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?

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.

Ah, the lazy days of summer. While the rest of the world is slowing down a notch, socializing more and planning vacations, PhDs nearing the end of their degrees are deep in, what is for many, the most stressful summer of their lives.

Whether you are about to defend your thesis or have just experienced that happy event, it’s hard to forget that looming ahead of you are months of rigorous job searching. It’s a good time to sit down with the people closest to you and really clarify the parameters of what you are and are not willing to do to stay in academe. Pick up a sessional contract or two – but for how long? Would you leave the country for a temporary contract? What about a tenure track position? How about leaving the continent – would you have to end a relationship to do that?

These are life-altering decisions, and can involve relatively unpleasant conversations at a time when there is already a lot of stress and uncertainty in your life. But it is useful to have your non-negotiables sorted out before you start sending off application packages – especially in this economy.

So no matter how much is on your plate right now, pick an evening – or a couple – and get together with people who support you and have a vested interest in your happiness to have dinner and talk through the issues that are weighing most heavily on you. Get their objective feedback, but don’t shy away from the non-objective opinions – they are sometimes the ones that make the most difference in the long run.  Repeat this process as necessary to get to that place where you know what you are really willing to consider once you are on the market.

Then, and only then, will you be able to realistically assess the suitability of the postings you see so you aren’t desperately applying for anything regardless of how it flies in the face of your values and priorities. Many very unhappy academics have done just that, feeling like there was no other choice. They were wrong – there are literally thousands of non-academic possibilities that would provide a standard of living and quality of professional satisfaction that far exceeds any so-so academic position.

If you are committed to an academic career, now is the time to start getting ready for the fall hiring season. Read over the links below, get advice from your committee and university career centre, update your CV, and go shopping for “interview” clothes. Some of you will land up with a job offer, and a few of you will be lucky enough to find a terrific position in a terrific university. By all means, give it your best shot, but be honest with yourself all the while as to how far you are ready to pursue this path before you go on to seek greener pastures.  Bonne chance!

Getting Ready for an Academic Job Search – University of Michigan
Getting Ready for an Academic Job Search – University of Windsor
Building a Network – University of Pennsylvania
The Hiring Process form the Other Side – UC Berkeley

Service – the third category on your CV is also one of the least discussed. Yes we all know you should have something to put into this section to look like you’re a good citizen. At the end of the day though, does it really  matter?

My first time through a PhD, I never got around to doing anything I recognized as service per se. I mean I helped out with the program conferences – but everyone did as we had a very small program of less than 20  people.

In fact, it was kind of an unspoken understanding in that program that “serious scholars” were too committed on their research to be bothered with such distractions. I passed through those years with virtually no understanding of what was going on in academe, my university, or even the rest of the program in which  my excruciatingly specific stream was situated. In short, I was clueless.

When I began my current PhD program four years ago, I swore I wouldn’t let that happen again. Since I started out as a part-time student, I was already feeling peripheral to the program, so I thought getting involved would be a good way of meeting fellow students outside of the classes we happened to share.

Initially, I signed up for the conference committee – at least I was familiar with that! Since the conference in my program is a reasonably complex affair, I was able to make suggestions, and help in the planning and organization in a way that made me feel like my presence was appreciated.

From there I became the part-time PhD rep on the programs’ graduate student association (GSA). When I switched to full-time, I became the PhD rep on the GSA and was appointed to the Program Executive Committee – and group of faculty and a few GSA reps that decide on faculty appointments to the program, approve course proposals and other interesting details. The year I was involved for instance, the program faced the York strike, an OCGS program review and overhauled the comprehensive exams process. I have just been appointed to the selection committee to replace the program dean.

Throughout these positions, I began to develop something I felt I had missed out on before: a strong sense of being part of a vital and connected academic community. With so much of graduate work demanding isolation, collaboration is something you really need to seek out and develop to enjoy.

While I pursued these activities for essentially selfish reasons, they will give me something interesting and cover a significant period of time to put under “service” on my CV. But I don’t see it as just window dressing. I really have learned some valuable skills along the way such as event planning, mediating difficult and sometimes contentious discussions, being able to balance the needs of the moment with the bigger picture, and of course, how to maintain supportive, collegial relationships in the face of disagreement.

If you haven’t yet waded into the waters of student participation, take a look at what’s available in your universities. If you can’t find it, you could always create it. For instance, in Toronto, there are frequent film screenings, which I particularly enjoy. I thought what I’d do this year is send out an invitation to folks on the program listserv to join me at a few screenings, and maybe a beer afterwards. Who knows, it may be just the thing some folks need to unplug and get out to meet some fellow students. Not sure how or if I’d put that on my CV – but it’ll be fun, and that’s really the name of the game, isn’t it?

