University Affairs

We are getting close to what many academics consider the best time of year – conference season. Next to teaching, it’s the most common response I get to the question, “What do you like about academe?”

However, the joy of subsidized travel is not without its stresses. Between preparing for the last few weeks of classes and slogging through huge piles of grading, finding the time to finish (or start!) conference papers can be hard.

As a result, you can sometimes arrive at a much-anticipated conference feeling rather disheveled – hardly an ideal position to put your best foot forward in a tight job market. You could leave an unfortunate and lasting impression to prospective committee members at a major conference, effectively sabotaging any hope you have of being invited for an interview later on. However, with some determination and a well-organized game plan, you can make your pre-conference preparations as painless as possible.

Here’s a checklist to help you prepare for this year’s conferences early enough to allow for the usual contingencies that can derail the good intention of many academics.

1. Make conference preparation a top priority.
2. Put some real time and effort into your PowerPoint slides, if you are using them. If you are not graphically inclined, get someone who knows the software to help you put together informative, nicely paced and attractive slides.
3. Double-check with conference organizers to make sure your technical requirements can be met. Always back up your presentation on a USB stick in case disaster strikes. No matter what platform they say they are using, test your slides on both a PC and a Mac to catch any formatting discrepancies.
4. Check the program for presentations or presenters that overlap with your areas of interest. Send them a short e-mail introducing yourself, explaining the connection between your areas, and suggest getting together for coffee while you are there. This will ensure you have some folks to begin networking with even before you arrive. But remember, once contact has been made, it might be perceived as odd, if not rude, to miss said person’s presentation unless you are presenting at the same time.
5. Double-check your presentation wardrobe. Is it suitable for the expected weather and level of formality?
6. Go through your presentation, with slides, in front of a sympathetic audience of colleagues, friends or family. This is invaluable for making last-minute improvements and will help you feel more confident when the real deal rolls around.

Conference season can be a wonderful opportunity to make valuable contacts and showcase not only your research and presentation skills, but also your ability to interact with your peers confidently and with poise. By taking the time to prepare carefully, you will get the most out of this year’s conference season – and probably enjoy yourself more too!

One of the most popular career articles on University Affairs has been How to ask for a reference letter. The popularity of this article is evidence of the intense interest, and perhaps trepidation, at the thought of asking for reference letter causes PhDs.

Since asking for references is an activity everyone in academe will have to face at one time or another, I’m sure there are lots or questions, concerns, even horror stories out there. I think I’d like to change things up a bit here and open the floor for questions and concerns about asking for reference letters.

All names will remain confidential unless you choose otherwise, and no one will be able to see your e-mail address when you send your questions and comments. Keep in mind this is a mediated board, so anything sent in will be vetted by the editor before it goes live.

About reference letters
One perennial problem is how to ensure well written letters are submitted on your behalf. I have spoken to many graduate student advisors who have run university dossier services (which collect and archive confidential application materials such as reference letters and official transcripts) and we have all seen letters that are not likely to help a candidate, and in some cases could actually hurt their chances in a competitive job market.

Here are some steps you can take to minimize the chances of one of your letters becoming a proverbial albatross around your neck:

1. Always give your referees a graceful way to decline when you ask for their support: “I realize your plate is terribly full this term. Do you think you will have time to write a letter of support for my applications to XXX? I will understand if there is too much you have already committed to take on another responsibility of this type.” If they agree to write for you, you have a better chance that they will do so conscientiously.
2. If you are concerned about one of your referees’ ability to write a strong letter, make sure at least one, if not two, of your referees are more experienced. You might even ask if they could provide a little mentorship to the potentially troublesome professor.
3. Diplomatically “suggest’” what content would be most valuable in your letters. This should include reminders of particularly impressive work you have done, student evaluations and awards. These suggestions can help your referees focus their letters and avoid overly duplicating each other’s content.
4. If your university has a dossier service (in Canada only University of Toronto and York University do), you will not be able to access your file to read what your referees have written. However, if you do have a serious concern, then talk to the service coordinator about having your referee or another member of your committee read over your file. They can let you know whether the file was acceptable as it was, or even what could be added to it to strengthen it.

Here are a few links to other resources on University Affairs about reference letters. I’ll be interested in hearing your take on it. I’m also looking forward to providing whatever insight and suggestion I can that might help you avoid an unnecessary explosion!

