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Starting the hunt for an academic post can feel daunting, but many aspects of the application process will be similar to other jobs (even if the exact processes differ) and starting to plan and prepare well in advance makes the process less stressful. None of us can control the outcome, but what we can control is how we approach the task.

Where do I look?

Vitae suggest a list of sites to look for academic jobs. The first port of call for most academic job hunters in the UK (they do also advertise some international posts) is www.jobs.ac.uk – sign up to their mailing list to get regular emails advertising current posts. This is a good idea even before you are ready to look, as it gives you an idea what is out there, how often posts come up, and what employers are looking for.

How do I start preparing?

Fore-warned is fore-armed. The best way to prepare for writing applications in the short and long term is to know what is expected and what skills and experience prospective employers will be looking for. The easiest way to do this is to look at personal specifications. If you want to work in academia, you are probably looking at a postdoctoral research role, or an associate lecturer role, as a first step (depending on your experience).

Postdoctoral research associate

For a postdoctoral research associate the personal specification might look like this:

Competency	Essential	Desirable
Attainments/Qualifications	PhD (or nearing completion) or equivalent qualification/experience in a related field of study.
Skills and Understanding	Sufficient knowledge in the discipline and of research methods and techniques to work within established research programmes.	Evidence of research activity and published research.
Prior Experience	Understanding of health and safety legislation	Experience of undergraduate teaching
Behavioural Characteristics	Excellent written and verbal communication skills. Able to communicate material of a specialist or highly technical nature. Able to manage research and administrative activities and to balance the competing pressures of research and administrative demands and deadlines. Able to liaise with colleagues and students. Able to build contacts and participate in internal and external networks for the exchange of information and collaboration. Able to identify potential sources of funding. Actively participate as a member of a research team Engage in continuous professional development. Understand equal opportunity issues as they may impact on areas of research content Where appropriate to the role, willingness to undergo training in order to conduct risk assessments An understanding of the importance of equality and diversity within an organisation and a commitment to helping create an inclusive culture.
Circumstances	Willing to work flexibly to achieve project demands

Associate Lecturer

For an associate lecturer, it might look like this:

Competency	Essential	Desirable
Attainments/Qualifications	The successful applicant will possess a depth or breadth of specialist knowledge demonstrated by a PhD (or nearing completion), or equivalent qualification / experience, of the core knowledge relating to academic area in order to teach and support learning on academic area modules.
Skills and Understanding	Possess and maintain sufficient breadth or depth of specialist knowledge in the discipline specify discipline and of teaching methods and techniques to work within own area. Possess sufficient breadth or depth of specialist knowledge in the discipline specify discipline to work within established teaching programmes.
Prior Experience	Evidence of successful engagement with undergraduate students	Experience of undergraduate teaching
Behavioural Characteristics	Excellent written and verbal communication skills. Able to communicate material of a specialist or highly technical nature. Able to liaise with colleagues and students. Able to build contacts and participate in internal and external networks for the exchange of information and collaboration. Able to identify potential sources of funding. Engage in continuous professional development. Be able to engage the interest and enthusiasm of students and inspire them to learn. Develop familiarity with a variety of strategies to promote and assess learning. Understand equal opportunity issues as they may impact on academic content and issues relating to student need. An understanding of the importance of equality and diversity within an organisation and a commitment to helping create an inclusive culture.

What next?

Now you know what will be expected of you, what do you do next? Return to the previous section, where you kept track of all your skills and experience (in your evidence log) and match it across! This way you can see the gaps in your experience and know what you need to focus on. If you approach this task like you are the one on the recruitment panel, deciding if you have enough experience, you are both working out the gaps in your CV and becoming more familiar with the recruitment process and the importance of signposting your experience clearly. Remember, they will have LOTS of applications to read, so the clearer you make yours, the better!

Activity

Imagine you are applying for one of the roles above (just choose one). Look through the specification and turn it into a bullet-point list. For example:

Role: postdoctoral research associate

Attainments/Qualifications

Skills and Understanding

Specialist knowledge in my discipline
Knowledge of research methods
Publications

…..etc.

Once you have completed this list, cross-reference it with the list of your own experience, which you have been compiling (you can check it against your draft CV too). You could give yourself a mark out of 10 for how much you think you meet that criteria, or colour-code them (red, amber, green) according to how confident you would feel convincing someone of your experience levels in that area. Create a visual representation for yourself – just a tick box system might be your preference, but get creative if that works for you! Make notes to support this process and record ideas for next steps.

PhD	I’m going to submit in the next 6 months	Keep writing!
Specialist knowledge in my discipline	I have been submerged in my subject area for the last ten years, keep abreast of recent publications, and attend key conferences
Knowledge of research methods	I’m confident on the methods I’m using in my research, but could do with swotting up on other methods.	Maybe I could look for some free training at my uni?
Publications	I haven’t published anything yet.	Will speak to my supervisor to ask what they advise as a first publication avenue. Maybe I could turn that conference paper I gave into an article?
Excellent written and verbal communication skills.	I write well and am experienced in both public speaking and teaching (different communication styles). I have strong feedback from my supervisors I could quote.

