Mid-career faculty move in UK?
I am a PI in a non-Russell group university in STEM. I believe to have a strong track-record and international standing in my field. I have over 10 publications in Nature and other prestigious journals as a leading author, multi-million grants, prestigious fellowships (previously held an ERC grant, currently having a major national fellowship) and frequently give invited/plenary talks at conferences in my area. I have a feeling that I "overgrew" my current university, which does not provide further space for growth of my research direction. Particularly, in the last couple of years it became practically impossible to attract good candidates for PhD and postdoctoral positions (I think it is a combined effect of my university low-profile plus recent negative publicity regarding redundancies, etc and ever growing visa barriers for international students and postdocs), so as I cannot fill in the funded posts. There are also issues with research infrastructure and support.
I therefore started to think about a potential move to a bigger and more prestigious university. I applied to several relevant openings, but in most cases was not even shortlisted, although my mentors and former advisors all said that with the level of my current funding and just awarded fellowship this should have been straightforward. In a couple of cases I was shortlisted, but I was not selected anyway. I am a bit puzzled, since in most of these cases I was able to check, whom they hired eventually - these people do not have stellar grants, publications, etc (in some cases I would rate their track-record as utterly mediocre). Is it then the case that most of these calls are "arranged" for a specific person? Shall I then work towards such an arrangmeent for me? This would be somewhat morally uncomfortable (I got a position at my current university without knowing anyone there and hence no internal lobbying).
Any advice or sharing experience will be highly appreciated. Just to add - I am not British originally and significant period of my career was overseas (my international network is still stronger than UK one). However, as I just secured major grants in UK the move outside seems pointless. I am also still below 40, so I thought it should work in my favour (potential for further grants) - yet, again in the calls I applied for the "winners" were rather established persons, although without superimpressive record.