How universities can beat Chinese institutions at preparing graduates for the modern economy

Thousands of students come to Australia from China to complete university studies, but do we really know why? Many assume Chinese students go abroad to study with the aim of emigrating, and some of them probably do. But the real driver behind that aim, and also the reason why our education system is more effective than Chinese higher education at preparing graduates to succeed in the modern economy, demands greater scrutiny.

In his upcoming book, The End of Cheap China, Shaun Rein looks at how Chinese higher education is out of line with the needs of its own economy. As the Chinese population ages, and shifts from wanting to make iPhones to buying them, the country can no longer rely on manufacturing. However the education system is not preparing young people for a more service oriented economy. The Chinese curriculum still focuses on rote memorisation and test scores, which do not adequately train Chinese on the creative and analytic ability needed to survive and innovate in a global economy.

By contrast, Australian universities do prepare graduates to be agile in a modern, changing, service-based economy – and should be actively marketing themselves to Chinese markets on these strengths.

Beware of including distracting achievements in your resume

A candidate recently asked me for advice on his resume for a General Manager role. It contained a section listing general interests and achievements, including a year spent researching in Antarctica. I advised him to drop it as being not only irrelevant to his application, but potentially a way to get him ruled out of contention.

A resume has one purpose for the job applicant: to help secure an interview. On the hiring side, they are used to exclude candidates from progressing further. The hiring manager, or selection committee, are extremely risk-averse when reading your resume, and if anything in it looks risky, your resume could easily work against your application.

Including irrelevant achievements distracts from the evidence of meeting a role’s selection criteria. 

The Antarctica experience could make this applicant seem a bit odd (a loner? Show off?) and not a fit for General Manager. 

The candidate is proud of his work in Antarctica and it could make him memorable to the interview panel. I suggested he refers to it in interview but stay focused on providing evidence of his skills, experience and aptitude for this role. For example, if asked how he deals with conflict, he could respond, “Spending a year with a research team in Antarctica means that I had to work out how to settle differences with and between colleagues. But I’ll give you a more recent example….”

While we are all proud of our extracurricular achievements, think hard about what they could signal about you when your resume is being evaluated for a job. You could end up reminding people of the hyperbolic video resume “Impossible is Nothing” that turned into an Internet meme. 

How to perform better in job interviews: good posture builds your confidence – and helps you breathe!

With good posture you will not only look and feel more assured – without looking overbearing – good posture will generally build your strength and flexibility, and help avoid back problems.

Imagine there is a string pulling up the top of your head. Put your shoulders back without puffing out your chest. Align a neutral spine. This helps you breathe more easily, so you can remain calm and focused in your interview, and good posture enhances your speaking voice. Pilates teaches you how to realign your body. 

How to perform better in job interviews: Other resources

If you are a few days before your interview, concentrate on these above preparation tips so you don’t bewilder yourself. 

If you have some more time, check out my interview tips bookmark stack on Delicious: http://www.delicious.com/stacks/view/LWrehD 

And my company website: http://www.desailly.com.au 

And please drop me a line to let me know what works well for you!

How to perform better in job interviews: practice answering questions

I send my short listed candidates some questions they might be asked in their interview. This to start them thinking about how to describe their key achievements and qualities in a succinct way. Expect questions about how your skills and experience meet the selection criteria. Review the selection criteria several times, jot down some points next to each about what you’ve done that shows you meet each of them. Are there any parts of the job description, or areas in your CV that may be of concern to the panel? Think of what you can say that you will do to assuage any concerns. Remember to remain realistic and honest!

Don’t assume the panel are as familiar with your CV as you are! In the interview draw out the highlights from your CV that support your claims for this role.

Practice behavioural questions

Behavioural questions are extremely popular in interview and most of us aren’t good at answering them. 

The key to both types of questions is to have already thought of examples of what you have done, how you have handled conflict that provide evidence of how you would act in the role you are interviewing for. For my candidates I offer to conduct a mock interview and this further gets people thinking about how to better phrase their accomplishments in interview. It quells the nerves, too, as it makes behaving in an interview a more recent experience. It’s a bit like jumping into cold water before a race, so that the initial shock is already dealt with. Or, another analogy: remember a time when you got back onto a bike, or horse, when you had not ridden for a while? It can take some readjustment to find your comfort zone.