I’ve been reading with a mixture or sympathy and amusement The Chronicle’s recent job search series by “Margaret Tennent” (not her real name), a sociology PhD looking for a tenure track position.

Her experiences no doubt reverberate with grad students across the continent unlucky enough to be graduating in the worse economy in generations.

She describes dispelling the misplaced idealism of her pre-med and pre-law students – the amount of debt they will incur and the length of time it will take to pay it back (she’s in the States). As she’s blithely bursting the bubbles of her students, she suddenly realizes her own predicament is just a precarious.

I wish someone would take the time to do for all Masters students looking to go on to a PhD and a life in academe what Margaret does for her students – tell them the truth.

They fill out their PhD applications with visions of spending their days in simulating research with supportive colleagues and enraptured students, travelling around the world to share their wisdom to admiring audiences, and a secure, well-paying job for life. These are heady hallucinations indeed which lure thousands of unwitting students toward a dream that brutally disappears just as the end is in sight.

It’s time for a reality check. For junior faculty, teaching loads and committee work can be back breaking. A spirit of entitlement is spreading across undergrad programs like a pandemic, transforming grading into and act of compromise at best. Conference funding is scarce, research funding is drying up, and retiring profs are not being replaced, leaving remaining faculty to fill in the gaps. And that is the plight of the “lucky ones.”

Even time for research, the backbone of academic life is getting short shifted as faculty are taking on greater teaching loads and administrative duties. The Canada Research Chairs program  has been a wonderful addition to the university system, but there are nowhere near enough chairs to make a difference to most junior faculty.

I know I sound like a gloomy gus, but I see this situation as an academic analog to the situation of sports in Canada. Many of our children are funneled into hockey lured by dreams – either their’s or their parents – of being in the NHL one day. The “hot shots” join rep leagues where they focus on developing their hockey skills for 5-6 days a week, and spend most weekends out of town for tournaments.  The demands are so great that these kids inevitably shrink their entire world to activities and relationships around the arena. By the time they hit university, most are realizing the NHL will never happen for them – nor will it for almost every kid who devoted their youth to hockey. That’s when I see them, struggling to understand who they are, and who they could be without hockey.

The lives of young academics are not all that different from these talented athletes. Both have exceptional skills that set them apart from their peers. Both have had very specific goals that have motivated them to put the time and energy into developing their respective talents. Both are trying desperately to enter fields that will admit very few of them. In fact compared to hockey players, young academics have it pretty good. At least they have a chance of realizing their goals without necessarily competing with every person in their field around the world.

Nonetheless, for both hockey players and academics their core is, or should be, passion. A deep, unabiding fascination that gives them something that is becoming rare in our fragmented world – a sense of who they are.

Understanding what is at the core of this passion is the first step toward reconstructing their lives when the door closes on them. A harsh reality, but not a fatal one. In today’s world, there is always room for people with a drive for excellence – and that is something else both grad students and hockey players share.

For the past 72 years, researchers at Harvard having been documenting the lives of 268 Harvard students. The half that are still alive are now in their eighties along with the principle investigator George Vaillant and are now sage enough to offer pearls of wisdom as to the secret of happiness. This study is a sort of upper class version of Michael Apted’s Seven Up! documentaries, so mere details like having a decent job, enough to eat and a safe living environment don’t figure high up in the equation. But even so, it’s interesting to hear what they have to say.

On the way through an academic career, it’s easy to lose sight of what is most important to us. While many well intentioned advisers will stress the need to meet a deadline, publish a paper or get a particular scholarship, very few will suggest we take time to exercise everyday, partake in some meaningful volunteer work or learn to play an instrument for the sheer joy of making music. Granted, if we did indulge in such niceties completing in four years would difficult, as would putting together a successful tenure application.

Maybe that’s one of the things that is wrong with academe – the idea that if you are not sacrificing every area of your life for the pursuit of higher knowledge that you are simply not “serious” and therefore worth funding, hiring etc. Is that realistic in a world where there are so many other professional options for PhDs? Does that really produce the best scholars and teachers?

I predict that one of the changes that will start occurring inside the ivory tower over the next generation is an acceptance, perhaps even a celebration of well-rounded individuals as the model of what a scholar should be – someone who perhaps didn’t publish as much or as often, who didn’t take on quite as many grad students or passed on a couple of prestigious posts. In modernist terms, someone who wasn’t as “productive” as the traditional “hot shot” professor would begin to emerge. This new breed of scholar will be someone with a more nuanced sense of excellence; they might not even choose to try for tenure, but instead learn to play the Celtic harp or teach street people how to read.

