University Affairs

In most things you do, you get to see progress. You start painting a wall and, an hour later, you can see that you’ve put in an hour’s work, and that less work remains because of your efforts. You incorporate feedback from a reviewer when strengthening an article for publication and, sure enough, you end up with a better article that’s likely to be published. 

In the job search, it’s a lot more difficult to tell whether you’re making progress. The inability to chart how close we are to achieving our goal can make the spirit say “meh.”

The fantastic thing about the job search and its feedback vacuum is that you’re probably already well-prepared for it. If you’ve worked on a thesis, you know what it’s like to face a seemingly endless task and to keep yourself motivated and working, even if your committee members take six months to comment on your latest chapter.

So, what else from your studies can be adapted to your job search? You probably had some strategies in place that routinely got you through tough spots and past the series of rejections that are part and parcel of the job search. 

Maybe, in your academic writing, you have a rule that you had to achieve a certain amount of output, rather than put in a particular number of hours. That way, you know at the end of the day that you’ll have at least 500 words written, instead of having spent the time checking databases for relevant articles again, just in case. The same can apply to your job search. Maybe you can commit to researching a certain number of organizations, writing a prickly part of a cover letter, or attending a workshop at your university’s career centre, instead of searching online job postings and hoping for the best.

If you ever used the strategy of having a “junk” file to deal with writer’s block, try the same strategy with your résumé, cover letter and any notes you make to help prepare for networking or interviews. After all, it’s much easier to edit an ugly first draft than an empty page. So, if you found it useful to create a document that wasn’t your paper, where you could work out ideas without worrying about whether you were articulate, try the same with your job search documents. Give the document a separate name — something called “ugly résumé” or “cover letter that will never see light of day” gives you permission to write in plain language about what you can do. 

Career advisors tend to talk a fair bit about transferrable skills. They extend beyond the skills that you will explain to employers. If you can handle an extended research project — even if it hurts — you’ve already developed the abilities you’ll need to come out on top, on the other side of the job search.

I have to admit that I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed right now. I swear, I didn’t forget to write this blog post… which is due in 10 minutes, so technically, it’s not late yet. It’s just that I am writing this big grant proposal, and I’m working on the animal ethics for said proposal, and today I had two student meetings, a lecture and an administration meeting, and somehow, 4 o’clock seems a lot closer than I thought it would at this point of the day. Our daily responsibilities can build up quickly. So as I sit down to write, finally, I can’t help but ask myself how I could reduce my workload to a more manageable level.

To some extent teaching and student workloads are fixed, and we’re all here for the research too, right? So that just leaves administration. And our administrative load is not negligible. I’m on admissions, awards, hiring, executive, technical, and faculty committees at the moment. On their own, each is pretty manageable but when added on top of my other responsibilities, they can just be the last straw.

One of the problems with being on administrative committees is that they generally add little to your CV. While the time and effort put into teaching and research pay off with career progress and further research opportunities down the road, and the more you put into them, the better the payoff, administration activities are more like checkboxes; you need to do a certain amount of administrative work, which leads to the appropriate checkmark after your name, but any additional effort results in relatively little career advancement (unless you want to go into administration in the future, of course). So the extra effort beyond that which leads to your checkmark may help the department or faculty to succeed, and might get you a pat on the back from your supervisor, but it doesn’t help you move forward. In fact, if you get too caught up in administration, it can definitely hold you back from putting in the effort you need to into teaching and research.

I am told that this is a particularly significant problem for female academics, because there are fewer of us, and so more demand for our services on committees that strive to achieve a balanced sex ratio. I can’t really speak for the guys out there, but I can confirm that I am asked to be on more committees than I have time for.

Instead, take my faculty dean’s advice. I overheard him talking about workloads today, and he said jovially, in the context of accepting higher workloads, “sometimes we are our own worst enemies!” I found this kind of amusing, as he was the person who appointed me to search committees for four faculty members in the last academic year. But he’s also right. Maybe it’s his job to ask for my contribution, and my job is to set the limitations on what I can contribute. So next time he asks me to join a new committee, I’ll just remind him that I’d really like to help out as much as I can … but sometimes, I end up taking on too much, and in that context I am my own worst enemy, and it just might be time for me to say no.

Your CV (or résumé) details past employment, past education, and any other relevant experience. Ideally it indicates your achievements. All of that is organized so that it is easy for a potential employer to find the information they need to determine if you have the necessary skills and knowledge to do the job they need done.