Even if you aren’t dealing with a supportive recruiter like me, practice into a mirror, with a friend or record your answers and play them back to see how you might improve. 

Remember you can pause and take notes

You may get asked a confusing or convoluted question. Or in your excitement, you get off track and you answer the wrong question. Jot down the key words of any slightly complicated question, and glance at them during your answer to make sure you cover all the points. Make sure when you finish to ask the questioner if you have answered their question, it’s possible they are nervous too and asked garbled question that didn’t serve their intentions.

How to perform better in job interviews: Other resources

If you are a few days before your interview, concentrate on these preparation tips so you don’t bewilder yourself. 

If you have some more time, check out my interview tips bookmark stack on Delicious: http://www.delicious.com/stacks/view/LWrehD 

And my company website: http://www.desailly.com.au 

And please drop me a line to let me know what works well for you!

How to perform better in job interviews: define your competitive advantage

Remember your interview isn’t really about you; it’s about the organisation that is considering employing you. And you are selling yourself to them. So tune into the selection panel’s WII FM: work out from their perspective, if they hire you, “What’s In It For Me!” 

Research the panel members and, of course, the organisation. What particular issues, challenges, opportunities are they facing that you, with your unique set of skills and experience, can take care of for them? This is your USP – your unique selling proposition, and represents the package of benefits you bring to their needs. Other candidates who lean on their individual product features – the general stuff in the resume – will fail to make this important connection to their ‘buyers.’ 

Even if you are not familiar with sales and marketing, you probably know that people do not make wholly rational decisions.  Hiring decisions are based on the hiring managers' feeling of comfort, that this appointment is not going to create trouble for them. So be mindful of subtly reassuring the panel about how you will be able to make your new employer look good, how you will be solve their problems, how you are not going to be a risk to them – backed up with evidence based on your aptitude, skills and experience. 

Check out my interview tips bookmark stack on Delicious: http://www.delicious.com/stacks/view/LWrehD 

And my company website: http://www.desailly.com.au 

And please drop me a line to let me know what works well for you!

How to be noticed for senior management positions in academe

Getting yourself noticed for senior management positions is not only important because you get to practise the skills required to succeed in such positions; if you aren't noticed you are likely to miss out on opportunities. Most people don't notice when these roles are advertised, and some -- especially women -- do not want to put themselves forward. For these reasons, it is vitally important to be noticed as a potential candidate, before your ideal role becomes available. 

Follow the points below and I may tap you on the shoulder about becoming an academic leader.

Be Seen

Create a LinkedIn profile and keep it up to date, it only takes a few minutes each month. If you're worried you will get unwanted approaches, shut them out in your settings. Keep your university staff page up to date and comprehensive. If your institution's systems make updating it too hard, create your own website, or blog. Don’t forget to add the links to your LinkedIn profile.

Be Known, and Well Regarded, as a Deft Administrator

If people notice you managing well, they are more likely to suggest you for a management role. Serving in Deputy or Acting positions is ideal, but these opportunities are few and can be hard to get. Consider other roles that will get your administrative skills noticed and valued by peers, such as editing a journal or becoming involved in a project. Showing your diplomacy, and your competence in getting things done to a level of excellence, not only earns respect from peers but impresses a selection panel.

In an upcoming post I will address the selection criteria used for academic leadership positions, following a research survey I am conducting of the higher education sector in Australia. In the meantime I will speak generally about the skills and experience required.

Acquire Relevant Skills and Experience

The ability to manage financial outcomes is increasingly important and yet many academics fall short in this vital area. Consider managing a conference or other event, and be able to talk about the financial outcomes (did it make money? how did you raise additional funds?). If you don't understand budgets at all, there are plenty of short courses designed for generalists.

Being able to manage change, is another capability of strong contenders for leadership. As change becomes the ‘new normal’ across campuses and disciplines, there are a great many change initiatives you can become actively involved in. Remember to be considered in your approaches and evaluate the impacts of your actions, so you can both articulate how you manage change and become at it. Being able to drive change in an area from the ground up is great for getting involved in your institution, in advocating for changes (both up and down), being good at consultation and building support for initiatives. 

