Interviewing for a lecturer position in the UK

This is all pretty standard practise for UK lectureships. They are basically testing your skills that will be required in the position.

In the presentation they will want to see a demonstration that you can communicate your own specialism to both an undergraduate audience (as in teaching class) and your research peers (like for a conference). They want to know that you understand how research is done and where the money comes from (knowledge of funding sources), and some assurance that you demonstrate the basic skills to communicate and cooperate with others already in the department to achieve that goal. They will also want some indication that you have done some background intelligence to discover their particular departmental specialisms and how your skills will fit in their niche. You should at least have read the pages on their web site!

The presentation is likely to be done in a "public" venue with most staff and PhD's invited, who will also ask you questions at the end, just as if it was a research paper.

The interview will be behind closed door with the panel, often with senior staff such as Deans and HR who will ask questions that verify things from your CV/Resume. They will find out about your past employment, measure your level of experience, salary expectation plans for career development and so on. They would want to know how long you planned to stay with them to know if their investment in you was returned. They would want to know that you were self assured and reliant and not dependant on your previous supervisors, but conversely not a loner who could not collaborate with the existing and future teams.


A very UK specific thing is the REF. It is an exercise that happens every 6 years or so. Every university in the UK obsesses over it. While the rules/targets keep changing, it has consistently stressed quality over quantity. The last REF only looked at your top 4 outputs. What hiring committee was to know is what would your previous REF submission have looked like and what your submission for the next REF will be. Be prepared to answer what your top 4 publications are from 2008-2014 and your top 4 from 2015 forward and future publishing plans are.