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.