Who wants to give me careers advice?

[liv]

So two years ago I left my tenured academic job because it was making me miserable and requiring me to commute 300 miles a week. And I took up a fixed term job working on an interesting project about using modern teaching methods to make sure all students, including minorities, have a good experience at university. The project has come to an end, and it has been pretty much everything I hoped for; my CV is much more interesting and diverse now, and includes some leadership experience.

So I'm able to apply for a much wider range of jobs, and more senior jobs, now. And I'm sometimes getting shortlisted but so far nobody actually wants to offer me a job. So I'm going to be out of work from the end of the month, and I don't know what to do next.

I genuinely don't know what job I'm looking for. In fact, I don't think there exists a standard job title or career path for people like me.

My highest priority in a job is that I want a lot of autonomy and a lot of variety. I've found that the easiest way to get that is academia, and therefore I've worked in academia my entire adult life. Also, I really really enjoy teaching, and I would like a job that includes at least some teaching and preferably a lot. I'm certainly willing to consider jobs outside academia if I get to decide what I want to do each day between interesting options, and if any organization at all is willing to hire me with zero experience other than in universities.

I'm 40 and thus probably around half way through my career. I'm in principle willing to retrain, but it would have to be definitely the right thing, I don't want to spend a lot of time and money on more education just for the sake of it. I'd really rather get a job that uses the skills and knowledge I already have. That's quite a variety of stuff; although my career has been pretty linear, I've picked up a lot of really eclectic skills along the way, especially through volunteering.

I'm good at:

• Teaching (any age and level)
  
• Causing disparate groups of people to bond together into a community with a common purpose
  
• Research (most of my experience is in natural science, but I have two years of professional level education research and I'm generically good at finding out and analysing information)
  
• Communication, not only with people like me, but higher ups, people from very different backgrounds, and just about anyone really.

The second point is the most difficult to fit into a job niche. Lots of people are good at teaching, research and communication, but very few people cause communities the way I do. All the good jobs I've had have been in institutions that value that, and I don't get those jobs unless people count volunteer experience as experience.

I'm not very good at: physically demanding stuff, or anything that requires me to do boring but attention-requiring work. I think I'm at least potentially competent at management, more technical management that is focused on a particular skill or task than general management of people and orgs, and I have some leadership skills (see: community creation). But I don't have a lot of formal experience of the sorts of things that tick hiring people's boxes as 'management' or 'leadership'.

I want to do something at least vaguely socially beneficial, though I think very few possible employers are totally morally pure. I am willing to work more than 40 hours a week only if it's genuinely a one-off crisis; I strongly prefer not to be doing that regularly. I don't drive at all, and I would really like a commute of half an hour or less by bike, or an hour or less by public transport. I'm in principle ok with working from home, but I am a giant extrovert and I thrive more in jobs where I get to talk to other humans regularly.

Those things are all priorities over salary, but I'm currently on £40K and I could get by on less than that but would rather not be massively financially constrained. If nothing else because most of my social circle including several of my partners earn quite a bit more than I do. But equally, I'm from a generation and background that have lead to not carrying any debt, and I don't have any dependants, so I can afford to prioritize other things than income.

I would be somewhat willing to go back to a traditional academic job in bioscience, but it's definitely not my first choice. And also I don't think I'd actually land such a job, because I don't have a particularly stellar CV and mainstream academic jobs are ridiculously competitive. Equally I'm very willing to consider something completely out of left field, which is why I'm making this an open post and asking for any suggestions.

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

Are you in a big city now? Could you look for training or communication jobs at nonprofits? Or you might consider hiring a career counselor if you are in a big enough city.

Good luck!!!

[liv]

Thank you! Not exactly a big city, a medium sized city with a huge university, namely Cambridge. That means that there are more than the average number of weird intellectual jobs going. Maybe I should in fact be paying an expert to give me advice; I often get the impression that people from outside academia just don't really understand how my career shape works. Working as a trainer in the right sort of non-profit could be really cool, definitely worth following that up, thanks.

[princessofgeeks]

Wishing you all the best. And in Cambridge surely there are lots of people with academia in their past who might understand.