Many successful academics do not want to serve in administration for their academic communities. It is true that management positions on campus today and leave little time for research or teaching; while a good track record in both these areas remain prerequisite to being considered. A desire for academic achievement through others, and through the sometimes exhausting processes of modern universities, is mandatory. And we do need more people willing and ready to step into these positions, with the respect and support of their colleagues, if we are to maintain the strength of our universities through the impending retirement of so many baby boomers currently in these roles. 

How to perform better in job interviews

As part of my comprehensive candidate care, I offer interview preparation, an offer that is usually gratefully accepted. As a result, I help a lot of people prepare for their job interview. It is natural to anyone to be uncomfortable about the prospect of a job interview – even people who are recognised as leaders by their peers and who themselves sit on selection committees. People who think their reputation or their CV will do the work for them in interview can find themselves behaving like a possum in headlights in the interview. 

It is a given that prior to interview, you must research the organisation and position, dress appropriately and make arrangements to arrive punctually. Preparing how you will behave is key to presenting your best in the interview. Many people do not do this, so you may well give yourself a competitive advantage so that you are offered the job over the other candidates. 

How can you afford not to prepare, then?

In coming days I will post some tips that I know will help. 

Is the online education revolution finally coming?

A dozen years ago, many in the Australian tertiary education sector feared that students would be poached by online education providers based in the US.

As the Internet became part of our everyday lives, it threatened to disrupt the education sector, and to take away students and jobs. The federal government commissioned an expert team to investigate the matter, which reported back that the predicted online exodus to the US was unlikely.

A follow up investigation (they really were worried about this) after the tech wreck of 2000, found that while fears of a “tidal wave” were unfounded, competition for students would increase.

And so, everyone settled back down again, technology adoption slowly reached a late majority of the academic population, most of them using it to augment ‘traditional’ forms of conveying knowledge. At the same time, Australians reached the point of owning more than one mobile telephone per head of population.

Now the New York Times reports that traditional educators in the US are being overtaken by online enterprises:

As Wikipedia upended the encyclopedia industry and iTunes changed the music business, these businesses have the potential to change higher education

Why hasn’t this disruptive innovation hit earlier? After all, Australia has a strong history of distance education and a fine, century-old institution like UNE still teaches more than three quarters of students off-campus. Why didn’t this all move online and morph into new models long ago?

The diffusion of innovation relies on people as well as structures. From my own observation working for educational technology firms between the dot.com boom until five years ago – the Internet arrived too late in the careers of academics for many to see any point in changing. Perhaps not recognising the monumental shift about to change everything, or maybe they didn’t want to go out of their comfort zones with retirement so close, the result is an education sector that’s in many ways stuck in the past. That’s not going to be good enough for younger Australians, or their employers for that matter.

What stopped the innovators outside the entrenched system was that the technology was clunky, and broadband expensive and patchy. The price and accessibility of technology slowed adoption by users before it could reach scale. Now the explosion in use of tablets and smart phones is occurring at a time when Australian students will be given more power to drive demand as the federal government seeks to lift the percentage of young adults with a degree from the current rate of 29 per cent to 40 per cent within ten years. Established universities that eschew online education in favour of the on-campus experience are already missing out on the growth that their peers are getting in their online courses. 

What this means is that for institutions to thrive in the emerging new environment, their academic leaders as well as teaching and professional staff will have to be savvy to the opportunities of new technologies and media forms. And this time, they will need to really get their hands dirty, as it were, and use the tools to transform old ways of doing things, in order to remain relevant.

The vexed issue of PhDs and how to select people for academic roles

How we blood people for a career in the academy, the topic of a column in The Oz Higher Ed this week, is Peter van Onselen’s take on the problem of selection for all academic roles, from junior to executive positions. To be considered for any of these, a PhD is required. Yet is the PhD a rite of passage to earned academic glory -- or a perverse incentive? The skills and behaviours required to complete a PhD have little correlation to the skills and behaviours that lead to success in roles other than research. It is time for a rethink about how we recruit and select for academic leadership positions, because many baby boomers will soon retire from those roles and replacements will need to be found.

The blooding theme is a striking description of the PhD experience but Professor van Onselen does not exaggerate. I treated my own PhD as a project and a lesson in how to think deeply and widely at the frontiers of knowledge – and then quickly moved on, but not into academe itself. Working outside the academy provided more opportunities.