However, no employer is hiring you for your past. They are hiring you based on an assessment of what you can do for them in the future.

Past activity happens to be the best evidence available on which to base that assessment but no one is under any illusion that it is not flawed. Predicting the future is a notoriously difficult activity.

In your cover letter and in your interview (should you get one), you need to help your potential employer see how all this past activity might translate into future contributions that would benefit the employer.

When you are a typical candidate with a typical background, the person doing the hiring might be able to make assumptions about how your background will play out in the future, based on their own (partial) knowledge of those educational qualifications and former jobs. You probably don’t want to rely on those assumptions. It is always better to do some of this work yourself.

If you are applying for an academic job, say something about where your research program is going next. A tenure-track job leads to a 20 to 30 year career in this department. The hiring committee needs to be able to imagine you as an active researcher throughout that period. Similarly, connect your education and your past teaching experience to concrete contributions to the hiring department’s various academic programs.

If you are applying for a position outside of academia, your particular past is probably atypical of the kind of experience other applicants bring to this employer. You will need to do more work demonstrating how your atypical background will enable you to make a strong contribution. In particular, you need to break down jobs that you understand well but that might not be understood in any detail by the people doing the hiring. If they haven’t done something similar, their knowledge of what a particular job involves is going to be limited. Highlight the relevant elements to help them see the relevance of your experience.

This is not easy. You need to know quite a bit about what the job entails and what the expectations are. This is why information interviews are so important in the job search process. The job ad itself probably doesn’t provide you with enough detail to make a strong case for your potential contribution.

You also have to navigate the tricky terrain between making a strong, plausible case and appearing to be set in your ways and unable to respond to the needs and demands of your potential employer.

Before moving on from the topic of awkward moments in networking, I want to address one final, painful topic. So far, I’ve looked at situations controlled by the networker. What happens, though, if you run into someone with whom you suspect you have burned a bridge?

That question came up in a workshop, in which a participant noted he had been networking and continued to network in his field. During his networking, he encountered someone — a potential employer — against whom he had previously committed a gaffe. He opted not to mention the elephant in the room but came away questioning his choice.

He’s far from the only job seeker out there to have made a misstep with a potential employer. Looking for work is stressful, time-consuming, and likely to lead to mistakes now and then.

Over the holidays, I asked some friends about mistakes they had made (I know — that’s a gaffe right there). They came up with:

• Using someone as a reference without telling him or her
• Asking for a reference letter and not using it
• Exaggerating your relationship with a mutual connection
• Talking about a professional contact on social media.

So, what do you do when you realize you’ve made a mistake? Some choose to ignore it and hope it goes away. Others opt to apologize in order to smooth the waters, despite the momentary embarrassment of reliving the error.

The worst option is a combination of the two: the supposed apology that’s actually an excuse.  This version of an apology is tempting because it gives you a chance to say sorry and explain that the offense isn’t actually your fault. If, indeed, the offense isn’t in any way your fault, that’s fine; however, if you bear any responsibility for something you regret, then a pure apology shows that you’re aware of the impact of your actions and that you feel remorse for whatever inconvenience or harm it caused the other person.

Apologizing at all can seem risky — after all, it might revive the other person’s anger, or even draw their attention to something they hadn’t been aware of in the first place.

One of my friends summarized the risk this way: “If someone apologized to me for something I hadn’t known they had done, my initial reaction would probably be irritation, but my trust would return. If I found out about the same mistake through someone else, and hadn’t received an apology, I don’t think my trust would return.”

How we handle difficult situations speaks to others and (perhaps even more loudly and insistently) to ourselves. Painful as making amends may be, it can be good for your relationships, your career and your sense of integrity.

I have a confession to make. It’s a bit embarrassing. But here goes….

I have 18 graduate students.

If you’re wondering whether that’s an unusually high number for one prof, you’re right… it is. I hardly know how it happened. It was just bit by bit … I’d get a great idea for a project, and put in a proposal, and get funding for a student. Or I’d get a great idea for a project, and budget for TWO graduate students. Or a promising student with exciting ideas and a scholarship wanted to work with me. Or sometimes someone comes along and you can tell they’re a great person who just deserves a break, so how could I say no?

You get the picture. Things just kind of snowballed.