[hilarita]

So where are you looking for jobs? Last time I was job-hunting, I was looking for a specific type of thing, but also open to Things Wot Looked Interesting (which is how I ended up in my current job, which wasn't what I was looking for specifically). Also, now people know you are job-hunting, they may recommend jobs for you to apply to.

[liv]

I'm afraid that "where" is a fraught question because of Brexit. But assume for the sake of argument that I'm looking in Cambridge. I'm trying to be very open to random things, because I think at this point the exact job that suits me isn't going to be an obvious one. But yeah, this is the purpose of my post: get ideas to broaden my search, and possibly get recommendations from people who know I'm searching.

[rosefox]

Item 2 sounds like something that religious organizations value. It might be worth looking into non-clergy jobs such as education director for a faith community with an education program.

[liv]

That is a very good idea, thank you. The problem is that the UK Jewish community is tiny and poor and about 80% Orthodox, and the number of Progressive synagogues big enough to actually pay people to run their education programme is vanishingly small. But it's not zero, so definitely worth investigating.

[ewt]

Freelancing is hard work in a different way to having a dayjob, but you do get a fair amount of autonomy, and I really enjoyed the years I spent teaching piano (and would like to go back to it at some point). Variety depends a lot on the range of students: I was teaching complete beginners, adults who had had lessons as children, and so on.

I wonder whether you would enjoy teaching school; I think at this stage you might need a PGCE or similar to do it, though, which probably counts as retraining. (And I'm not sure the conditions are great at most state schools, at least.)

I also wonder whether private tutoring is something that would interest you, particularly if you want to keep some income while looking for the right other job. "I took some time off to decide what to do next, and while I was doing that I did some tutoring to keep my hand in" is a better line than "I kept applying for jobs but didn't get any of them".

It also seems like somewhere with a university as big as Cambridge ought to have some full-time chaplains who aren't Christian clergy, and that feels like something you might be good at and enjoy, but I don't know where to start looking.

[liv]

Thank you, this is super helpful. I am scared of freelancing because I hate hustling; applying for grants was my least favourite part of being an academic. And I fear I might succumb to the temptation of thinking, well, I don't *really* need the money urgently, maybe I'll advertise / chase up contacts next week, and just never actually doing anything. However I think freelancing isn't really like trying to attract grant money.

But private tutoring is something I feel I would enjoy, and it's certainly worth investigating if I can get in to that. Particularly if I can work through an agency who would take up some of the burden of identifying and approaching potential clients.

University chaplain would be just about my perfect job, but I've never heard of a Jewish chaplain in the UK who isn't Orthodox ordained.

School teaching: eh, I agree the conditions are well known to be awful, and I've looked into a PGCE but for some reason it counts as a first degree (even though it has "post-graduate" right there in the name) and costs £9K, and I don't feel sure enough about teaching to want to spend that kind of money. In other circumstances, I think I'd enjoy actually doing the work, but I'm not likely to pursue it as things stand.

[blue_mai]

Not helpful advice but:
1. I like how clearly you define what you are good at. I would love to be able to "cause communities", that's amazing!
2. I am really interested in the teaching practices you've been working with. Some things I have heard a little about, and of course my place has its own Learning and Teaching centre, but I haven't got properly into it. Essentially I want to ask you for advice. Would you be up for a discussion some time? Is dw, email or in-person best? (I'm not great at phone/Skype). Perhaps I will outline in a post, which will mean I don't splurge quite so much context at you.

[liv]

I would definitely rather talk to you in person, and I have sent you a text to try to arrange things. (Let me know if that reached you?) I'm very happy to give what advice I can about teaching practices, so do email me if arranging to meet up is too hard. I also would like to spend time with you in general though!

I am not sure I have a current email address for you; there's an old Yahoo one but it seems to be controlled by spammers. So if you email me [firstname] [at] outgra [dot] [be] then we can make contact.

But sure, DW also works, I'd like to read your post, and I might make one about my about-to-finish job, I think at least a few people might be intrested.

[blue_mai]

oh! I thought I replied almost immediately (by text) - it looks that way on my phone, perhaps it didn't go through properly?
I am free that day.
also, that yahoo email is still my current personal email - sorry it spits out spam every so often. I do have a functioning gmail one, but I just don't use it much. happy to switch to it if you prefer, it does keep track of conversations better.