• Reference Letters Revisited
• The Ubiquitous Reference Letter

A reader sent me a link to an article recently published by his supervisor, Jonathan Sterne, in the Journal of Communication Critical/Cultural Studies, “The Pedagogy of the Job Market” (6: 4, 421 – 424). This article should be required reading for all graduate supervisors.

His main point is the status of the academic job market in general is not a holy quest nor is a tenured position in a large research university the Holy Grail of academe (my metaphor). He goes on to offer seven principles to realign the position of the academic job market in graduate education and admonishes graduate supervisors for perpetuating this myth. He calls on them to be as critical of their own occupational environments as they are of any other human institution.

This last point of Sterne’s is the closest I have ever heard an academic admit that this profession has a dysfunctional relationship with the term ‘career’ even when it refers to their own – some might say ‘especially’ here.

As a person who has spent more than 20 years in a university setting – 12 years in grad school (MA, ABD and PhD in progress) and 12 years in a university career centre, I have frequently run head-on into the unacknowledged prejudice of all-things-career-related which seems to permeate academe.

I have to be very careful how I introduce myself, or how I describe my background when I speak to academics, because as soon as I use the ‘c’ word, I can see the blinders go on, the frozen stare that says “I’m pretending to listen – but I’ve already made up my mind” and then they quickly change the topic. There is no glimmer of intellectual curiosity, no spark of recognition in a shared sphere of professional interest; nothing to suggest that anything someone for the ‘career’ centre could be involved in might in anyway be relevant to academe at all. In fact there are more than a few professors who would be much happier if career centres simply disassociated from universities altogether. Honestly, I’m not overstating this (too much).

At first I was just plain offended. But it happens so predictably that I’ve come to accept it as one of the great idiosyncrasies of universities. They will unabashedly recruit students by the thousands with allusions to high-status careers, but once said recruits arrive, they are fed misinformation, or no information about the likelihood of realizing their career dreams. To insert any connection between course content and it’s relevancy outside the ivory tower is unilaterally avoided.

Many professors aren’t at all sure where their universities’ career centres are, let alone, what they can do for students. I’m constantly astounded how out of touch faculty members are at universities across the country when it comes to understanding the roles of career centres their own campuses.

Historically, career centres were ‘placement centres’ and were essentially branches of the Department of Labour with the primary task of helping war veterans reintegrate to the workforce after upgrading their educations at university. But that was over half a century ago, and things have changed no less radically in career centres than in the rest of society during that time.

Here is my challenge: if you haven’t yet, seek out your university career centre – online and physically. Feel free to ask them about their philosophy of career development and how that impacts their practice. You may well find their programs and services to be much more grounded in theory and research than you ever suspected.

In the meantime, share Jonathan Sterne’s homepage with grad student who don’t have quite as enlightened supervisors as he obviously is. Thank you Jeremy for sharing Sterne’s article with me – I hope you appreciate how lucky you are!

Happy New Years folks!

I hope you all had a relaxing break. I, unfortunately, spent a good chunk of my holidays writing a paper – sound familiar?

I’ve been reading all sorts of synopses of 2009, and they all seem focused on the gloom and doom of the economic downturn (or ‘crisis’ if you are in the States). Of course, those of you in the job market, or about to be, know all about that.

It seems unproductive to start this New Year with the emotional baggage of its less than stellar predecessor. Instead, I’ve been trying to think up ways to re-frame things to focus more on what opportunities may now be more realistic, even preferable to attempting to find a tenure track position this year. Here’s what I came up with:

1. Taking another year to finish your dissertation at a more leisurely pace. Many Ivy League universities are actually facilitating this option with innovative funding options like internship and bursaries. Talk to your dean and/or supervisor about this – imagine, not panicking at bedtime!
2. Conference with abandon rather than worrying about finishing the dissertation in a few months! Go to fun places, but concentrate your energies on papers that have publishing potential so when the academic job market eases up, you’ll be more competitive than ever.
3. Take a ‘gap year’. I know these are something younger students are encouraged to do, but if you think about, many grad students would benefit from having a year away from academe to reconsider their options, while exploring new ones. Of course there is the financial aspect, but if you don’t have a family to feed, it might be one of the last times you be able to hit the high road just because!
4. If getting away from academe for a year is unrealistic in your situation, at least take some time to seriously investigate your non-academic options – preferably with the support of a career counselor or advisor experienced with grad students. That way if things don’t improve quickly enough for you, you will have an idea of what your next steps might be.
5. Learning a potentially useful, or at least fun, skill. This diversionary tactic could open your eyes to a whole aspect of yourself you had forgotten about, or never knew existed. You will be surprised how much you enjoy doing something, anything, that does not involve research, or academic writing. It can be downright invigorating if not enlightening!