Now I work in recruitment for the higher education sector, I see the difficulty my clients have in finding people suitable for senior academic appointments. The difficulty is particularly acute in the professions where PhDs are scarce and traditional academic profiles based on peer-reviewed publications are even scarcer. In architecture, leaders design rather than churn out words. Accountants use numbers to tackle real-time problems. People who lead in the professions have good management skills, skills that would be valuable to the academy. Where to find the leaders who will ensure that universities continue to be the right structures for learning, research and community engagement?

People who could be great for academic leadership roles are often lacking the right skill set, or qualifications. Leading researchers may feel their PhD training has not equipped them for the financial management and other management tasks of a Head of School. Some claim that professional managers should take on these tasks. This does not happen in other sectors; people continue to acquire skills through their careers but may climb the ranks from where they started. Gail Kelly started out as a bank teller and rose to CEO of St George and then Westpac. She understands every aspect of banking including the customer experience. A generalist accountant or lawyer would not have that knowledge. 

Research publications and PhDs are counted in university rankings as well as in appointments and promotions of individuals. That is not going to change, and in the rise of the power of students as consumers, rankings only become more important. We must entice good teachers and researchers to diversify their skills into leadership and management, particularly in the humanities and social sciences. And in fields of professional endeavour, we must make it attractive for people who are mid-career to undertake research, or revive their academic profiles, so they can truly be eligible to lead within the academy.

How to be noticed for senior management positions in academe

Getting yourself noticed for senior management positions is not only important because you get to practise the skills required to succeed in such positions; if you aren't noticed you are likely to miss out on opportunities. Most people don't notice when these roles are advertised, and some -- especially women -- do not want to put themselves forward. For these reasons, it is vitally important to be noticed as a potential candidate, before your ideal role becomes available. 

Follow the points below and I may tap you on the shoulder about becoming an academic leader.

Be Seen

Create a LinkedIn profile and keep it up to date, it only takes a few minutes each month. If you're worried you will get unwanted approaches, shut them out in your settings. Keep your university staff page up to date and comprehensive. If your institution's systems make updating it too hard, create your own website, or blog. Don’t forget to add the links to your LinkedIn profile.

Be Known as a Deft Administrator

If people notice you managing well, they are more likely to suggest you for a management role. Serving in Deputy or Acting positions is ideal, but these opportunities are few and can be hard to get. Consider other roles that will get your administrative skills noticed and valued by peers, such as editing a journal or becoming involved in a project. Showing your diplomacy, and your competence in getting things done to a level of excellence, not only earns respect from peers but impresses a selection panel.

In an upcoming post I will address the selection criteria used for academic leadership positions, following a research survey I am conducting of the higher education sector in Australia. In the meantime I will speak generally about the skills and experience required.

Acquire Relevant Skills and Experience

The ability to manage financial outcomes is increasingly important and yet many academics fall short in this vital area. Consider managing a conference or other event, and be able to talk about the financial outcomes (did it make money? how did you raise additional funds?). If you don't understand budgets at all, there are plenty of short courses designed for generalists.

Being able to manage change, is another capability of strong contenders for leadership. As change becomes the ‘new normal’ across campuses and disciplines, there are many change initiatives you can become actively involved in. Remember to be considered in your approaches and evaluate the impacts of your actions, so you can both articulate how you manage change and become better at it. Being able to drive change from the ground up is great for getting involved in your institution, in advocating for changes (both up and down), becoming good at consultation and building support for initiatives. 

Many successful academics do not want to serve in administration for their academic communities. It is true that management positions on campus today leave little time for research or teaching; while a good track record in both these areas remain prerequisite to being eligible. A desire for academic achievement through others, and through the sometimes exhausting processes of modern universities, is mandatory. And we do need more people willing and ready to step into these positions, with the respect and support of their colleagues, if we are to maintain the strength of our universities through the impending retirement of so many baby boomers currently in these roles. 

Why many academic job applications would be graded “F”

As a recruiter, I see too many poor quality applications for senior academic roles. These applications are written by intelligent people. Yet if the applicants were to mark their own applications as student assignments, they would have to fail them.