[aldabra]

While you're looking, Cambridge's Temporary Employment Service is much better than it advertises itself as at producing interesting jobs. In my experience. They found me my current job, which is vastly better than the previous one (and which has now graduated to direct employment on a fixed term contract). They present themselves as looking for admin and receptionists, but they've found me genuine research stuff. And there is a route into permanent jobs which goes: get the temp role while they're recruiting, and be good enough at it that they don't bother to read the applications they get. I've seen someone do that recently.

Reed comes recommended too, for temping at Cambridge Assessment. You're not allowed to temp for more than nine months with the same agency, so people doing it long term alternate between the two.

[naath]

I feel like 2 would be a big win in management, but maybe management isn't your thing; you could go into school teaching with an aim of moving into school running or educational policy making, although I've no idea how that career works.

(I've just tended to know people who know people, which is crap advice in the general case really)

[quizcustodiet]

Interesting post, thank you for sharing it.

Given the range of your interests and skills, I wondered if you'd have better luck aiming for a portfolio of part-time roles with different focuses (potentially including charity/voluntary work alongside something to pay the bills).

Options that struck me for elements of that sort of portfolio:

Open University teaching - having done it myself, it's not very well paid for the effort required, but it will give you a lot of teaching, enthusiastic students and scratch some of your social good itch as well. It's also geographically flexible: for the course which I was an associate lecturer, I had to do one face-to-face class and one webinar, so you could work for any of their regions from Cambridge.

L&D/CPE - some of the work you did in your previous role sounds like it might lend itself to turning into refresher courses on patient engagement, person-centred care and understanding the needs of diverse patient groups. That sounds to me like something which NHS trusts and colleges and universities might be willing to pay for. I imagine you'd want to work with a range of different people to develop it, which might help with community building.

NHS management roles - locally and nationally the NHS is kicking off a lot of big transformation work around the Long Term Plan and building Integrated Care Systems. One of the priorities is personalised care and improving/closing health inequalities, so I think you'd be well placed to apply for roles in that space.

Public Health training - one of my Civil Service colleagues also has a pH.D. in biochem and has recently started training as a Public Health registrar, i.e. providing scientific and clinical input to NHS and local authority work on improving population health. Community building, research and communication are all key strengths. Not sure about availability in Cambridge, though: my colleague moved to the North.

Good luck!

[silveradept]

I don't know how practical it would be, or what retraining would be needed, but your still set sounds like it might work in a library setting, for the right institution. Public service can help build community, there's a bit of teaching involved, and sometimes, depending on the position, you can do research.

I don't know what the salaries are, though, but if they're like what they are here in the States, they're not nearly high enough for the work involved.

[ephemera]

As a librarian, I 100% wouldn't advise anyone taking on debt to re-qualify in the field (pay's pretty low in most areas, and the jobs just aren't out there) but, that said, Liv, it might be worth including librarianship in your searching (and perhaps temp-ing) pool, as your skillset would absolutely be amazing in certain ways for it, and depending on the organisation and the team, you could do a work-based route to qualification.

[silveradept]

Definitely. I second the advice to not take on any debt for qualifications. I, personally, think you have most of what you need already and could pick up the rest, but some organizations turn their noses up at anyone who doesn't present them with the qualification they want to see.

[solitarywalker]

If you feel like posting about it, i'm curious about how a job-search actually works. When i look online the answer tends to amount to, sign up on our scammy looking website, which basically just encourages me to give up. (We're similar in some ways though opposite in others; i also would want something which is somewhat independent and socially beneficial.)

In my own case i discard the idea of self-employment because it requires marketing yourself. But as an extrovert perhaps self-employment would be an option for you?

[(Anonymous)]

Is the area of university activity around open scholarship/open data/research data management something that might interest you? It's a growing field: it didn't really exist until a few years ago, so many institutions are still building up their provision. It's something where good communication skills are massively important (both in raising awareness of what needs doing, and persuading people it's an important enough part of good research practice to be worth their time and attention), it often involves teaching in the form of running training sessions, and a research background is really valuable as it means you can see things from the researchers' perspective. It's also something that (at least where I am) involves trying to pull together disparate groups from all over the university - IT, libraries, central admin, academic departments, and so on.

[sea_bright]

Er, the above comment was me.