Compiling a reflective record like this has many benefits:

It serves as a record for preparing for future jobs.
It signposts you towards any gaps in your experience and helps you plan what action to take.
It helps you to become more realistic about what you should be aiming for and thus means you are more likely to be successful for the roles you apply for. (Caveat: don’t be afraid of aiming high – you often have much more experience than you think you do, it’s all about framing it)

We have created a version of the standard academic job description and where you can get relevant expeirence during COVID-19.

Writing a personal statement: tailoring your application

Your personal statement/covering letter gives narrative and context to your CV. As with all job applications, it is CRUCIAL that you tailor your application to the role advertised and the institution it would be based at. This can be done in the way you format your CV (reordering the sections to move the most pertinent experience to the top) as well as in your personal statement. In this section of the application (it might be called a cover letter), it is really important that you show, clearly and concisely, how you meet all their criteria. Use all the tasks you have done so far to help you do this, mapping out specific examples from the evidence log you have been compiling.

The Professor is In gives useful advice on what not do to when tailoring your application to the university – just naming someone who already works there and saying “I would love to work with them!” isn’t enough!

Your personal statement is also your opportunity to explain the significance of your research: why does it matter? How does your work make a difference to your specific field. This is information that it’s harder to pick up from the CV alone, so is important to justify in a more narrative section of the application.

Understanding the shortlisting process

Peter Matthews, Senior Lecturer in Social Policy at the University of Sterling, describes (in an article for WONKHE) how the process works:

In a UK context shortlisting is mainly driven by employment law and HR practice. To go anywhere near a recruitment process at most universities you will undergo training. This makes very clear that recruitment is about writing a job description with very clear “essential” and “desirable” criteria that you are looking for in candidates. You will then use these criteria to assess applications. It will usually be pointed out in the training that if you do not follow the criteria quite rigidly in selecting your candidates then you might open your employer to legal action down the line if an unsuccessful candidate ever finds out.

The process sounds very tick-boxy, and it is, but for a good reason – it tries to remove biases from the process as much as possible by focusing on specific criteria. Of course, and very sadly, we know from the statistics on aspects of identity like gender, ethnicity and disability, that recruitment is still very biased.

The basic process is that the recruitment panel – at most universities this seems to be made up of, at least, the line-manager for the post, a senior manager, and someone from another section of the university – individually go through the job applications with an assessment grid or similar document, and score the application against the criteria set out in the job description. This is usually a scoring system (such as: 0 – has not met; 1 – has partially met; 2 – has met; 3 – has exceeded). The candidates who have met all the essential criteria, or with the highest scores, are then shortlisted for interview.

As Peter Matthews goes on to say in the article (do click through and read the whole thing), don’t assume your experience is obvious! “Of course I can manage a large project, I did a PhD!” OK, great, so tell them that, so they can tick it off!

What are they looking for?

We also asked some of our University of Exeter academics what they look for when they are recruiting:

Evidence of a career strategy – both in terms of where they would like to be in say 5 years time, but crucially, some evidence of how they might get there. This might involve plans about research questions, identifying collaborations, researching what funding is available and when – having a plan about publications etc. These plans need to be ambitious, realistic and informed by reality. I also like to see that ECRs know the environment they are in – policy, Uni research strategy, funding climate etc. Professor Michelle Ryan – Professor of Social and Organisational Psychology

Publications – the quality not the number of publications is key plus an awareness of the requirements of the REF particularly in terms of timescales.

Impact of your research – consider how engage with wider audiences and are the outcomes of your research useful to wider society.

Raising your professional profile – don’t just focus on the prestigious international conferences and overlook the benefits of the smaller events/conferences as easier for you to make an impression at this stage of your career. Often future recruiters present. The “social” networking as important as the Conference events.

Social media platforms – consider Twitter as a forum for linking directly to your publications.

Work/life balance – need to be able to work effectively and efficiently but not a career where you have “down” time as need to keep up to date with current research/literature although work very flexibly. Is this a career for you in terms of values and motivations?

Professor Andy Jones – Assistant DVC for Innovation and Business/Professor of Applied Physiology

In an early career researcher, I’d be looking for signs of professionalisation. This means that they need to show awareness, through their CV, of the needs of institutions, so: awareness of need to secure funding, pathways to impact integral to research project, an international dimension wherever reasonable, publications that are high quality (better fewer and top notch than scattergun and not very good), a range of teaching experience, a sense of the ability of the person to be organised and take on responsibilities/multi-task. Professor Pascale Aebischer – Professor of Shakespeare and Early Modern Performance Studies