So, how’s it working out? The short answer is, great. I love working with graduate students. They are interesting, fun, and keep you on your toes. I enjoy mentoring them in developing their proposals, editing their theses and manuscripts, and hanging out with them in the lunchroom talking about the latest Lady Gaga album.

But if you’re wondering if it’s a bit, well, nuts around here … that’s true, too. Right now I have three theses and a manuscript in my inbox. Unfortunately… or fortunately… they are likely to be joined by more next week. Sometimes it does seem that I’m just constantly rotating through different student’s products.

So what have I found has worked with managing this many students?

1) The students come first
No student should ever be compromised because I’m busy. I normally schedule meetings within two or three days of a request for one, and return written work within one to two weeks. This keeps a positive relationship between myself and students, and reminds them that when I set a deadline for them, I expect it to be met, too.

2) Editing is about teaching, not writing
Instead of rewriting sections of student’s manuscripts, I give lots of recommendations, guidelines and direction… occasionally on almost every sentence… and students implement their own edits. I do some additional light editing, usually to demonstrate a different approach. If they learn how to write, later drafts and papers really do get better.

3) Follow it through to the end
The benefit to having lots of students is (or should be) lots of publications. Not all students will publish their theses, but they should realize from the beginning that they are expected to, and that is the standard they should strive for.

4) Multitasking
It doesn’t take any more time to teach 10 students how to use Microsoft Access, compared with one student. I organize lab meetings to teach basic skills and expect students who need to learn to attend it. This also creates an educated peer group so that if one student didn’t understand one component, other students are available to advise them. This leads directly into….

5) Peer mentoring
Part of the secret to making sure a large lab group like this works well is creating a respectful, helpful and interactive social culture. If one student has questions that I know can be addressed by another (often to do with methods or software use), I refer them to the other student instead of meeting with them myself. This is good for the original student, who learns the topic more deeply because they now have to teach it to someone else, and the overall social culture of the lab, as it creates a more cohesive and interactive atmosphere.

6) Ya gotta love it
This just isn’t going to work if you don’t really enjoy students. If you’re giving up evenings and weekends for them, you’ve got to do it because you enjoy teaching and mentoring.

Ultimately, the success of my lab group can be seen in their productivity, happiness, and community. They get their theses done in the right length of time for them; publication and submission rates are good, and my students hang out together for fun. This has resulted in lab camping and hiking trips; they formed a band and write rap songs about endangered species; and this year several students have devised a friendly “Big Year” competition to see as many birds as they can in 2012. It’s just a fun, respectful and creative atmosphere that in many ways has been driven and developed by the students themselves. And I just get to sit back and enjoy it!

Welcome back. All of us here at the Careers Café hope that you had a joyful and relaxing holiday season. We’re gearing up to provide more advice and support for your career in 2012.

One of the things that is so attractive about an academic career is the job security. If you secure a tenure-track position and then get tenure, you could be with the same employer for 20 or 30 years. The idea of never having to look for a job again is remarkably attractive.

However, your job won’t stay the same for all those years. Opportunities will arise to take your academic career in different directions. Research opportunities. Administrative opportunities. Teaching opportunities.

While the thought of applying for another job is almost unthinkable now, there may come a time when you want to change institution or even leave academia for another type of career (permanently or temporarily).

Outside academe, it has become normal for people to change jobs every 2 to 5 years. That may be a promotion or lateral move within the same organization, or it might be moving to a new position in a different company.

You need career advice throughout your career

When you are unemployed or just starting a job your need for career advice and support is fairly strong. You spend a lot of time thinking about your career and making decisions. You devote considerable resources to looking for a job, and then getting settled into that new position.

Once you are in a job, your career planning will be less intense but it shouldn’t disappear entirely. You don’t want to just be reactive. You want to plan your own professional development, and make conscious decisions about your next career steps.

You make those conscious decisions in conditions not of your own choosing. Knowing your own goals helps you choose between the options actually available at a given moment. You will compromise, but you want to be in control of what you compromise.

Questions to ponder

In this season of looking ahead, you might want to consider how you will actively manage your career this year.

• What are your career goals?
• What can you do this year to become a good candidate for the kind of job you would like?
• Are there any skills you want to develop?
• Are there any options you want to learn more about?
• Are there aspects of your job that you’d like to give more attention to?
• Are there particular tasks you’d really like to do? Any you’d really like to stop doing if you could?