I had a friend who when offered a prestigious postdoc, asked, and received permission to postpone her start date so she could take a six-month training as a Pilates instructor – something she had always meant to do but never could find time for in grad school. I still laugh when I think of the expressions that must have been on the faces of the selection committee.

Take the time to browse through The Atlantic’s article on Vaillant’s research. It’ll be a nice break from the daily pressure to get the next item on your to-do list scratched off. Then consider what you would have to say if someone interviewed you when you were eighty about what really mattered in your life. Once you have a sense of what you would answer, think about the role your academic path would play in that. Something to ponder isn’t it?

If you have been following Margin Notes blogger, Leo Charbonneau, then you have heard of Mark Taylor’s recent OpEd piece in the New York Times. Taylor likens the structure of graduate education to the auto industry in that it produces products (PhDs) for which there is no demand (i.e. tenure track positions).

To say this piece has generated some feedback, is putting it mildly. The Times’ editors closed responses at 437, and the conversation continues on blogs across the continent.

One particularly virulent response came from Marc Bousquet writing in the Chronicle who lambastes Taylor, and by extension, The Times, for “pimping junk analysis” of the situation (did I mention people get frothy around this issue?). As far as Bousquet is concerned, we don’t need more academic positions to sop up the overflow of PhDs leaking out of universities in increasing numbers each year. Rather, we need to address the real problem, which he claims is “a restructuring of ‘demand’ so that work that used to be done by people with doctorates is being done by persons with a masters or a BA, or even by undergraduates.” His comments generated another 77 comments.

Just to throw a little gasoline on the fire, Broquet provides a link to his own blog where he has archived enough video (like the one below) guaranteed to send you crawling to the local liquor store for relief.

OK, so where does all the gnashing of teeth and flame throwing leave the thousands of us, yours truly included, who are frantically paddling upstream towards some mythic “land of tenure?” Is there any hope? Do we just give up, pack our bags and check out of grad school and get a “real” job?

I, for one waited a long time to do this degree. I’m ABD in one field (due to a series of unfortunate events, the like of which seem to flourish in academe), and I am going to get it this time if it kills me – which feels like it just might sometimes. Finishing this degree is, for me, about many things more important than getting a job, so I’m in it for the long haul. But of course, I have a job, so I can afford that luxury.

What about you? For many grad students getting through the PhD, is and of itself like the ultimate litmus test. They know someday they will need to sort out career issues, but given the current state of affairs in academe, they are ambivalent about an academic career and are happy to focus on their studies. The uncertainty of the future doesn’t bother them as much as it does their families. A recent StatsCan report doesn’t help matters. It reports that while annual income levels of Masters students were $15,000 higher than for BAs, PhDs were on average only likely to earn $5,000 more than MAs. Hardly a compelling economic argument to justify the pursuit a doctoral degree.

For others, especially those near completion or recently on the job market, the doom and gloom can be overwhelming. If that describes you, the best thing I think you can do for yourself is educate yourself on what else is out there. Browse through previous postings on this blog and the Career Resources section of University Affairs for more specific information about how to do this. Check out your university’s Career Centre. But whatever you do, do it with the same vigor as it took you to get this far, or else you will be inadvertently stacking the deck – trying to convince yourself you have to stay in academe because there are no viable options – which just isn’t true. Without having any understanding of the alternatives, deciding to focus only on an academic career or not is like choosing between a long shot and a dead end – not much of a choice.

If, at the end of the day you,  like me,  would always regret not finishing after having come so far – just so you know you did it, especially when everyone around you thought you were crazy – well, don’t be afraid to keep going. Not everything that matters in life can be distilled down to dollars and cents, and sometimes, what is gained in the journey that ends with a PhD, is, in the end, more significant than what is given up to follow that path. That’s my story anyway,  and I’m sticking to it.

I’m just back from my first conference of the season. It was in Boston so when I began talking with the person seated beside on the plane, it wasn’t surprising to learn he also was an academic. When I asked him what field he was in he said tersely “Mathematics – you?” “Communication and Culture” I responded and we both stared at each other, silenced by the seemingly incomprehensibility of each of our disciplines to the other. The conversation, having apparently run its course, died and we spent the rest of the trip in an amicable, but persistent silence.

Later that evening, I was catching up with my reading when I came across Daniel Drolet’s article in University Affairs admonishing social scientists to get better at ‘selling’ themselves.

His main point is that social scientists need to be more lucid and strategic when they describe the relevancy of their research to others, especially politicians and funding bodies. His point, I think, is well taken and equally applicable to academics in other fields. Apart from the pragmatic benefits of being intelligible to others, there is the simple social benefit of being better able to connect with people around us.

How many times have you seen “that look,” the one the mathematician and I shared, that people will give you when you try to explain what you do? Depending on who it is, and the context, “the look” can be interpreted as some combination of disbelief that anyone would want to do anything so mundane/irrelevant or just plain unpleasant (the mathematician probably gets a lot of those) for their whole professional career.

Taking Drolet’s point to heart, I revisited my conversation with my travel companion. Neither one of us handled that particularly well.  If I could hit rewind and do it again, I might have asked a couple of questions to drag the pertinent elements out of him (or, at least, pertinent to me). For instance, “Oh really, I know nothing about your field, what do you most enjoy about it?” Or, “Can you give me the Reader’s Digest version of your area of interest”? Either question might have opened the door to a really interesting conversation.

I faired no better than he, offering absolutely no explanation or even attempting to make my interests seem even remotely transparent to him. Yes, I was so exhausted from four days of intensively focusing on my field that perhaps I was a little slower on the uptake than I might have been otherwise, but that’s hardly an exceptional circumstance, and really no excuse.

If we actually believe, as we claim so eloquently on our funding applications, that our research is timely, significant and filling an important gap in our disciplines, than we need to get a lot better at saying so out loud. In a media saturated world, the oral tradition is more powerful than ever  – what you say matters. And, as Drolet discusses, in a cash-strapped economy, its important for our friends, colleagues and acquaintances to understand that what we do isn’t just an expensive hobby.

I have a proposal that I invite you to take up as you attend your conferences this season. Next time someone asks what you study, do not answer with the name of your program or discipline – those terms are largely unintelligible to people outside the academy and are conversation killers. Instead, try preparing a functional description of what you love best about your field, “I am really curious about how all those hours people spend playing video games affects the way they behave in the real world” rather than delivering the thesis of your last funding proposal, “I am deconstructing the technological determinist argument in a neo-liberal, post relativist milieu.” This not only humanizes what you do by foregrounding why you do what you do, but it also offers a segue for further conversation to the initiated. Generally speaking, it’s a friendlier thing to do.

Give it a go, and see what comes out of it – and take a moment to share your experiences on the blog. This is one situation we all face, and could, undoubtedly, be a lot better at handling.

I wanted to draw your attention to a recent post on the Inside Higher Ed website that explores, quite  accurately I think, many of the issues PhDs face when they are forced to leave academe rather then when they choose to leave.

The author, Christine Kelly, identities six fears that hold people back from taking the initiative to move ahead and seek out career alternatives with an open mind and positive attitude. This posting should be required reading for anyone in this situation, which in today’s economy applies to just about every grad student in North America.

I want to emphasize one of Kelly’s points:

If you feel like you are being pushed out of the ivory tower, rather than choosing to leave, this process may be very difficult for you. You probably feel anger, betrayal, and rejection by the system you believed in. You need to address these issues and examine any false beliefs that might be preventing you from being fully present in your non-academic job search.

Don’t skip this part under the mistaken assumption that feelings don’t count, or that your top priority is just to “get a job.” You do need to address what you are feeling before you will be able to shift gears successfully.

One of the most difficult situations I face as a graduate student adviser is helping doctoral candidates through this process because the flood of negative emotions you can experience by being forced out of your chosen vocation will make everything seem worthless and hopeless. These emotions will abate in time, but until they do, your ability to assess your options and priorities will be severely hampered.

This is why you need people around you who can help offer alternative perspectives to those you can come up with on your own at this time. Like just about everything else in academe, the career exploration process will be much less traumatic, and ultimately more successful if you build a community of support around yourself. Your mentors and advisers, people who have encouraged you along the way, friends and family are all good places to start. But at some point, you will probably need to find people with knowledge of fields and positions you want to explore.

It may come as a surprise, but the job search process is actually something you will find you are quite skilled at because it utilizes essentially the same skills used when conducting primary research.

Skills in academic research …	... Translate to these career exploration activities
Seeking out and interviewing informants	Networking and conducting informational interviews
Compiling and analyzing the data you've collected	Developing a career plan
Extrapolating a hypothesis out of said data	Creating a career objective - I can make a meaningful impact in this position/field because ...
Presenting persuasive arguments supporting your hypothesis both in print and orally	Writing cover letter and resumes: presenting yourself convincingly in job interviews

In fact, PhDs across the disciplines are probably more adept in the abilities required to integrate well in today’s’ workforce than any other graduate from a program not geared to a specific career path. It is my belief based on observation and personal experience, that there is actually not much that a motivated, focused PhD can’t do.  The biggest thing holding them back is not an unwelcoming job market, nor a lack of transferable skills, but rather, as Christine Kelly explains so well, their own fear. Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

“The university is responsible for providing graduate students with the best possible preparation for their future roles whether within academia or in other sectors. This responsibility extends to developing professional skills.” (CAGS 2008, p.2)

When’s the last time you heard something like that come out of the mouth of a graduate dean?

