What can I do to best prepare myself? How do I know if I'm ready?
Use this as an opportunity to review the current promotion criteria and reflect on where you can demonstrate evidence of this already and where your gaps are. This will support you in appreciating your achievements so far and forming a development plan for areas you need to focus on.
We have some great resources to help you reflect on and understand yourself on the University of York career development web pages, including an activity to support reflecting on your values and your strengths, alongside a behaviour and skills audit.
Understanding you and reflecting on what is important to you at work, what motivates you and your strengths, are the foundations of exploring what could be next for you and your career.
Coaching is a way of providing additional, confidential one-to-one support for you to consider ways forward on your current situation and identify outcomes you are committed to. A coach can work with you to support you in considering your future direction and career development. You can apply for a coach through our coaching scheme.
Mentoring is an informal and supportive relationship where a more experienced member of staff assists you to enable you to gain benefits and insights from their knowledge and experience. A mentor can work with you to support you in working towards promotion through sharing their experiences and providing a different perspective on the areas you are working on. The mentoring scheme opens twice a year (usually around May and November).
LinkedIn Learning is an online learning platform giving you access to a vast catalogue of content to support you with your personal and professional development. It gives you the flexibility to focus on the content that is most relevant to your preparation for promotion. Not sure where to start? Use their AI-Powered Coaching tool, which shares advice and recommendations from the LinkedIn Learning library.
Squiggly careers (Helen Tubber and Sarah Ellis) present a different way of thinking about your career goals and includes being confident to have a non-traditional academic career path. It is about having an open mindset for laying out your career path in a way which best suits your skills, strengths and aspirations. A squiggly career moves beyond the traditional linear career and focuses on a career path of growth and learning. We have redesigned our academic promotion criteria to better enable you to demonstrate the value of this in the promotions process.
Interested in reflecting more about this concept? To access squiggly career resources, you need to register with Amazingif.com. On the top menu bar, select 'learn with us', then select 'Squiggly Career Resources' and then 'Enrol for free'. This will give you access to their podcasts and career development resources.
As part of the academic promotions process, you will be required to submit your academic CV. We have developed a 'top tips for refining your academic CV' resource, which has been designed to support you in preparing your CV for a job application for any next step in your academic career - so it can also be used to support you in preparing your academic CV for promotion. For promotion, we recommend a maximum length of 10 pages to enable you to demonstrate your strongest achievements to the panel.
Now you need to review the promotion criteria against your own experiences and draw out how you meet it. Academic promotion is based on demonstrating your level of performance against The University of York's promotion criteria.
We are collating a range of anonymised example applications to demonstrate the type of information that can be included on an application. You can see the examples available on the applicant guidance page.
Our promotion homepage will be regularly updated with the latest overview of the current promotion process alongside videos of promotions stories from colleagues. We will hold a promotions information webinar each year, which is attended by a range of colleagues who provide an overview of the process, top tips and an opportunity to ask questions - don't worry, if you miss it, we will upload a recording of the webinar onto our webpages alongside the Q&A. Ensure you really familiarise yourself with all of the information on the webpages, and continue to check regularly for new information.
Congratulations! Ensure you still take up any opportunity for feedback to understand where your strengths were across the process and any development areas - this will support your ongoing career development.
If you have been unsuccessful, you may understandably be feeling disappointed and unsure of what to do next - but don't give up. You will be able to apply for a future promotion round so ensure you take any opportunity for feedback to understand the reason for this decision, and be more informed of where the panel saw strengths in your application and where further development is needed.
A conversation with your line manager is a good place to discuss the feedback you received on your application and to update your development plan. Your Departmental Promotions Group will also be able to provide further support and guidance on future applications.
