How to get an academic job

How to get an academic job

It can be difficult to get higher education jobs as a graduate and newly qualified academic, so here you will get 3 effective tips on how to get a job as a recent graduate.

1. What can your education be used for?

Where academic concepts, theories and methods have been your everyday life for many years, you now have to communicate with the HR department, which, all things being equal, does not value your grades as much, but to a much greater extent looks at who you are as a person (your personal qualities) and how your academic skills can be used in your new workplace.

You must therefore ensure that you make it easy for the recruiter to understand who you are and what you can contribute to the company or organisation.

Skip the most obvious points, for example that you have a good understanding of numbers if you have a master's degree in economics and instead, write what skills you have in relation to the job itself. What niche within finance that you would be particularly good at working with?

You can count on the fact that everything that is obvious to you is not necessarily so to the HR employee.

By clarifying your academic qualifications, you also offer clarity for all and make sure you appeal to the widest audience. Terms tend to change and you don't know who will read your application. It may be that you use some technical terms and abbreviations which are completely natural to you, but cannot be immediately understood by readers of your application.

2. Your application is not a thesis

In continuation of the first point, it may seem obvious, but unfortunately many new graduates fall into the trap anyway and they write too academically when applying for a job.

Try to think of Ludvig Holberg's play: "Erasmus Montanus". He had studied Latin, and was somewhat learned, but when he came home to the nursery, no one understood what Erasmus said.

Although the play was written as a comedy in the mid 1700s, it also describes your challenge as a graduated academic.

You must not talk over the head of the HR employee because if you can't communicate with an HR employee, you probably can't communicate with the "rest" of the company or organisation either.

How you then use your academic terminology and ability to communicate clearly and precisely in the job itself, is a completely different matter, on the condition that it is required by the job. For example, if you have to communicate with professional investors, the public, the EU etc.

3. Put your academic x-ray vision on the shelf

You can laugh or cry, but the fact is that both politicians and journalists like to have one particular angle when talking about newly graduated academics. If you can't find a job, you're lazy!

The narrative is reinforced by low unemployment.

But if you take a helicopter perspective on your job search as a recent graduate, what can you do to get an academic position faster?

Applying for one job at a time, then hoping you get the job of your dreams can have major consequences for the speed with which you get your first job after your master's degree.

How wide is your job search? Have you searched in different sectors? It does not have to be only in the private or public sector that you are looking for a job.

If you ask your parents and their circle of friends about their career path, you will quickly realise that far from all career paths are winding. And with this in mind, you can also easily apply for a position that may not be your dream job, but is a good step on the way to the ultimate dream job for you.

Also consider the point that your dream job today will not necessarily be your dream job in ten years time. Both you and your surroundings change over time.

Job search for academics

Should you still find yourself in the situation that it has become a desert walk doing job searches and no job interviews are within reach, what do you do then?

As a graduated academic, you can get professional reviews via your trade union, both in relation to the application process and the way in which you write your applications and your CV.

In continuation of the last point that a career path can be tortuous, an example can be mentioned that a newly graduated academic in humanities had difficulty finding a job. In order not to be an attractive candidate, the academic graduate chose to contact a baker to offer her labour, completely unsolicited.

The baker had not in his wildest imagination thought that he would ever hire an academic employee. But he did. And he got the help of an expert to get an x-ray look at his business.

The academic didn't know everything about running a business, or about strategies, but she had her academic background to conduct qualitative interviews with customers, and from there create a plan and optimise processes.

After a few months the baker had a significantly better turnover and the academic had obtained a perfect reference and documented that as an academic you can think outside the box and create success, regardless of the context in which you work.

Try to reflect on this method

• Why did the academic do what she did to achieve her long term goal of a job as an academic employee?
• What did the academic do to convince the baker of something so "crazy" as hiring an academic as a project worker?
• How far are you prepared to go to get an academic job in relation to working hours and transport times?

After your reflections, you can use your social network to hear if someone needs a completely new approach to their business.

If you would like to apply for an academic job that is already online, you can do so via this button: