There is no shortage of candidates looking for postdoc positions and of professors looking for postdocs. And yet, it is somewhat difficult for the right candidate to find the right university and vice versa. Part of the reason for this discrepancy is that many professors still rely too heavily on their network instead of adopting more modern recruitment marketing strategies.
Here are four reasons why you shouldn’t just rely on your network to find postdocs.
The single most important factor when trying to fill open positions is ensuring candidates know about them. When you rely on word of mouth marketing, you are likely missing out on excellent candidates, simply because they aren’t aware of the vacancy. This can happen for a number of reasons.
First, you might not know which of your connections are open to opportunities. Therefore, you might neglect to pass an advert on to someone who would be interested in the position and would apply if they came across the ad themselves.
Second, you simply might not have a large network yet. For example, you might be a new PI or new to your field of research. Because your network is limited, your reach for potential job applicants will be limited.
Lastly, you are still tied to other people driving your marketing strategy. Others simply might not share opportunities.
In an article about word of mouth marketing for business, Nathan Vogele writes, “… you can only serve people who know and hear from people who have already discovered your business…if you are relying on this alone, you limit the amount of business you are doing.” This is just as true for universities and professors. Word of mouth relies solely on the networks of researchers and academics. These networks can vary in size and vastly limit your potential reach.
When you rely on your network to help you find potential employees, you are relying on other people to do the important work of defining who you are and articulating your needs. This is a passive approach to recruitment and may work in some cases, but may not work in others.
In some cases, people in your network will not actively promote your position or your work to their colleagues. Researchers, professors, postdocs, and other university employees are incredibly busy. When you’re working grueling hours, word of mouth marketing is not generally a priority.
In other cases, even if people are talking about your university and your research, they may not have all their facts correct. Carrie Dagenhard, a content strategist in the private sector writes, “Word-of-mouth marketing can trigger a release of inaccurate information that’s misleading at best and reputation-damaging at worst.”
When you rely on word of mouth marketing, you are not in control of your own narrative. While this could prove to offer a genuine and unbiased look at your research group, it could backfire.
It’s natural to form networks with people who are demographically similar to us. We all tend to gravitate towards those who are like us. However, this inherently limits your network and neglects all the rich benefits of a more diverse network.
Rahdiah Barnes, President of the National Association for Multi-Ethnicity in Communications (NAMIC) in New York notes, “One of the most important things you should do for yourself personally and professionally is to have a diverse network, a robust network that’s full of different people with various backgrounds at varying levels with assorted life and career experiences.”
If you want to get applications from underrepresented groups, you need to be sure those people are in your network. Too often, they are not.
Additionally, members of underrepresented groups in academia often don’t have as wide of networks. This means your word of mouth marketing will not reach a diverse group of applicants.
This is not only true for underrepresented groups but also international candidates. Our networks tend to be local and geographically limited. This means the vast pool of talented international candidates could miss out on your open positions.
Even if your word of mouth marketing helps you fill an open position, there is always the risk that the placement might not work out. If the person referred doesn’t live up to expectations, you could potentially damage important relationships within your network.
Word of mouth marketing can be effective when used in conjunction with other marketing strategies. But relying on others to spread the word about your university will not only limit your talent pool, it will deny you potentially exceptional candidates who would be a great fit, if only they knew about you and your work.
Whether you’re looking to buy a new couch, for a place to stay on your next vacation, or for a new and challenging job opportunity, the first thing you’ll do is head to Google.
Consumers are used to having access to any and all information. They want information from a variety of sources—direct from companies, unbiased testimonials, and other news about the product or service.
Job seekers are no different. The more information they can find, the better. When active job seekers find open positions, one of the first things they’ll do is Google you.
You want to be sure the information on your website is current and reflects your most compelling work. Spending time on this type of recruitment marketing may feel unnecessary or secondary to continuing important research. However, without a talented team of academics, your research (and reputation) will suffer. The best way to attract top talent? A thoughtful approach to recruitment.
Potential job candidates will likely visit your website for three reasons:
In each of these cases, candidates already have a basic awareness of you and your work. When they visit your website, they’re looking to deepen their knowledge and decide if your lab could be a good place for them to take the next step in their career. If the first thing they see on your site is outdated information, it might also be the last thing they see. Why should they bother reading more when the information might no longer be accurate?
Website visitors form their opinions about a website in less than one second. Mike McDermott, President of the digital marketing firm Bash Foo, writes, “50 milliseconds is all you have to convince visitors to stay on and explore your website.” If the first thing they see is announcements from several years prior, job seekers will assume everything on your site is out of date—including current vacancies.
Keeping your website up to date will also help more potential job seekers find you by improving your search engine optimization (SEO). SEO is the process of improving how your website ranks in the list of search engine results in order to bring you more traffic. There are a lot of things Google takes into account when ranking search results, but one of them is how often the site is updated.
