That's great - sounds similar to what I did for 18 months after leaving (or rather, not leaving) uni. Thought I'd better check as people always got confused when I used the term. Okay, back to the original questions:- I haven't seen any rankings. I always got the impression that these things were tied to the research rankings and industry links rankings of the parent universities - especially as a lot of these groups operate under the banner of the university. A lot has to do with the repuation of individual professors as well, if they're well known in their field.- As above, because mostly they're part of the central university, you're classed as either academic or non-academic staff for salary-banding purposes. Former is probably better if you have a PhD and research background. Latter is probably better if you have professional qualifications. Either way, the salaries aren't going to break any records, but you should get a cushy pension and holiday package.- I moved into (private sector) management consultancy afterwards. I went from the "dark blue" university to the "big blue" company. I don't think the prior experience either helped or hindered me. I joined at the same level as other graduates who had done random things or nothing since leaving uni. Some of the work was transferrable, but I have no illusions that the environment is different enough that I'm pretty much starting on the same learning curve as everyone else. I'd say that the business types and the career paths are more different than similar. I found it really difficult to get any real consulting experience without coming from the academic side, but the academics don't like to think of themselves as consultants because they don't like the idea that their research is biased by commercial interests (i.e. customer needs). As a non-academic you do get to do a lot of the business development and selling that senior consultants would in a "normal" consultancy. I was a bit surprised by that as I think we were one of the better universities at commercialising our research, but it reflects the strengths and interests of people you find in the different positions. However, you also do a lot more basic administration and babysitting than I'd have liked; you have to do everything from filling in consultants' billing sheets for them to chasing them up for deadlines. Then again, the "herding cats" analogy has been used by IBM for their own adverts, so perhaps there are some parallels there.
