I have finished my PhD in Law and I applied to several lecturer posts but no one will hire me without teaching experience? I would very grateful if someone could Advice me on this.



Responses from panel about teaching experience really getting me down :-(

please help :-(

Have you got a little teaching experience? I've recently been told that a lot of people say "I'm a lecturer" when actually they have done a 10 min slot in 1 lecture on 1 module - and they seem to get away with this on their CV. So if you have got some experience, then it may be worth thinking about how other people are marketing themselves.

If you have no experience, then is there any way to pick up some dissertation supervision over summer? - there may be a lecturer or two wanting to pass on a few people at the moment. Is there any opportunity to guest lecturing at other unis e.g. about your PhD topic? Can you run some seminars/workshops? can you think about giving private tuition - all of this would add up to teaching experience.

The only solution is to get some. You are never going to be able to convincingly answer the teaching questions at interview otherwise. It's perfectly fair - would you as a HoD want to appoint someone who'd never taught, given the importance of the NSS these days? Don't beat yourself up (although I'm pretty horrified that no-one in your supervisory team ever pointed out that this would be a problem), just concentrate on fixing it. I'd get a speculative application for hourly paid teaching in at all universities that you could commute to from your current base. This is the time of year when problems with teaching cover start to emerge, so you might get lucky. Don't be too picky in your letter about what you can/ can't teach, with Law you probably need to be able to offer one of the compulsory modules to stand much of a chance, so even if it's not your exact research area, think what you could competently offer.

Ask the department where you did your PhD whether they can offer you a couple of hours tutoring a week and allow you to do at least a lecture or two. If you do this for six months then you've got some teaching/lecturing experience on your CV and it'll put you in a better position. Most universities these days allow their PhD students to do some tutoring and lecturing whilst they're studying so that they can have some experience by the time they finish and come to apply for jobs. This means that the market is competitive and there are quite a few people who've finished their PhD and have at least some experience. So to compete with them you need to gain some teaching/lecturing experience.

It would be in your current department's best interest to allow you do some teaching experience to help you get a job-placement. Lots of departments are judged on their placement record so talk to them first and ask them to help you.

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I would like to thank you all for your comments and suggestions.

======= Date Modified 22 Jul 2010 09:42:10 =======
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