Statics sites run the risk of being deemed “dead” or “inactive” by search engines. With millions of websites, why feature an outdated or inactive website on the first or second page of search results? If you regularly update your lab website, not only will you leave users with a good impression, you’ll also improve your rankings in search engines, making your group more visible to potential new members.
In addition to a clean interface and intuitive design, your website should include as much relevant and engaging information as possible. At a baseline, this should include the group’s publications, current group members, and any vacancies you have. It is very important that these three sections are always kept up to date so that potential job seekers can easily find your latest research, see who’s in your group, and know if you’re currently hiring.
In addition to current lab members, you should also include a section of lab alumni and a brief note about what they went on to do after leaving your lab. Potential PhD and postdoc applicants are very interested in their potential supervisor’s placement record. Providing this information is a way to demonstrate your mentorship skills and helps potential applicants understand if your group will put them on track to achieve their career goals.
You should also look for vibrant, compelling pictures to add to your website. Make sure that there’s a picture of each current lab member, as well as other group pictures from around the lab, conferences, or lab social events. You can even include pictures of the campus to give potential applicants the full picture of what it’s like to work in your lab. In addition to helping people see themselves in your group, having quality pictures also help improve your search engine ranking.
Ensure your website is comprehensive with plenty of links to useful university resources. This can include links to your social media channels, resources for international students, or links to information about your location.
By investing in your lab website and keeping it up-to-date, you make it easier for candidates to learn about your work and resources. The more excited and engaged candidates become, the more likely they’ll submit a quality application.
Now go update your website!
Stellenbosch University in South Africa is climbing the rankings to cement its reputation as a world-class institution. The university is committed to meeting the needs of Africa’s growing population and attracting diverse staff and faculty. We spoke to Johan Loubser, Head of Personnel Provision and Planning, to learn about some of the strategies they are using and how they are changing the national perception of the university.
One of your core strategic themes is to be an employer of choice. Can you tell us about what that means at Stellenbosch?
Our vision is to be Africa’s leading research-intensive university. In order for us to achieve our vision, it is important that we can attract outstanding students and employ talented staff and researchers. One of our focus areas for the next five years is to become an employer of choice and to do that we have to support the health and wellbeing of our people. We’re working on our talent acquisition and talent management plan, but also on encouraging life-long learning and creating an inclusive campus culture so our employees can maximize their potential.
How do you gauge your progress towards these goals? Are there KPIs that you monitor?
When it comes to ensuring equity and promotion, we monitor the share of our permanent staff who are from the designated groups, as well as the share of doctorate-holders from designated groups who are in permanent academic positions. Year over year we continue to increase in these areas. We also look at the percentage of our staff that participate in training and development programs each year because we want to be an organization that encourages staff development and responds to individual needs. Since we want to encourage staff wellbeing, we conduct staff surveys about wellbeing and work culture to identify areas for improvement and monitor how many staff members use our employee services.
When you go about recruiting international staff, what is your process for that?
First of all, when it comes to recruitment, there is a huge difference between recruiting for administrative positions and more strategic, academic positions. And then, of course, there’s another component for our recruitment locally in South Africa, which is the diversity targets that we have to adhere to. These targets are about race and gender and we have to comply with the targets that the government set up for us. So our talent acquisition on the higher level is more focused on the national side of things and getting the right local people in.
When we go international, for talent that is not in South Africa, it is when we can not source someone from here. Then we rely on job boards and websites such as Academic Positions. We’ve also got an external company that handles strategic recruitment for us. They will map the market and provide us with a list of names. We do this for senior positions, like associate or full professors, as well as Deans, Vice Deans, rectorate positions, and Deputy Vice Chancellor positions.
Can you talk a little bit about some of the strategies that you use to attract diverse staff and faculty?
If you look at the legacy of our university, there was very little diversity in the higher level positions while the lower level positions were held by a very diverse spectrum of people. So, for now, we have to concentrate on diversifying the higher level positions. We’ve set targets and the Deans must provide us with personnel plans which will include specific diversity figures. Performance can be measured against what is achieved in terms of diversity. It is a topic that is very high up in all of our agendas. We have a medium term, five year plan with regard to diversity targets.
It is not always easy to find the right talent, especially within South Africa where we have to compete with the corporate environment within a diversified economy of a developing country with an abundance of goods and natural resources and being recognised as one of the largest industrialized countries in Africa. We are in a situation where we really have to concentrate on finding those diamonds to attract them to our university, and that’s where we have to sell Stellenbosch and the culture of the university. We have to concentrate on the inclusive culture we have at the university now and how things have changed since 1994, because there are still perceptions out there. There is still a perception that this is not a multi-lingual university which means that some people can be excluded, which is not the case.
Language is actually a big focus area for us. We are currently revising our language policy which dates back to 2016. This policy covers everything: internal communication within the university, communication outside the university, the language of teaching, running parallel classes in different languages etc. Within the Western Cape, where we are situated, the three languages that are prominent here are English, Afrikaans and isiXhosa. Those are the languages we focus on, but in total we’ve got 11 official languages in South Africa and we try to cater to all of them. English and Afrikaans are our languages of learning and teaching, while we contribute to the advancement of isiXhosa as an academic language, and also continue to expand it as an internal language of communication.
