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.