How to gear up your career in the new year

A new year gives the opportunity to reflect on where we want to be and set strategies for achieving our potential.    The following tips don't take much time and will give high returns in putting you in control of your career and opening greater opportunities. 


Check your public profile
Google yourself. What comes up? Do the search results capture your achievements so that a search specialist, like me, will be able to find you for a position that matches your capabilities? If they do, well done and go to my next tip.


If your public profile does not showcase your potential, here's what to do. 


1. Create a profile. 
This should be on your staff page if you are at a university or college, or in an online community relevant to your specialisation, such as the following networks: 
http://academia.edu/
http://www.researchgate.net/

Also create a profile on LinkedIn 


Already have these profiles? Update them. 


My next post will cover more items for your career management new year's check up.

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.

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.

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.