Dr Bryony Parsons

Ordinarily, that wouldn’t be a huge amount of time on its own, but when you combined it with the events of that week, I literally don’t know how I got the job. The Wednesday I was emailed, my boyfriend came back from India, and I also had to prepare for a lecture the following morning so I couldn’t start preparing for the interview. 

I gave the lecture and when I came out, I discovered that my boyfriend had decided to get a tropical disease, so we spent most of Thursday afternoon in the Royal Hospital (I took my laptop). I basically worked on my presentation whilst my boyfriend was lying on a bed becoming increasingly incoherent, at one point only communicating to me in his native tongue, Polish. 

I went home to shower and bring him some items from home, so a pretty late night. Did I mention that one of my best friends was getting married in Crewe that weekend and that I was a bridesmaid? I was supposed to drive myself and the other bridesmaids to Crewe on Friday evening, so again not much chance of preparing! My boyfriend was a lot better on the Friday and I spoke to his doctor who said she would be sending him home later that day or Saturday at the latest. 

So I went to the wedding, and wasn’t home until 11pm on the Saturday. I got up early on the Sunday and basically had a solid day of preparing and finishing the presentation. In a way, I wondered if it helped because it made me prioritise the important bits, and I just told myself that if I didn’t get the job, I’d done the best I could under the circumstances. 

I turned up at the Library for my interview and suddenly felt quite nervous. I was used to presenting, and didn’t normally get nervous, but I think job interviews are always different. Then one of the lovely Liaison Librarians gave me a tour and I was put at ease. By the time I went into the interview I felt quite calm and collected and presented my slides. 

I think it’s good if you can present slides because you have the opportunity to show your best self by making sure you know the content and feel really comfortable presenting it. You can also include key prompts so you don’t forget to mention them (in my case key learning theories and University policy). 

One big difference I noticed from postdoc interviews, is they asked really great questions designed to get the best out of me, not testing me on whether I’d memorised something, and I felt the interview went quite well, only a couple of questions I could have done better on. 

A few hours later, I received a call to tell me I had got the job and I was amazed and delighted! She said she really liked that I came from a STEM background, and although I wasn’t what she had envisioned in a candidate, she could see the benefits. Oh, I was also trying to buy a house at this time, so not having a job would have been really bad, so I also felt relief. 

“One big difference I noticed from postdoc interviews, is they asked really great questions designed to get the best out of me, not testing me on whether I’d memorised something”. 

How did you approach the job search?

It was a bit different for me as I saw it on the redeployment list. I had been looking at lecturing roles so this caught my eye, even though I had never heard of Learning Developers before. 

Was there anything unexpectedly challenging you found while navigating the job market beyond academia? 

The biggest thing is having the skills to enable you to meet the essential criteria and for that it helps if you know what you want to go into, in my case teaching. Then it’s all about volunteering or doing courses to help you meet those criteria. 

The other option I considered was being part of the research coordination team, which would have involved finance. I got invited to an interview and had I have gone (if I didn’t get my current job) I would have asked to spend a few days in my Dad’s accountancy firm to gain some experience which I could honestly talk about in an interview. 

So that’s my advice, really: try and develop a few extra skills – even though you can probably do a lot of the jobs with the skills you already have, you could be competing against people with experience in that industry, or you may not meet the essential criteria so you have to make sure you get past the first hurdle. 

Can you describe a typical week in your job? 

When teaching was on campus, I would teach maybe 4-5 workshops a week, usually on statistics or EndNote. I would usually have an online statistics tutorial that I would be making using Articulate Storyline, and getting feedback on it from colleagues. 

We might be editing VITAL/CANVAS, preparing tweets, writing the newsletter, making videos, designing pull-ups and other promo, attending Learning Developer/study skills events, providing feedback on the Code of Practice on Assessment (COPA), designing or tweeting workshops, scheduling sessions/coordinating with other presenters meeting colleagues from across the University to see how we could be tailoring our sessions. 

We have also done a few embedded sessions within particular courses, and our Writing@Liverpool service means we have regular training/catch up sessions with our tutors and we check their time sheets, so there’s a bit of management experience in there too. Currently, we are doing webinars and trying to publish more online tutorials to help with the COVID-19 crisis. 

Have you found the workplace culture to differ from that in academia?

Yes, people generally don’t email outside of work hours and annual leave is recorded more strictly which makes you take it as you know you won’t be able to carry over more than five days. We have flexi time in the Library too which I think is very progressive as it allows people with families to take time off, knowing that they have already worked those extra hours, and again it stops you from working really long days. 

It’s a bigger place so I don’t feel I’m as close to as many people, for example no Christmas meals out with the department and departmental Secret Santa, but my team is so brilliant to work with, both professionally and on a personal level, that I really look forward to going into work. 

Is there anything you miss about academia? 

I miss analysing data and publishing papers. I loved that moment when you saw an interesting result. 

How would you describe yourself now?

I’d say I’m happier and more confident now, and I’ve had the worry of short-term contracts removed. If something were to happen to my current job, I’d be gutted, but since I was invited to several interviews after my last job ended (and they ranged from lecturer to research coordinator) I actually feel confident that I could get another job, whereas after my first postdoc ended, there were several weeks when I thought I’d never find another job again.