There will be so many incredibly well prepared candidates who will be struggling during this time period, that your ‘unconventional’ academic timeline will hardly be the anomaly that it might have been in the past.

At the very least, having a little time to reflect on where you’ve been, and where you’re going may well make your next steps more clear. Now doesn’t that sound like a good way to start a new year!

Have you been watching the videos that have been posted from this year’s Career Corner at Congress? For those of you who didn’t make it to Ottawa, this is your chance to see and hear from some of the experts in academic career issues who spoke this year.

The other day, I was listening to David Ainsworth’s talk on career in the United Nations for PhDs. He’s quite a good speaker, and his talk is full of useful advice for PhDs longing for a career in this field. In the first clip of this talk, “Does my graduate degree matter?” Ainsworth emphasizes the need to carefully select the subject of one’s thesis. Hmmm – strategic thesis choosing – now there’s a Pandora’s Box of possibilities. (Text continues below)

At a time when there so much dissention over the status of tenure in the university system, and the supposed protection it affords scholars from the infiltration of market influences and other agendas on the ‘pure’ pursuit of knowledge, Ainsworth’s comment bears a second take. He promotes a pragmatic approach: “Designing your thesis on a topic of relevancy to a particular agency” [is a good way to prepare for a career in the UN].

But, one wonders, what if the premise or the findings of said research are critical of the UN mandate? Perhaps what is really being promoted is not so much expert knowledge of a relevant topic but also a diplomatic avoidance of irritating one’s future employer. All of a sudden pragmatism is sounding a little more sinister.

Of course, it could be argued, one is unlikely to want to work for an organization with skeletons in the proverbial boardroom, but that begs the question. It also runs far from of the point Ainsworth was trying to make. But nonetheless it deserves consideration, particularly in a hostile job market.

If you want to make sure you can transition out of academic reasonably seamlessly, either by choice or necessity, it would seem reasonable to suggest that having expertise in relevant areas would get you farther than the converse. Even in academe, some dissertation topics can be more desirable or less impressive than others under the scrutiny of selection committees.

It seems to be more a question of degree rather than of absolutes. How far can you let the priorities of your desired job market (academic or not) preside over your dissertation research before you cross the line dividing pragmatism from ingratiation?

How about you? If you knew that a particular topic was more likely to be viewed favourably by a prospective employer – academic or alternative – would you feel justified in pursuing that topic even if you really would have preferred a different direction, methodology, or emphasis?

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A common question I get during advising appointments is whether or not one should submit a teaching dossier if it is not requested in the posting. The role of teaching dossiers in general has been of the centre of some debates since they began to emerge in the 1980s. Some folks (rightly) claim that universities have become much more cognizant of the need to hire excellent scholars who are also gifted teachers and the dossier is a compelling way of providing evidence of the quality of candidates’ pedagogical abilities. Others believe that, especially in reach-intensive universities, the focus of selection will be on research and in such cases a teaching dossier will be less valued then a strong research agenda. However, even then, candidates will be required to provide some evidence of pedagogical mastery in their fields.

My philosophy is – when it comes to applying in a job market as tight as this one – unless a posting explicitly indicates not to submit extra materials, anything that might help differentiate you from other candidates will only help. If you are concerned that your teaching dossier will not get the full attention that it deserves, how can you make sure the selection committee understands what a great teacher you actually are?

To start, read the recent article published in the Career Resources of University Affairs outlining what to include in your teaching dossier.

This will give you an idea of what a thorough treatment of your ability to teach effectively might cover. However the clincher here is the suggested length – 12 pages. When a teaching dossier is not listed in a posting, it is a lot to ask a busy committee member to slough through that unrequested documentation. In fact, in some cases, selection committees may refuse to consider any materials not listed in the posting in order to keep the playing field equal.

Considering this, it is only prudent to consider alternative ways to distribute the strongest elements of your teaching dossier throughout the rest of your application package. Here are a few suggestions that I have given students on how to do this:

1. Develop a shortened version of your dossier – no more than 1-2 pages
2. Make sure one of your referees can provide an informed description of your skills as a teacher. It may be useful to provide this referee with stats from student feedback forms (if available) and to request that they sit in on a couple of classes so they can make specific references to the strategies you used.
3. In the teaching section of your CV, rather than just listing the courses you have taught, you can provide relevant details about the student populations in these classes and in some cases, a short description of innovative elements you used to increase comprehension or engagement. Also mention where you took on more the regular duties of a TA.
4. In your letter, be sure to have a good paragraph explaining your teaching philosophy and how you integrated this into your teaching methodology. Of course, highlight any accolades or awards you have received for your teaching.

