Don't be disheartened - as I said "The other candidate's background matched the project better." could also be code for 'I appointed my own PhD student/colleague' - because their background would, predictably, match it quite well...

It's about 1/20 on a postdoc application. Stats would suggest hitting at least 14 rejections before getting very introspective. It sucks but from experience persistence pays off :)

Yeah just to add a 2nd opinion; you are indeed overthinking it :)

A supervisor asking to be 1st author, or not be named, is something to worry about. Nobody cares who the corresponding author is (think in all the stuff you've read, have you ever noticed or cared!)

The general concept of research is that it's investigator-led; i.e. if someone tells you what to do 'by numbers', you're not being (or training to be) a researcher, you're training to be a lab assistant.

That said, you would be right to complain if they have not trained you sufficiently to select a topic and pose an informed question. I think a reasonable expectation is they should not tell you what to do, but should provide timely and insightful feedback on what you are proposing.

The fundamental thing here is research needs to be self-driven. Whilst at undergrad level, the expectation is you will learn the content and pass the exam, at masters it (without much notice, typically), relies on you defining the content and requirements. At PhD even moreso.

I can certainly say, from experience, if you want to do good research, yes, you have to do it all yourself. This is based on all the good researchers I've spoken to who seem to universally arrive at the conclusion if you need to do a good study, you end up doing 95% of the work. Miracle supervisors/teams who will appreciate all the nuances exist, but they're very rare.

1. How to start a literature review

Read. Whilst taking notes. Most bad literature reviews smack of glossing over abstracts/wikipedia, with no genuine understanding of the source material. Take notes, because this will force you to read properly. Do not even think about the writeup at the early stages.

2. How you work on your literature review and fine tune it over time

Have a method. Will you do an empirical meta-review, or a discussive chapter? These have very different requirements. A good review is a contribution to science in its own right, and as such needs a clear methodology and method.

3. The approach you take to the literature review

Personally, when starting out I ignored the first two comments and tried to write x words. I learned from experience this is how not to do it.

4. How many words is a literate review in a PhD usually?

This is not a question to ask - to paraphrase Pascal, 'I would have written a shorter review but didn't have enough time'. A good review must start way over the limit and be cut down. Nobody has ever written a good piece of work by aiming upwardly on a word limit.

4. Any other advice you might have!

I think that covers it :)

Having been on both sides of the interview table;

Not getting an immediate offer (within 24hrs), means either:

1) The person in charge is following HR policy correctly, and not phoning you an offer (it's 50/50 on this; many academics ignore HR policy to give an informal offer right after the last interview, as it can otherwise mean days of waiting for HR to deliver an impersonal phonecall, and risks losing the best candidate;

2) You're 2nd or 3rd choice, and they don't want to formally reject you in case option #1/2 falls through.

Beyond 2 weeks, it's sadly likely you've not got the post, and HR have failed in their responsibility to inform you - but it's still possible if you're #2 (or #3) and #1/2 is in some kind of protracted negotiation. Usually an applicant is offered a week to make a decision. So best not to burn bridges in any follow-up.

In any case, you are entitled to send a gentle email asking for feedback. If they confirm a negative outcome, I would still gently press them for feedback, as in my view anybody who takes the effort to apply deserves it, and any academic worth their salt will happily give it (and you may be able to read between the lines on it, e.g. "does not know enough about the X programme at this University", is often code for 'it was stitched up to an internal, but we had to advertise due to policy, and your application was really good - sorry'). In any case, you should always press for feedback as it will improve your future applications, and - contrary to some beliefs - will always be seen as a positive thing by the academic asked to provide it.

The forward planning approach is to consider where you see yourself being, or applying to, in a few years time.

Many UK universities want 'REFable' publications. Do not take for granted they will read or evaluate them carefully internally, they may look at a coarse bibiometric like https://www.scimagojr.com/ and simply ask if it's Q2 or greater.

In general a sign of a good journal is all three of:

- It ranks ok on bibliometrics;
- You see publications that you cite, and from colleagues, there;
- It rejects one of your papers.

These are not all fair (esp. #1), but it does cover how it will be viewed by both peers and naive reviewers, and #3 covers scenarios where #1 and #2 prove misleading (because both alone are not necessarily measures of quality - that a journal rejects 'ok' papers and forgoes the $ it would make from accepting them, is, fundamentally, the best indication of quality these days!).

Keep applying.

A typical (from experience) number of applicants to post in CS (admittedly not the same discipline) is about 20. This means applying 20 times, if you play the numbers game - which you should, considering you have no control over the other applicants.

