In June 2024 I was fortunate to receive a Manchester Met conference funding to attend the NARTI Annual Conference hosted by Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University. The NARTI Annual Doctoral Conference brings together doctoral students from the network of universities in the north of England. This was a two-day event with a mixture of full seminars, track smaller presentations by doctoral scholars at various points in their journey, plenty of time to network and a conference dinner. This provided me with the opportunity to experience and present at a conference specifically catering for the doctoral community without the potential pressure of a full international academic conference.
The conference theme was Business Research for a Sustainable Future, which resonates with my PhD which I am undertaking part-time supported by a wonderful supervisory team of Prof Julia Rouse, Prof Roman Kislov and Dr Katie Green. My study explores an attempt to extend workforce supply via guaranteed job interviews for local candidates, with self-declared barrier(s) to employment. This pre-employment initiative for NHS Health Care Support Worker (HCSW) acts as a disrupter to the established traditional recruitment interview which has been found to favour certain “in group” candidates. The available literature suggests recruitment interviews perpetuate historical injustices by ascribing greater value or authority to the perspectives of certain groups despite evidence that diverse inclusive teams provide better health outcomes.
There were two main reasons for attending the conference to consolidate my theoretical position and to gain experience of presenting at an academic conference. I started my PhD, later in life, with a 30-year career in the NHS. I therefore bring practical and real-world experience of the subject and have an idea of potential impact on workforce practices. However, I have found the place of theory difficult to get my head around. I am attempting to use Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice to underpin my study, and the conference presented the opportunity to consolidate this. My submission for NARTI conference was to the Human Resource Management (HRM) track as whilst I have experience of being a line manager and being line managed, I do not have a HRM qualification. Therefore, I was looking specifically for critique and challenge from HRM academics. I had thought I was OK at public speaking, as I presented within my NHS career. However, presenting academically is quite different, but then so is writing…. but I guess that is another blog! The main difference from my work experience is I would know pretty much everyone in the room, have already had pre-conversations with them and understood their position. Within academia you have no idea who is in the audience, which could include an author who you are critiquing.
My track was on the afternoon of the first day. It was disappointing that my audience was the track chair and another brave soul. Even the other presenter did not turn up! The plenary before had been cancelled. I guess an empty timetable from lunch to 4:30pm was too tempting for people to not drift off and enjoy the sights of Newcastle on one of the hottest days of the summer. Yes, as the saying goes “its quality not quantity.” I received constructive feedback from the paper reviewers and the track chair. Nevertheless, it also marked a key personal milestone for me to have the confidence to articulate theoretically my research aims and objectives before embarking on data collection. There was the added bonus of being awarded best track paper (although I am suspicious that was the consolation prize for having the smallest audience!)