Here at the Careers Café, we’d like to help you make decisions about your career. The more we know about what you want to know about, the easier it is for us to provide the information you need.

Please tell us about specific topics or questions in the comments and one of us will try to write about it during 2012.

In my mission to abolish networking awkwardness, I’ve written about reaching out to potential future colleagues and following up with new contacts. Getting back in touch with people from your past can be tricky, too.  Most of my clients have had at least one valued mentor with whom they’ve lost contact. By “lost contact,” I mean that the parties haven’t spoken in at least a year. But the time elapsed is not main issue: it’s the fact that it now feels too awkward to get back in touch.

First, if you’re feeling a bit squeamish about renewing contact, good for you. If there’s something you want to get from renewing a relationship other than the relationship itself, it makes sense to be aware of your own motives and deal with them appropriately. 

Some people handle the awkwardness of renewing old professional relationships by establishing friendly contact first, and then only later asking for the assistance that prompted them to renew contact in the first place. That can work for you and the other person, if you actually intend to remain in contact after you’ve asked for (and received) the person’s help. 

On the other hand, if you plan to renew contact primarily for help, and don’t know to what extent you’ll stay in touch, it may be safer to be up front. If you start with a friendly hello, later followed by a request for, say, a LinkedIn recommendation, only to follow that with no contact at all, your acquaintance will likely feel deceived and used. 

If you renew contact with your request, the recipient might still feel used — or they may feel flattered, or simply neutral because you’re engaging in behaviour that’s normal in the professional world. At the very least, they won’t feel deceived; you’ve been upfront about your request (for that recommendation on LinkedIn, 15 minutes of their time to learn more about their field, their advice about where else you should be applying in addition to the organizations you’ve already identified, their ideas about what you could be doing to make yourself a more appealing candidate to employers…). Now your contact has the option of saying yes or no, and they’ll know exactly what you’re hoping for.

So, lay it out clearly for your soon-to-be-renewed contacts. Keeping your requests specific and reasonable helps keep awkwardness to a minimum. Set the context briefly, by saying or writing something like “I’ll soon be on the job market” or “While I won’t be on the job market until X date, I’m doing some research.” Then, be clear about your request: “I wanted to know if you’d be willing to write me a short recommendation on LinkedIn about the work we did together planning the grad student conference in 2009” or “Because you know industry X well, I was wondering if I could take you out for a coffee, and we could spend about 15 minutes talking about some questions I have, before spending the rest of the time just catching up.” Keeping your requests specific and reasonable helps keep awkwardness to a minimum. 

Renewing contact might still feel awkward. And some people may say no to your requests; that’s okay. If someone says no, let them know that you appreciate that they took the time to respond, and that you hope your paths will cross in the future. A classy response shows that you understood your request was indeed a request on your part, and not an obligation on theirs. And when someone does help, a thank you accomplishes the same thing.

You’re overworked. Swamped. Exhausted. You have five years of data filed that you’re just itching to get at. And finally, after years of struggle, you’re looking forward to the opportunity to catch up on everything that you’ve had to put aside while starting your academic career. You have a research leave, or sabbatical, coming up, and you’ve earned it. It’s like the light at the end of the tunnel.

So do you use that time to catch a breather and analyze those data? Or do you give yourself even more work by taking the opportunity to travel and collaborate with colleagues at some distance to your home university? I remember the temptation to settle back and just focus on writing and research. But just before my first sabbatical, a colleague close to retirement told me that the most important thing I could do was to take the opportunity to expose myself to new ideas. So I took his advice, and traveled to work out of another research facility for part of my sabbatical.

That turned out to be one of the most rewarding periods of my career. It was enormously rejuvenating to collaborate with new people. I came back to my university with new ideas and new perspectives on my research. I regained my enthusiasm for my subject. Most importantly, I came back a better teacher, researcher, and scientist, and thus my students and colleagues back at home also benefited from “the new me.” Now I’m hooked … I take every opportunity to visit other labs, and I really can’t put into words how much these visits have helped me. There are some things you just can’t do over Skype.

So is a traveling sabbatical right for you? I think the answer for most people is yes. I didn’t realize how jaded and run-down I had been before I traveled to another university during my sabbatical. And it was the travel that was important, not the break … I had spent several months at home before traveling but it was the trip that was inspiring. I suspect that I was not the first young academic to have forgotten some of the joy of learning. I regained that by working with new people in a new environment. I suspect that most young academics would benefit in the ways that I did.