This revolutionary statement is from a an important document currently posted on the website of the Canadian Association of Graduate Studies, entitled Professional Skills Development for Graduate Students.

This document takes as given that graduates of Master’s and doctoral level programs have  important roles to play in society, not just in universities. It states that,

“… funding agencies, universities, employers of highly qualified people, researchers, and graduates themselves recognize the importance of professional skills that complement their disciplinary expertise. To be competitive then, graduate students increasingly need to engage in ongoing development of their skills in areas that complement their academic programs and enhance their employability. The knowledge economy demands a high level of professional skills from all of its participants if they are going to increase the economic and social benefits for Canadians and for society in general.”(p.2)

Focusing on the broad categories of academic, private, public, or not-for-profit sectors, the paper identifies four areas of skills development that are considered to have a ‘likelihood of success in implementation in the university context: communication, management, teaching, and ethics.” (p. 6)

It goes on to define these areas and implementation principles for ensuring that all graduate students are provided equal opportunity not only to acquire disciplinary expertise but also these complementary, professional skills. The hope is this document will provide a catalyst for universities across Canada to develop a core set of professional skills that all graduate students will be able to master as they complete their studies in any field.

I want to highlight a point made in the report, that most, if not all the skills inherent in the categories listed above, are those usually acquired during the course of many graduate programs. What is revolutionary here is that not only are university administrators are being called to normalize the diversity of post graduate careers paths. They are being asked, to an extent, to accept a degree of responsibility in ensuring their graduates have educational experiences that can be explicitly applied to nonacademic contexts.

In Carolyn Watters’ Dean’s podcast, she discusses this paper with the outgoing president of CAGS, Martin Kreiswirth. At one point during the interview, they express concern that funding may well prove to be the deal breaker that prevents the professional skills concept from being adapted.

I think that  in this case, ‘funding’ could a red herring diverting attention away from what is likely to be the real obstacle to the implementation of the professional skills initiative – a fear that this will open the door for graduate programs to become nothing more than advanced workplace training programs. This is a real and present danger – but not a new one, and not one that will be exacerbated if these principles are followed. Market pressures realized through changes in what research is funded has a far greater influence on the structure of graduate education than this program will ever have.

Imagine, if you will, being able to get professional presentation coaching, not only for academic conferences and job talks, but also for job interviews in a range of sectors as a normal part of graduate level education. Or what if we followed the suggestion made in another podcast by Dan Russell, the Google guru, that universities begin to routinely do post-mortems at the conclusion of team research projects to identify more explicitly what worked and what didn’t. That knowledge is critical both inside and outside academe, and would fit relatively seamlessly within many current academic practices. Shifts like these would only improve the quality of graduate education, and maybe even the career transitions of its graduates.

Right now the CAGS paper may be just a good idea, but it has the potential to be a revolutionary one, and boy, could we could use a revolution in our universities right about now.

What about you? Take a look at the paper (it’s only 9 pages) and let us know what you think.
Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

In my last post, I mentioned the article published in the Globe & Mail this past Monday on the dismal academic job market. Not surprisingly, the economic downfall is hitting universities hard. In higher ed one of the most common strategies to weather this storm seems to be to implement hiring freezes. A gloomy prospect for PhDs waiting to land their first position.

The article is quick to assure readers that this can’t last forever, and such “setbacks” can be excellent opportunities to strengthen CVs through postdocs and publishing. All relatively true. Although I can’t help wonder at this rate how soon it will be until having books in print will be the industry standard for new faculty.

Historically, this is just the latest of a seemingly endless stream of events that have derailed the long-held prediction that a critical need for massive numbers of faculty is just around the corner. By now, this is beginning to take on the aura of apocrypha,which has been used to divert two generations of our brightest students towards academic careers that never materialized.

The fact is, the majority of PhDs who have graduated in the past 20 years have not landed up in tenured positions. Most have not ended up in academe at all. The Globe article is hardly “news.” It merely reiterates that things are  not going to improve anytime soon.

Yes there was that happy blip in Ontario when the double cohort of two graduating high school classes went through the system, amidst much political hoopla and well-publicized funding increases. In fact, the echo of that surge in enrollment is partly motivating the sudden interest in the opening of new spots in graduate programs.