Whilst doing so, I would keep an eye on industry, and not limit yourself to academic postdocs, unless you're really passionate about teaching and the conventional academic route. If it's research you're interested in, it's not always the case that an academic post (particularly in technological fields) is the best place to push the state-of-the-art, and it's often actually less viable than in a leading company (if you're in a leading solar energy provider, you'll likely have far more access to data, tech, and resources than a partner academic ever would). You will also earn considerably more, in all likelihood, if that's a consideration.

If you formally suspended study, yes; though the nature of the question suggests you basically got the corrections then disappeared? (you are not the first, or last student, to do this; I'm not being judgmental!).

They would very likely either insist on a re-viva or say no. Because you didn't publish (complete) the thesis, and there's no guarantee the work is still a novel contribution after so long. Varies by field, etc., but in general whilst academics are (largely, subject to dispute) forgiving and sympathetic, University regulations are not. The general policies will say if you didn't return the corrections on time, you failed, and have probably been recorded as failed in your absence, because if this wasn't the case deadlines would be meaningless.

Realistically, you probably need to find a supervisor sympathetic to your cause, and self-fund (pay fees) for 1 part-time year for the supervisor to look at the thesis, and find examiners, and re-draft it to get it up to date.

Hindsight is 20/20 but I really think you should have just stuck the same document back in as 'corrected' in 2014 and crossed your fingers, since examiners are very hesitant to outright fail. By not even submitting them, you'll have failed as a result of process, rather than academic judgment.

You are right to be looking at exit strategies, sadly. You've done the right thing by insisting on time to focus on study, allowing these problems to be identified; but there's no quick or surefire solution.

Having supervised a PhD with a small company before, I've seen these issues and it put me off working with SMEs towards the 'very small' end of the scale, funding a PhD.

On the one hand, yes they do pay the fees/stipend. But this is also a cheap, tax/NI free, talented member of staff if they abuse the system by giving that person a load of unrelated work. They may well have entered into it with the best of intentions, but with 10 people they don't have the capacity to reliably guarantee you'll not get repeatedly drafted in to solve problems elsewhere. Covid has probably exacerbated this, as the shifting financial situation of the company will also be a factor in whether something behind schedule is well-managed or an all-hands-on-deck panic.

I'm sure your supervisor does have a good relationship with them if he's enabling them to abuse the system, as it's a cosy win-win for the supervisor (who gets research funding on the CV), and the company (who get a cheap member of staff), whilst the student is the one that loses out, with two full-time job equivalents. I don't know if it's the case here, but as with any supervisor you'd probably want to know how many of their students have successfully completed or dropped out before, and if there were any with the same company.

With the company hemorrhaging managers this is also a worrying potential sign they either can't retain staff, or have a politic-y environment, or are flat out running low on cash and offering people the opportunity to resign, as is the fact the relationship with your industry sponsor is already starting to grate.

I don't want to be all doom and gloom though - it is worth reading the studentship agreement carefully, before making any decisions. If the company cuts the funding at some point in the future, what's the implication for you? Will the University step-in to cover the shortfall (unlikely but possible in the terms), or will you be left self-funding the remainder? Will that be affordable? You want to identify a Plan B so if you do need to dig your heels in and ask for better terms it can be on the basis of 'or I'll accept this alternate offer'. A strategy to try is setting immediate actions that you have control over - e.g. 'I will only respond to emails for company work on Fridays'. If you do choose to stick in there, you want to be agreeing tangible things and concrete tasks at meetings, not what an immeasurable % of your time will be spent doing.

You're in a rare and fortunate but also challenging position, if you've not managed people before.

It is, in general, always better to spend budget in academia if you have it, otherwise it usually gets taken away.

One tip is to talk to the individual (or potential candidates), and try to identify their own long-term goals. If they want to do their own PhD, experience helping you analyse data or literature is something that they'll be more keen to do. If they want to go into industry, helping with programming aspects might be more useful to them. What's relevant will depend where you're up to in the PhD, but any boilerplate coding or statistical analysis etc. is fair game.

I would try to balance giving them tedious things they need to do, with interesting things they want to do. Bear in mind if it's just translation you need, you could pay a professional translator and probably get a better result for less cost. If they're intellectually-minded and/or ambitious, you may find they don't perform well at mundane, repetitive things; on the one hand, that doesn't mean you can't ever give them a mundane, repetitive task (that's why you pay them), but is also means you probably won't get the most out of them (and potentially a resignation) if that's all they do.