When a committee is faced with hundreds of strong, targeted applications, it could well be that your accomplishment as a teacher may draw their attention. If teaching is your forte, the invitation to come on campus is when you really want to shine. If you do get such an opportunity, make sure to ask for as many possibilities to meet with students, both undergrad and graduate. Your obvious love of teaching and genuine interest talking with students will validate everything you wrote in your application package and can make a lasting impression on the committee.

I’m in Syracuse right now, attending a conference of career advisors who specialize in graduate students. The conference opened up with a presentation by Julie Miller Vick (senior associate director of Career Services at the University of Pennsylvania and Jennifer Furlong (associate director, graduate student career development at Columbia University). You may know them better as columnists for The Chronicle of Higher Education’s CV Doctor and Career Talk.

They have just launched what has been described as ‘the bible’ of tips and advice for academic searchers transparently titled, “The Academic Job Search Handbook”. This is the fourth edition of the invaluable resource. If you are ever going to buy a book on the topic, this would be a good one to invest in. Check out your career centre and ask them to get a copy of this edition, if all they have is the third.

Why am I such a fan? Well, first of all it’s packed with real CV samples, as well as letters with blurbs about what sort of search they were used for and where their writers landed up. I don’t think I’ve seen another resource that does this.

Secondly, it’s written with a realistic approach to the realities of today’s academic job market. The section entitled ‘Additional Considerations’ covers topics like dual academic couples, being pregnant on the job market, issues related to international and older PhDs. There is also a chapter called ‘The Expanded Job Market’, which explores alternative paths complete with sample resumes. As happy as I am that they thought to include such a topic in a book focused on the academic job market, I am left hoping they will one write a whole book on the topic, as I think they could expand that conversation much more than they were able to here.

Their clientele are PhDs from R1 (Ivy League) universities in the States. The very ones often accused of scooping up the prime Canadian positions, as evidenced in a latest hot feature in University Affairs. Yet, this recession, or economic crisis as it tends to be called down here, is a great equalizer. When there are no jobs, all PhDs are in the same boat. Miller Vick and Furlong recommend anyone entering the academic job market for the foreseeable future:

• cast a wide net – apply to any position that sounds like something you can do;
• try to tailor your CV and cover letter to every position and if that’s not possible at least tailor them to the positions you most want
• network – reconnect with faculty from previous degrees, introduce yourself (or your research if that’s less intimidating) at conferences;
• and have a really good Plan B.

Their advice is well taken. This job market is not for the faint of heart, but it doesn’t have to defeat you either. By increasing your knowledge about how to do your best, and expanding your options, you will ride out the storm and likely find yourself in a position that will be more than you dared dream was possible.

I’ve had a few PhDs ask me about the advisability of posting their CV on the web as a passive form of marketing or networking.

This is a relatively common practice. Most Google searches for specific research topics will unearth a few random CVs.

However, I personally would not post my CV on its own online — for example, on my own personal website — because in so doing, I would be providing contact information and other details about my professional life to all and sundry — that can’t be a good idea these days, surely.

Moreover, without any form of context or framing to give my CV relevance, I can’t help but wonder who would find it, and of those who did, who would care? Yeah, someone stumbling across it might see something of interest to their research, but in a knowledge-based economy, we have moved beyond the message-in-a-bottle approach to networking.

For instance, I’ve been recently introduced to LinkedIn — a social networking site focused exclusively on professional networking. You can meet people in academe — or any other field — through people you already know. Their contacts become your contacts through referral, just like in the real world. This would be a good way to find out what it’s like to work in a particular university by asking people who work there. Or you could scope out a conference before deciding to submit a paper by connecting with previous attendees. There is a Learning Centre and a blog on the LinkedIn site to help you become more comfortable and strategic using this tool.

I also just came across Cestagi.com, which markets itself as a “collaborative platform” facilitating interdisciplinary research in the field of sciences, engineering and technology. It even provides a way of posting and updating your CV. I haven’t posted anything on this site, not being in those fields, but McAfee Site Advisor didn’t find any problems with the site when it checked into it.