In all fairness, many of today’s realities – the economic downturn, the reluctance of increasing numbers of senior faculty to retire, the systemic shift to replacing retiring faculty with contract workers – were not anticipated in the the late seventies and early eighties when the legend of an impending academic renaissance began to emerge. But since then, universities have retold the tale to each new graduating class, in spite of no evidence that the situation was really about to change.

It’s important that universities are up front with students they recruit into doctoral programs. A life in academe is not the likely outcome of this level of education. For many, that’s not a problem, they have their sights set elsewhere anyways, and, I want to emphasize, tend to do very well in the private sector when they have time and motivation to prepare in advance of graduation. But many would at least think twice about pursuing a PhD if they didn’t believe that there was a good chance they would land a tenure track position.

Only when the realities of the academic market are acknowledged, can its potential be truly realized. Only then will universities, governments and employers recognize that there is a growing pool of highly trained, extremely competent graduates who represent one of Canada’s largest untapped resources.

Right now the onus is almost entirely on individual grad students to figure out how their abilities might fit into the workforce. It doesn’t have to be this hard. Canadian universities provide a huge array of services, support, information and events to help our undergraduates transition successfully into society. It’s time now, especially now, to do the same for our graduate students.

A reader recently commented:

“Carolyn has raised a very important point. Career advising offices in various schools are doing a good job in guiding undergrad students. However, they have no clue about the needs of our grad students. Almost all grad students are on their own as far as preparation for job hunt in industry, government, and academia is concerned. Successful grads are usually those who are able to find a good mentor (career advisor) using one’s own network. — ahmad”

Ahmad’s point bears repeating – successful grad students are almost always those with strong mentorship relationships. Although I know of some really exceptional graduate student supervisors, I fear they are few and far between. But let me be clear about this. There are many graduate faculty members who would love to have the time to be the ideal supervisor. The sad reality is that they simply cannot with the number of students they are supervising, along with rising teaching and administrative demands they are negotiating. It is not at all uncommon these days for professors to be trying to supervise over eight PhDs – that’s craziness.

The University of Washington has prepared two thoughtful, comprehensive guides, one for graduate students (PDF) and one for faculty (PDF), on managing the mentoring relationship in grad school.

“Think of mentoring as the consistent and developmental evolution of wisdom, technical knowledge, assistance, support, empathy, and respect to graduate students through, and often beyond, their graduate education. In other words, mentoring is a constellation of activities—educational, interpersonal, and professional—that mean more than advising students on how to meet degree requirements, as critical as that is. Mentoring helps students understand how their ambitions fit into graduate education, department life, and postgraduate career choices.” [Faculty Guide, pg. 6]

Oh for a world where this was so – read it and weep!

Nonetheless, I encourage you to share these with your peers and the faculty in your programs – especially your supervisors. While it may not be possible to realize all the ideals outlined in these guides, maybe you could identify a couple of strategic places where you and your supervisor could improve your relationship in ways that make it more satisfying and productive for both of you. For more ideas on where to start, the University Affairs career section also recently published a piece on six best practices for supervisors, students and supervisory committees including “Sharing expectations early” and “Having a plan B” if research plans don’t work out as expected.

It also bears noting that the Canadian Association of Graduate Studies, which consists of all the graduate studies deans and their colleagues in graduate faculties, made a big push in 2008 toward establishing some national guidelines for student supervision. You can check those out on the CAGS website here (along with a similar document on professional skills development for graduate students, which I may post on another time). It’s an encouraging sign to see graduate faculties focused on supervision and mentorship – let’s hope it makes a difference!

As those of you who have read my bio know, I am on a leave of absence from my job as a career adviser at York University to teach and research for a year in my field – Communication and Culture. As chance would have it, that choice landed me in the middle of the longest strike ever held at an English-speaking university in Canada. As a union member on the picket line, I began mulling over how academe in general measured up as an employer.

Unlike just about any profession I can think of, young scholars have established a close relationship with their future employers long before they are hired, beginning during their undergrad years.

In grad school, the relationship between the student and their intellectual home can become complicated by the introduction of the employer-employee relationship, but because of the mutual understanding that graduate students are learners first, the expectations around the employment relationship for those of them who are TAs or RAs are (or should be) mitigated by the demands of scholarship. For the most part though, there is still a fondness and a trust that often typifies the relationship at this stage – an extension, perhaps, of the supervisory relationship.

For the few that actually go on to be hired by the same university after graduating, the sometimes abrupt shift in their relationship with the university can be disorienting.