I was reminded of the transformation that I underwent during an academic trip I recently returned from. I maintained and built on many of the research collaborations that I initiated during my sabbatical, and the last few weeks I took advantage of these partnerships to help me prepare a proposal that will take my research in a slightly new direction. Again, I came back rejuvenated and more knowledgeable about my research area. So I urge all the young academics out there to take advantage of research leaves and go somewhere new. I expect the benefits will far outweigh your expectations.

No matter what stage of an academic career you are in, you will always be developing your skills and knowledge. Whether it is improving how you do the core tasks of your job, learning how to use new technologies, or taking on new challenges, there are always things to learn and experience to gain.

Needing or wanting training, mentoring, or some combination of the two is not an indication of weakness. It is an indication of your commitment to doing your job well.

Professional development begins with needs assessment.

I highly recommend that you do this yourself, probably annually. Make time to sit down and think about where your career is going.

• What is going well?
• Where are you struggling?
• What would you like to be doing?
• What skills do you need to do your current tasks better?
• What skills do you need to be able to take on those tasks you’d prefer to be doing?

No one is judging you. Be honest about both your successes and your struggles.

The next step is to figure out how to get the support you need.

If you want to develop or improve teaching related skills, investigate what your Centre for Teaching and Learning provides. Are any of their workshops appropriate? Do they offer one-on-one support?

You can also organize your own peer support for teaching. Ask a trusted colleague to come and observe your teaching and give you specific feedback. You can do this on a reciprocal basis. The colleague doesn’t have to be from your department. Sometimes asking someone from another discipline to observe and comment on your teaching can be really productive. Be curious and explore options together.

Research development needs might also be met through peer-support (remember you have peers in other universities) or there may be training workshops offered within the university or by outside organizations. Ask the Office of Research Services for help identifying appropriate providers. Or ask colleagues who have skills you want to develop.

You might also want to develop skills that will help you manage your lab better, or work more effectively with TAs and RAs. There are things you need to know about employment law and dealing with unionized staff. There are also things you can learn about working well with a team, mentoring, dealing with difficult situations so they don’t escalate into bigger problems, and where you can go for help if you need it.

The university cares that you do these things well. They probably offer training. Ask around. If there isn’t something already available, someone might organize a workshop if they know there is demand.

Consider professional development a regular part of managing your own career. Pace yourself and make both needs assessment and learning new skills part of your regular workload.

Since my last post was about staying in touch with your network, it seemed suitable to get back in touch with someone from mine. This past weekend, I had coffee and a conversation with one of my favourite profs. We talked about networking, particularly as it applies to the academic job search. Her take was that networking is like exercise. It’s painful in the moment, but healthy in the long term, and can even bring moments of elation. 

The trick, she said, is to strike the right tone. This consists of a blend of “personal warmth and professionalism.” 

What does that look like? She gives the example of an email to a prospective postdoc supervisor who is presenting at an upcoming conference. After providing a brief description of how your work engages in a conversation with the professor’s, you can say, “I’ll be at this upcoming conference. Would you like to meet for a coffee to talk about our work?”

She notes that not everyone will rush to say yes, but most will.  In her own estimation, “meeting new scholars in my field is one of the most enjoyable things.” For you, it’s also a chance to expand your scholarly community — that’s where the moments of elation come in.

Naturally, I asked about the less elation-worthy parts: what would make networking go wrong? If you’re networking with someone in a department to which you plan to apply, don’t get really intrusive too soon by asking for the secrets of the department. Instead, ask what sort of courses would be involved in the role you’re considering and what the department is looking for. If other juicy information happens to be forthcoming, the professor notes “you can file that,” but don’t request it. 

Many people early in their careers feel really weird approaching people out of the blue, but, the professor advises, “you have to,” and “people are used to being approached.” She concedes that, while most professors are happy to be asked for their advice by junior scholars, not everyone will be. If you reach out, but get a chilly response, back off and be grateful that you’ve just crossed someone off your list of people to work with. 

The biggest risk she sees for young scholars networking is missing the right tone by being too self-effacing. Since striking the right tone is so difficult, she suggests a tried and true method for anyone about to contact a potential employer. Have someone read over what you plan to say and ask, “What tone are you getting from this?”

If there are awkward moments in the job search that you’d like to see addressed in the Careers Café blog, please leave a comment or contact me at www.twitter.com/unicareers.