Here are three of the most common errors that would make a first year blush:

Not answering the question

In the case of a job application, this means addressing the selection criteria – both explicitly in a separate statement, and by tailoring your resume. Make sure your resume contains evidence for all the selection criteria, including outcomes of your achievements.

If you can’t find quantifiable evidence of your skills and knowledge against each and every selection criterion, then you probably don’t meet the job requirements. Reconsider whether you should submit at all, or instead turn the exercise into a gap analysis and work on an action plan to gain the skills or knowledge that you currently lack, for better success in future.

Poor presentation

Some applications seem to be the result of somnambulist writing. Rambling on, throwing in everything that the applicant has ever thought or done, in the hope that some of it will hit bullseye with the reader.  Remember the readers are looking for evidence against the selection criteria, and then they want to move on to the next stage in the process. Help them by putting forward your evidence, and not wasting their time by making them wade through 30 pages. And don’t forget basics like page numbering and consistent fonts.

Poor presentation includes sending your resume as a file called “My resume”. Name your file with the position number, or name, and your last name.

Late submissions

This one’s a doozy. Positions are generally open for applications for many weeks, sometimes months. If an applicant can’t get their application in on time, how does that look to the selection panel? And if there has been a search for the position and you haven’t been tapped by the headhunter, maybe you need to improve your profile (I’ll address how to do this in a follow up post).

Academics: next time you are preparing a job application, mentally get out your red pen and mark it like it’s a student’s assignment. Or I can help you – send it to me at rdesailly@gmail.com for an objective review.

How to find candidates for academic leadership roles

The higher education sector is approaching a capability crisis with many leaders facing retirement. Given the situation, finding good candidates for leadership roles is critical for ensuring continuity during this transition process. So what is working?

This week, my client is interviewing candidates, that I found for them, for two Head of School positions. To be successful, people in these positions spend 25% of their time on research and the rest on academic leadership, including hands-on management from strategic planning through operations. What I’ve discovered is that not many academics want such a role, and even fewer actually have what it takes for their School to succeed under their direction.

Of all the short listed candidates on campus this week, only one responded to an advertisement for the position. Advertising was part of the blended marketing campaign, including listings on major academic job sites in Australia, the UK and North America.

Why didn’t the advertising work? People who are best suited to a leadership position are too busy being successful in their current role and research to notice job ads.

All the other high quality candidates came directly either identified through my research, or my contacts, or referred to me via a ripple effect generated by my online communications campaign, the message travelling via social networks.

Read my next post for insights on how to make sure you are recommended by your colleagues in an active search for leadership positions in your field.

Two smart strategies Australia’s proposed new university will use to secure a future academic workforce

Laureate International Universities has applied to open the nation’s fifth private university (as reported in last week's Campus Review).


If approved by the South Australian State Government, the new enterprise will bear the grand title The International University of Australia. The Public Consultation Document is published here.


Australian universities generally are not planning how to retain what Laureate admits is every University's "key asset", its workforce; despite increasing challenges to attract and retain the people they require. Not so at The International University of Australia. Part of its proposed model is to attract PhD students by employing them as academics, noting that the Australian Postgraduate Award provides a stipend that is too low to attract people in professions who can make more money outside of academe. This is a canny way to also secure an on site workforce in fields -- hospitality, adult education, design and business management education -- where it is complex and difficult to manage an army of part time and contract teaching staff. Having teaching staff on site while they also do their research will inevitably lead to more contact with students. It also plans to establish a systematic mentoring process for junior staff. Both these strategies should help create a pipeline of talent in a challenging geographical market (Adelaide) and in a higher education sector that is about to wave bye-bye to a swathe of staff approaching retirement.


The Laureate group can also offer career pathways – opportunities to develop while also providing the lifestyle benefits of travel and living in new countries – that should also help attract and retain a bright young workforce. Other Australian institutions may not be able to provide their staff with the global reach of Laureate, but being smarter about how to attract and retain staff earlier in their careers – there is not much evidence of this going on.


In the short term, Laureate will be looking to appoint new research-focused staff in design, hospitality and global business, who have track records in winning grants. If you are an institution with people like these on staff, I recommend you look at how you might need to retain them. If that’s you, and you’d like some advice on your CV presentation, feel free to get in touch with me.