Some young faculty I’ve spoken to have felt that the university suddenly disregards the impact of the multiple and onerous demands made on them at a level that wouldn’t be tolerated in the non-academic workplace. This can make some new hires feel betrayed or undervalued.

Often, departments try to provide mentors or faculty advisers to help tenure-track professors acclimatize successfully and to increase their success rates in achieving tenure. But even then the process is stressful, demanding and, many times, disheartening.

Contract faculty, even those with full-time teaching loads, aren’t usually so lucky to have mentors, and many are left to face deplorable working conditions for many years without support, recognition or respect, priming the pump for fiascos like the recent York strike.

Then there is the drama of departmental politics, which tend to have long and bitter histories. Junior-level faculty can unwittingly stumble into a hornet’s nest of controversy until they learn the cultural norms of their departments. This, more than any other reason, is why PhDs have told me they leave academe – they just don’t have the stomach for it.

Granted, similar problems are endemic in other workplaces as well, but in the university they seem to take on a particularly nasty tone. Maybe it just feels that way when you are coming in with wide-eyed expectations of warm collegiality and support. Maybe there is something insidious in the stereotype some folks have of academics being socially underdeveloped due to long hours spent in isolation studying. Or perhaps, under the security blanket of tenure, some folks simply forgo the niceties of polite human interaction. In any case, it can be a rude awakening to grad students and junior faculty when they realize that the encouragement and support they enjoyed during their graduate years has disappeared.

I realize this all sounds very gloomy and concede that my own experience on strike at a university – another aspect of professional academic life perhaps worth exploring another time – may be influencing my perspective on this. But it’s important that we recognize that the university workplace is, in some very important ways, in crisis for reasons over which it has little control. It is a bureaucracy straining with increasing enrolments, decreasing funding, higher levels of accountability to groups with very different agendas than academic excellence, to name a few.

But if universities are serious about being the employer of choice for our brightest and best, they need to take a hard look at how they compare to workplaces that are more employee-friendly.

All the media attention on the tanking economy is starting to make me squirm – it sort of makes me want to play it safe for a while.

Apparently I’m in good company. According to an article in the Globe and Mail last week, in times of economic downturn, enrollment in graduate programs increases. This doesn’t surprise me, although I suspect career-related degrees such as MBAs are probably more susceptible to this trend than more academic fields. After all, not too many people appreciate the career relevance of a Masters of Philosophy (though they probably should). It’s kind of ironic that academe, one of the most precarious job markets around, provides society with one of the most popular havens from an unstable economy.

In spite of the doom and gloom, however, there are some advantages to being in academe during a recession.

For instance, if you are gearing up for the academic market and you don’t have an offer in hand, drawing out your completion date another year could provide a handy window to bump up your publications record. If you haven’t done much committee work, this would be a good time to rectify that as well. Then, when some of the hiring freezes are lifted, you’ll be a stronger candidate than you are now.

If you were planning on graduating into a non-academic job in the spring, this turn of events may feel even more ominous. Indeed, with a 25 percent decrease in entry level jobs, it may appear such feelings are well-founded. But Gregg Blachford, McGill University’s director of career planning services would disagree.

“There are still jobs… and opportunities out there, especially for university graduates, he told the Globe and Mail. “We encourage students to continue to look for work in the same way, but they’ll probably have to work harder to get a position than previously.”

By working harder, he means doing more than submitting resumes online to organizations to which you have had no prior connection. Especially during times of cutbacks, it’ll take more than a resume to help a prospective employer appreciate the difference you can make to their company.

In fact, this is the ideal time to pitch a proposal on a project that has immediate short term benefits for an organization that you can complete within a short-term contract – something less than a year in length. Such arrangements are win-win situations. Organizations can make important improvements with minimal commitment, and you can try on a new position, build up your resume and professional references so when times improve, you’ll be well-positioned to land a more permanent job.

That’s how I got into the field of career development. I had been doing a lot of research on the career prospects facing PhDs as I was in the latter stages of my English PhD in the mid-1990s – another economically dismal time, particularly in academe. By obtaining an introduction to the director of my university’s Career Centre at a professional conference, I was able to land a year-long contract doing a needs-assessment to determine the career support required by graduate students. This eventually led to a permanent position in the field.

Think about it – where could someone like you make a difference? Even if an issue or organization doesn’t seem to be connected to your field of study, don’t underestimate how much you could improve things with a strategic project. You’d be amazed at how badly many organizations need relevant research done in order to move ahead. Now may be the perfect time to give that a try.

As for me – rather than squirming, maybe I should take my own advice and start carving out an opportunity for myself – I let you know how it goes!