The advantage both these sites offer over merely posting a CV online is that they provide a purposeful context; this frames the information you post about yourself, making it easier for potential colleagues to find you. There is still nothing stopping creepy people from lurking, but how likely are they to prey on a bunch of academics? The bigger problem would be spammers — anytime you post on the net, you open yourself up to that intrusion — and you will have to decide whether or not the aggravation is worth the benefits. These sites are also a relatively low-risk way for you to find colleagues in your field who could make the challenge of starting in an academic or non-academic career just a little less difficult.

If you find a site that facilitates social networking in your field, be sure to comment about it below so that others in your field can get connected. That’s the crux of social networking: It’s a two way street where what you get out of it is proportional to what you put into it.

‘Tis recruitment season, and with the economy leveling out after the plunge, and all indicators suggesting a bullish 2010, employers are loosening their purse strings for new hires.

If you are graduating from a master’s or doctoral program this year, and aren’t too interested in spending anymore time in academe (I know you’re reading this!), then there are a few opportunities you might want to take a closer look at. As they cross my desk I’ll post them to make them easier to find.

Remember, it’s the bigger, national organizations that have recruitment ‘seasons’ where they hire a lot of entry level people all at once. Most employers in Canada have under 50 employees, so they hire throughout the year as people leave, get promoted, or new projects open up.

Bank of Canada – Offers full-time positions to graduates who would be interested in conducting leading-edge research at Canada’s central bank and, in so doing, contribute to the economic and financial well-being of the country. The Bank will be hiring graduates in economics and finance at the bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral levels.

The application deadlines are:

October 7^th, 2009 – bachelor’s graduates,
October 13^th 2009 – master’s graduates, and
November 15^th 2009 – doctoral graduates

Students can apply online and find more information about the Bank on their website at http://www.bankofcanada.ca/.

More details are available through the following links:

* Information about the Bank’s priorities and work environment
http:// http://www.bankofcanada.ca/en/hr/great.html

* Highlights of our compensation package
http://www.bankofcanada.ca/en/hr/compensation.html

Don’t forget, whether you are looking for a faculty position, or an academic administrative position (e.g. Dean, Provost) you can sign up for your own personal Job Alert through University Affairs. This is the easy way to make sure you don’t miss out on any opportunities because you just got too swamped to keep checking the postings.

Transitioning out of academe can be a culture shock when you’re used to the ideological norms of higher ed. I was reminded of this when I was reviewing Dan Schwabel’s megahit in the field of recruitment: Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success. Don’t know about you, but titles like that make me cringe on so many levels. The problem is, once you get past his unabashed embrace of commercialism and egocentricity, at the core of his book is something of relevance to academics.

Schwabel is the boy-genius behind the “personal branding” phenomenon (yuck) that is sweeping HR departments and across the continent. He describes this unfortunate phrase as:

[T]he process by which individuals and entrepreneurs differentiate themselves and stand out from a crowd by identifying and articulating their unique value proposition, whether professional or personal, and then leverage it across platforms with a consistent message and image to achieve a specific goal. In this way, individuals can enhance their recognition as experts in their field, establish reputation and credibility advance their careers, and build self-confidence (his italics, Me 2.0, p. 4).

As much as I thought I would be writing this guy off, he makes many really good points that are uncannily applicable to the academic job market. I thought that right now, on the cusp of the 09-10 academic recruitment season, would be a good time to translate his suggestions into something of relevance to those of you getting ready to mail out application packages.

First, differentiate yourself – you  will be competing against people with very similar backgrounds to yourself, give or take a conference paper or publication. In order to be short-listed, and invited in for a job talk which gives you a chance to really shine, you need to strategically define yourself as a (wait for it) intellectual and pedagogical “product.” What is it about your teaching, your research, your participation within the university community that makes you unique? Schwabel calls this your value proposition – it’s that thing that assures you that you’d be a really good professor.

Second, enhance your reputation and credibility as an expert. Well, if there’s one thing you’ve been trained to do it’s this. Incidentally, if you ever leave academe, your strength in this area, even if it feels more façade than fact, will  help you to achieve the first point of differentiating yourself.

This somewhat tautological concept becomes less so when we apply Schwabel’s third suggestion: keep it real. Ok, he uses the word “authentic,” but that word is now so clichéd it’s unusable in most conversations. If you are honest and clear to both yourself and your search committees about your strengths and skills; if you are strategic about where you would be most valued, even in a tight job market, you are much more likely to find doors opening – both inside and outside academe.

Although the term “personal branding” may make you shudder, try to get past the unsavory connotations and see where it could be useful in your job search.

If you want to hear more about what Schwabel has to say about it you can visit his blog or watch his presentation.