The Early Career Blog

Dr Steve Joy [An edited version of this article was also posted on the Guardian Higher Education Network .] A couple of years ago, I proposed ten irritating mistakes in academic CVs and ten suggestions for writing good cover letters . I think that those tips are still relevant today, but in the intervening years, I have noticed a pattern. Applicants get so wrapped up in worrying about how to present themselves that they stop seeing the wood for trees, and they fail to see what their behaviour implicitly communicates about them to the panel. Here, then, are five examples of such behaviours and why you should guard against them. 1. Inattentive You absolutely must pay careful attention to the details of your job applications, and this includes the formatting. One bizarre manifestation of inattentiveness that I keep seeing is the use, in the same application, of different formats for different documents, e.g. pairing a cover letter in boring old Times New Roman pt 12 and a CV p

Dr Steve Joy It’s said that, across the whole world of work, interview panels are only ever asking three questions: 1) Can you do this job? 2) Will you do this job? 3) Do you fit the culture of our organisation? There’s a lot of truth in this saying. What it means is that, in effect, the candidate’s task is to decode the phrasing of the interview questions in order to figure out what’s really being asked – whether you have the skills, the motivation, or the right cultural ‘fit’. It’s a powerful tactic. You can easily translate these principles to the specific case of academic interviews. Are you a good researcher? Are you a good teacher? Will you do your fair share of the administrative tasks required of academics? Are you au courant with what’s happening more broadly in higher education? It’s logical, and fairly straightforward. Where, then, do people go wrong? Personally, I see two main ways. First, you forget to contextualise . Look again at those questions. They aren’t askin