One of my great pleasures during the winter months is to curl up on the couch and watch TV Ontario’s Big Ideas. Recently, William Phillips, from the National Institute of Standards and Technology was speaking about “optical molasses” – the cooling potential of liquid nitrogen. Let’s be clear, I am not a scientist. In fact I dropped science as soon as I could in high school. But I found this talk to be absolutely fascinating not so much because of the topic, which actually turned out to be a lot more interesting than it sounded, but because of how excited Phillips was about his topic. It obviously delights him. He spoke self depreciatingly of his “geekiness” in how excited he gets about physics, and the audience of scientists laughed and clapped in recognition of this trait they all shared. A room full of self-proclaimed geeks celebrating their mutual love of science – a bond that undoubtedly differentiated them from their families and classmates as they were growing up, but which now identified them as part of this vital community of like-minded scientists. There is something I find riveting about watching someone like Phillips just revel in their passion so unabashedly. Take a look at his talk – he actually giggles he’s so delighted with his experiments.

We don’t do this nearly enough in academe, and that’s a shame, because it is in our programs, our classes and conferences where we have the chance to fully indulge in the aspects of our research that excite us, but which we can rarely discuss with the people closest to us for any length of time without noticing stifled yawns and glazed eyes. Somehow, in academe, the impulse to show childlike delight in the topics we research is too often stifled under a veneer of “professional decorum” and objectivity. Perhaps it is this unfortunate tendency that makes academia seem dry and boring to those in the “real world.”

Those of us who have pursued a career in academe are, for the most part, motivated by a genuine, burning passion for our fields. It is perhaps this more than anything else that makes it so hard to consider any other career path. Where else could we, like Phillips, find others who see the profound in the minutiae of everyday life? He demonstrates very powerfully in his presentation that we can be subjectively implicated in our research, without compromising its validity. Significantly, he doesn’t work in a university.

I can’t help but think that if we were better at expressing our feelings for what we do and why it’s important when talking with our colleagues, students, and our families, we be much more effective and happier scholars both in and outside the ivory tower – don’t you?

One of the questions I would hear most often from PhDs I advised was some variation of “What can I do with my degree other than be a professor?”

Next Wave: the career development resource for scientists
Non-academic Careers for Scientific Psychologists
Career Alternatives for Art Historians
Linguistic Enterprises: A Job-Search Site for Linguists Seeking Employment in the Private Sector
Ph.D.s Org: Science, Math, and Engineering Career Resources
Biotechnology Human Resource Council: Growing Canada’s Biotechnology Talent
The American Chemistry Society’s Online Career Centre
Mathematical Science career Information – project for non-academic employment
Non-Academic Careers in Physical Anthropology
Non-Academic Options for Philosophers
Promising Job Markets for PhDs in the Humanities

I heard from Hugo this week who was concerned about the length of his two and a half page CV. He is a postdoc and was wondering whether or not he should increase the length of his CV by listing the posters he presented at non-academic, scientific meetings even though they were not peer reviewed.

His question brings up several important issues. First of all, there is no prescribed length for CVs, and norms vary widely across disciplines, but the CV of a junior academic is not expected or required to be as long as mid-career academics. The more important concern is content. One or two first-author publications in peer reviewed journals core to your field will make a greater impact than a long list of conference presentations and posters. One book chapter is better than several book reviews. The lesson here is that any work that takes you away from your research needs to be worth the time invested in producing it by substantively improving your CV and/or your reputation in your field. Hugo’s CV is not excessively short at this early stage in his career.

Secondly, pedigree aside, your CV should demonstrate not only your depth of expertise, but also your breadth. With the increase in interdisciplinary programs, it is often advantageous to include a range of experiences both inside and outside traditional academic activities. For instance, non-academic publishing can demonstrate your reputation as an expert or leader in a related or applied area. Exhibits or performances of creative work are increasingly common in CVs outside the Fine Arts. Awards and accolades that recognize your skill or innovation in relevant areas can also be attractive. These types of additions will complement your traditional credentials, and all other things being equal, can give you a competitive edge. Hugo is in the Sciences, where being able to demonstrate applied relevance is not just a bonus, but in many cases, is a requirement. By adding his posters, he is showing his work is interesting and perhaps valuable outside the academic laboratory, which will be an important consideration for many hiring committees.

Finally, don’t hesitate to ask for advice from not only your supervisors and committees, but also from faculty in your field who have sat on several hiring committees. Collaboration is the keystone of academic life, and isn’t limited to research contexts. Your peers and colleagues are your best source of support and discipline-specific information.

Career Sense question of the week: What resources did you find most beneficial in compiling your CV?