If you're stuck identifying interesting things they could do, ask them for their input (not doing this is a common management error). If you're interviewing, ask this to candidates. You may not be able to give them an accredited graduate project, but that doesn't mean you can't jointly devise something useful to you, and useful to them, and an employee will be more enthusiastic about undertaking a jointly devised task.

As a final note, the other thing to balance is giving them a task that's useful but not essential for your PhD. With any graduate RA role, you need a Plan B for anything mission-critical, since they don't exactly have a contract they're going to worry too much about quitting from, and limited experience/expertise.

Be wary of asking on internet forums for a correct statistical analysis.

The root here, is that you give the impression you don't understand your own stats, and are attempting to 'blame' the supervisor for okaying them if they're wrong. This will not help you get a PhD.

To correctly infer if the numbers are entirely correct, you'd need the raw data and method. It is your job as a PhD candidate to understand this - it is completely reasonable if you consult a statistician - but not an internet forum. It will not hold up in viva if you say 'PhD forums said it was right' or 'supervisor said it was right' - you need to understand and answer this question yourself.

I'm in the relatively unique position of knowing a colleague who worked for the church and made the leap to a PhD.

For them, the original motivation was that it would enable them to teach at a higher level. This evolved over the course of the PhD, to the extent they're less interested in teaching now and work full-time as a researcher.

If you want to teach at University-level it is basically a pre-requisite; otherwise you're stuck as a TA for your entire career.

I wouldn't factor much the fact you're daunted by it; it will be hard, but it's actually a good sign if you realise this early on, and it probably won't be as hard as you think - but the only time you'll realise this is after completing it. A PhD will be very research-focused and whilst it serves as a passport to higher-level teaching positions it will take you away from teaching in the short term rather than towards it.

It is also my experience that the dedication and empathy a church role takes to support people spiritually and emotionally - however much you may describe the pressure as 'not enormous' - is something that will serve you extremely well when it comes to the hard work, rigour, and honesty involved in a PhD.

You sound well-suited; the only real consideration is the financial one. If you can come up with a way to make ends meet, I'd be very optimistic you'd succeed. If you self-fund, do 'shop-around', and be unafraid to commute, as it's a buyers market and you should be wary of accepting the first self-funded offer.

Speaking as an academic who's been on many panels, it's not really an issue in terms of 'job after PhD'. It will just be assumed you can teach it and you'll be appointed on the basis of REF-ability and potential to bring in funding. Quality of teaching is usually based on internal NSS proxies, which are as much to do with how students like you, as it is the quality of your content.

This isn't how it should be, but it's how it is. The problem I've seen more recently, is Unis care about on-time completions to the level they won't let PhDs engage in teaching, because (in their blinkered view) it reduces the probability of a 'timely' completion. Obviously, teaching and research go hand-in-hand in academia, and it's a false assumption, but since Unis are run by managers, it's a logical consequence.

It's also understandable these things are re-offered, because academics are human and will invariably want to avoid screwing over the TA that worked really hard on x the last year, to appoint new person y. Objective checks and measures should be used, but I'd think anyone would realise that what you want to look for are opportunties when people leave, rather than to kick a TA out of post on the promise of doing a better job (you may well be able to do it better, but it's a hard-minded manager that would enable and support this).

In short, you don't really have to worry about the lack of experience long-term, as a post-doc nobody really cares about your teaching portfolio, even if you're applying for a lectureship. But it will be a struggle to get one at your current place, since TAs are, for reasons above, generally 'stitched up'.

You could volunteer for free if you're particularly worried, but I'd be skeptical - likely the Uni would take your effort and there wouldn't be a commensurate return.

Most universities have a stats support programme. Make sure you check for this before help online.

I mean, if the covid vaccine etc. had been verified by a random online forum, then you'd be skeptical, right? Don't fall into the same trap with your own work. What you need is a professional statistician, and you probably won't find one posting here.

If you do resort to online, ask widely (multiple sources), and fundamentally use that to learn how to interpret your data - not as a get-out for not understanding it. Stats are so widely abused in research/politics/social media you need to understand them as a researcher. It's tedious, painful, but what you want to find is a good tutor at your Uni you can meet with to discuss and develop your knowledge, not a green light from here.

PS - if you go the self-funded route, it's still worth asking if the Uni could meet you in the middle, if you're on track for a good degree, and have a supervisor that's read your proposal and is interested in it. They will be unlikely to fully stipend you, but you may be able to get a fees waiver. It's usually considerably easier for an interested supervisor to use what little power they have to get the university to waive the fees in exchange for a really good potential of a timely PhD completion, rather than pay out a stipend.