholery you are likely to encounter. But some of my individual favourite academics to work with are physicists and engineers, so it’s not an area to avoid per se. Just the actual bastards I’ve worked with tend to be from that area.

Do you know the field of the interviewers? Broadly speaking? Because they do vary, e.g. when talking to an external party the scientists will think nothing of signing an NDA, but the social scientists would be less willing to do so. In general.

My degree is in a subject that would coincidentally fall within this faculty, albeit with lots of other subjects. I would say I have an affinity and fondness for my degree subject but I did my degree a long time ago and have not looked at it since.

I have seen the phrase “Academic vision” used a bit e.g. in the context of “ensuring alignment to the academic vision”. This type of terminology is a bit alien to me.