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atom44
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  • Imposter syndrome is a real thing. Even (especially?) at the faculty level. You deserve to be in that role and those who hired you believe you have the skills and experience in order to be successful.
  • Try not to compare yourself to others too much. Everyone has different strengths and weaknesses. Just work on being the best version of yourself. Leverage your talents, strengths, and experience.
  • Build a network of mentors. Within your institution, but more importantly outside. Ideally people who you can speak to honestly without worrying about it negatively impacting on your position. This has been critical for my own progression (and mental health...).
  • People who have spent longer as a post-doc or in an independent fellowship may have developed a larger network of collaborators. This is a very important thing to work on developing. You will find that it is very difficult to progress with research once you are taking on a full teaching and administrative workload. Having a network to collaborate with can help share the load.
  • Creating an identity as a researcher is important. It will take time. One thing that can help is creating a 5/10 year plan for what you want to do with your research. Think about what has been a common thread behind the research you have done. Is this something you want to continue doing? Is there some aspect of your experience/interest that you can leverage to create a niche? Can you tie your research into current trends (eg Sustainability, AI, etc). Think about who your competitors are likely to be and what differentiates you from them. Discussing with a senior mentor can really help. Many junior faculty are still working on this.
  • Be strategic/very strict with your time. There is an unlimited amount of random admin and other tasks that you could take on (and may feel under pressure to do so). Try to only take on tasks for which you have a clear reason - is it good for your CV/promotion/probation case, contributes to your research, etc. It's difficult to say no when you're still on probation, but you can (and should) push back on unreasonable/unnecessary tasks.
  • Imposter syndrome is a real thing. Even (especially?) at the faculty level. You deserve to be in that role and those who hired you believe you have the skills and experience in order to be successful.
  • Try not to compare yourself to others too much. Everyone has different strengths and weaknesses. Just work on being the best version of yourself. Leverage your talents, strengths, and experience.
  • Build a network of mentors. Within your institution, but more importantly outside. Ideally people who you can speak to honestly without worrying about it negatively impacting on your position. This has been critical for my own progression (and mental health...).
  • People who have spent longer as a post-doc or in an independent fellowship may have developed a larger network of collaborators. This is a very important thing to work on developing. You will find that it is very difficult to progress with research once you are taking on a full teaching and administrative workload. Having a network to collaborate with can help share the load.
  • Creating an identity as a researcher is important. It will take time. One thing that can help is creating a 5/10 year plan for what you want to do with your research. Think about what has been a common thread behind the research you have done. Is this something you want to continue doing? Is there some aspect of your experience/interest that you can leverage to create a niche? Can you tie your research into current trends (eg Sustainability, AI, etc). Think about who your competitors are likely to be and what differentiates you from them. Discussing with a senior mentor can really help. Many junior faculty are still working on this.
  • Imposter syndrome is a real thing. Even (especially?) at the faculty level. You deserve to be in that role and those who hired you believe you have the skills and experience in order to be successful.
  • Try not to compare yourself to others too much. Everyone has different strengths and weaknesses. Just work on being the best version of yourself. Leverage your talents, strengths, and experience.
  • Build a network of mentors. Within your institution, but more importantly outside. Ideally people who you can speak to honestly without worrying about it negatively impacting on your position. This has been critical for my own progression (and mental health...).
  • People who have spent longer as a post-doc or in an independent fellowship may have developed a larger network of collaborators. This is a very important thing to work on developing. You will find that it is very difficult to progress with research once you are taking on a full teaching and administrative workload. Having a network to collaborate with can help share the load.
  • Creating an identity as a researcher is important. It will take time. One thing that can help is creating a 5/10 year plan for what you want to do with your research. Think about what has been a common thread behind the research you have done. Is this something you want to continue doing? Is there some aspect of your experience/interest that you can leverage to create a niche? Can you tie your research into current trends (eg Sustainability, AI, etc). Think about who your competitors are likely to be and what differentiates you from them. Discussing with a senior mentor can really help. Many junior faculty are still working on this.
  • Be strategic/very strict with your time. There is an unlimited amount of random admin and other tasks that you could take on (and may feel under pressure to do so). Try to only take on tasks for which you have a clear reason - is it good for your CV/promotion/probation case, contributes to your research, etc. It's difficult to say no when you're still on probation, but you can (and should) push back on unreasonable/unnecessary tasks.
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atom44
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I'm an engineering lecturer at a UK university (and previously held a UK post-doctoral fellowship). So I'm very familiar with the situation at UK universities.

Everyone brings a different range of experience. You have perfectly reasonable/common experience for someone starting a lectureship in the UK.

Some more general points which I think would be worth considering:

  • Imposter syndrome is a real thing. Even (especially?) at the faculty level. You deserve to be in that role and those who hired you believe you have the skills and experience in order to be successful.
  • Try not to compare yourself to others too much. Everyone has different strengths and weaknesses. Just work on being the best version of yourself. Leverage your talents, strengths, and experience.
  • Build a network of mentors. Within your institution, but more importantly outside. Ideally people who you can speak to honestly without worrying about it negatively impacting on your position. This has been critical for my own progression (and mental health...).
  • People who have spent longer as a post-doc or in an independent fellowship may have developed a larger network of collaborators. This is a very important thing to work on developing. You will find that it is very difficult to progress with research once you are taking on a full teaching and administrative workload. Having a network to collaborate with can help share the load.
  • Creating an identity as a researcher is important. It will take time. One thing that can help is creating a 5/10 year plan for what you want to do with your research. Think about what has been a common thread behind the research you have done. Is this something you want to continue doing? Is there some aspect of your experience/interest that you can leverage to create a niche? Can you tie your research into current trends (eg Sustainability, AI, etc). Think about who your competitors are likely to be and what differentiates you from them. Discussing with a senior mentor can really help. Many junior faculty are still working on this.

Some mostly UK specific recommendations:

  • If you are in an engineering department (or STEM more generally) it is very likely that a condition of your probation is to apply for the EPSRC New Investigator Award. My #1 piece of advice for this is do not to rush to apply (you may feel pressure to apply quickly). Make sure you get the right project that is achievable with the resources you have at your university and is a perfect fit for your skills and experience. This will take considerable time. Get lots and lots of feedback on the ideas and the application (especially from people outside your research area). You can only apply once.
  • In the UK it is extremely difficult to secure PhD students (and even more difficult to secure good PhD students). Especially as a junior faculty member. This is unfortunately part of how the UK system works. This means that you will need to do more of the research yourself initially. If you can join on other people's projects (especially at other universities/overseas) and potentially co-supervise students within your institution and elsewhere this can help build a labour force as well as keep the research/publications going.
  • In Engineering, having industrial partners for grants is almost a requirement (although this is not explicitly a rule). Try to network with industry as much as you can, give talks at companies, reach out to companies/individuals and introduce yourself, what you do, and how it might be useful. Getting cash from industry is very hard, but getting in-kind contributions (some staff time, access to facilities, or free materials) is often very doable and valuable.
  • If you are not part of a group at your university all working in a similar area, it's even more important to create links to others who are. Working in isolation is very hard.