I think you can only use it if your university subscribes to it. If it doesn't recognise your address then it probably doesn't. Can you check with your university?

Thank you Hugh, I will.

I've still got two jobs I haven't heard back from yet and three more to apply for over the next two weeks, so fingers crossed!

I hope you find something when you start looking as well!

Thanks Bewildered, an informational interview is a good idea, I will look into that. I haven't heard of any redundancies in the places I am applying to, but I will be checking on who gets the jobs I have applied for so that I can see whether they are going to internal staff, or if external, how I compare.with the people that got the job.

HazyJane, I guess I like universities at the moment because they feel familiar, plus I like the holidays and the benefits they give, which I know can be hit and miss with other companies.

I would be interested in working in a policy role, yes, I'm looking for those type of jobs too.

Yeah I see what you mean, the thing is though, in my case I was earning £25k plus £2-5k annual bonus before starting the PhD, so really I think I should be earning at least that anyway.

I feel like I have so much more to offer than is required for a basic admin role.

Anyone got any tips for people with PhDs applying to these type of jobs? Anyone currently working in university administration?

I’ve applied for 8 positions so far and got no interviews. The only interview I have had was for copy-editing for a journal, so more academic.

I’ve tried to play down my PhD and not mention it too much in the application, unless it’s directly relevant eg data analysis skills.

I’ve used examples from previous work in the rest of the examples, which are generally quite generic about team work, working independently, project management, people management etc.

What type of jobs should I be aiming for? (Considering I have 8 years previous employment before my PhD in a variety of admin roles including 4 years managerial experience.) I see jobs advertised in the following brackets:

£20-25k – basic admin jobs (I haven’t applied for these)
£25-28k – ‘officer’ jobs – more technical, independent work involved
£28-35k – Managerial jobs
£35-40k – Senior manager jobs (I haven’t applied for these)

Do you think if you have a PhD you less likely to get interviewed for university admin jobs?

Mendeley is super easy. There's really nothing to learn. You just download the software, upload your PDFs, install the Word add-on (easy) and then when you want to cite the reference, you just click on 'insert citation' in the 'references' tab in Word and hey-presto.

It also makes a bibliography automatically for you and it's a great way to search your PDFs for key terms as well.

At my top 10 rated UK uni, undergraduate acceptance into Biology over the last few years was 100% of those that applied and got the required grades... So maybe this is pretty common.

I don't know much about US unis and most people on here study in the UK.

An MRes is a masters degree, so yes it's enough to get a funded PhD. Actually, MRes is often viewed as better than a MSc because you are doing research the whole time and have to write a thesis, whereas for an MSc your research project is generally only 4 months long.

But, many students get on to PhD programs without an MSc/MRes, so this may not really be your issue. How many PhDs have you applied for? How many interviews have you had? Where are you applying?

Mine would have just been a week or two if I didn't already have a job. My supervisors had seen and corrected all chapters before so there were just a few new bits to add and correct and that was it.

Have you tried contacting these people to see what your qualifications are equivalent to?
https://www.naric.org.uk/naric/

According to this website, http://www.bacp.co.uk/crs/Training/careersincounselling.php, looks like you only need a diploma, not a degree

Just found all this via google, I don't know much about it to be honest...