There are thousands of universities across the globe that thrive on passionate employees.
But as the number of universities continues to grow, it’s more important than ever to approach hiring thoughtfully and strategically. Nowadays, candidates are oftentimes willing to live and work abroad, and many research institutions across the globe are committed to hiring internationally. The competition for top talent is fierce.
Thanks to the popularity of social media and access to more and better digital tools, potential academic job applicants have begun to behave more like customers shopping for the best products. They have access to information about any institution—big or small—in any country. They can research practicalities like the facilities at each university as well as quality of life factors that were previously difficult to find. Consequently, it is now the candidates who pick the university as their employer.
As such, universities need to adopt new ways of searching for top talent. In order to find and attract the best researchers and academics, universities need to use many of the same tactics as businesses. This purposeful approach to recruitment is known as recruitment marketing.
Recruitment marketing goes beyond crafting a well written advert and posting it on a job board. It requires planning and an understanding of the changing landscape of human resources. The growth of the internet, social media, and digital tools has shifted the amount of information available to job candidates. They expect more and better information in order to make informed decisions about potential employers.
Recruitment marketing is the process of providing that information in the form of comprehensive landing pages, SEO optimized content, and frequent and relevant social media posts. Together, this content helps universities build greater brand awareness.
Why do recruitment marketing?
Competition for top talent is fierce among universities. As the number of institutions continues to grow, it gets harder to stand out and get on the radar of potential applicants. However, in order to fill open positions, it’s essential for job seekers to know that your institution exists and that you are hiring. This can be especially challenging for smaller schools that aren’t top ranked, as they lack the name-recognition to catch a candidate’s eye. This is one reason why recruitment marketing is imperative.
Recruitment marketing applies a funnel approach to hiring. At the top, there is the need to create awareness that your university exists. Beyond simple name recognition, universities need to move potential applicants further down the funnel by making information about your programs, facilities, and people widely available. This could be anything from looking up more about who you are and what you do, to setting up news alerts regarding your university. As they begin to become familiar with your institution and its value, potential candidates will then start to consider it as a potential employer.
Once potential candidates understand who you are and what you can offer, your focus should be to drive interest in applying to an open position. Each step of recruitment marketing builds on the previous one to ultimately lead candidates through the application process. If a candidate is already somewhat invested in your school or believes it to be a great match for them, there is a good chance they’ll continue with the long and sometimes tedious application process.
It is a fallacy to believe that candidates will apply to your open position just because you’re hiring. They often need to be convinced to apply. Recruitment marketing helps you do this because it allows you to show candidates what makes your institution an attractive employer. Through regular, proactive content creation and social media posts, you’ll generate curiosity and interest as an employer. If people can see the kind of innovative research being conducted at your school, or the benefits of working there, they’ll be more interested in applying.
Importantly, recruitment marketing helps you create a candidate pipeline. This means not only striving to reach active job seekers but also passive ones. Strong recruitment marketing allows your university to get on the radar of candidates who might not yet be ready to apply or might not be a match for any of your current open positions. It keeps academics interested in your brand, not just your available jobs. These pipeline candidates will be some of your strongest applicants because they will already be excited by your university. By showcasing your groundbreaking research, facilities, or staff, you can catch their attention and prime them, so that when you do post a relevant vacancy they’re already convinced you’re the institution for them and are eager to apply.
The goal of recruitment marketing shouldn’t just be about creating awareness of your institution. Ultimately, it needs to push candidates away from simply recognizing your school to being motivated to apply and join your community. If you’ve done some marketing work in advance, this leap from knowing who you are to actively trying to land a job, is not far.
Taking this long and thoughtful approach to marketing makes sense for a variety of reasons. First, it helps you create awareness of your university and employer brand. Second, it allows you to recruit more and better applicants for open positions, as well as create a pipeline of interest among passive job seekers. Third, it increases your chances of getting the right candidates to choose you.
Recruitment marketing is not some kind of magic formula but it is a start to finding the best candidates to fill your open positions. It cannot suddenly change the reputation you’ve built or your location but can control how you promote your university. It allows you to control your narrative and how you interact with potential candidates. In short, it puts your university in the best position to attract top talent from around the world.
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SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research is a space science research institute that develops pioneering technology and advanced space instruments to pursue fundamental astrophysical research, Earth science and exoplanetary research.
SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research is a prestigious space science research organization known for its innovative technology and advanced space instruments. The institute conducts fundamental research in astrophysics, Earth sciences, and exoplanetary studies, advising the Dutch government and coordinating national contributions to international space missions.
Promote SRON as an attractive workplace for international instrument scientists and engineers, with a special focus on women.
Utilize a targeted and efficient strategic storytelling marketing campaign to maximize visibility and awareness of SRON.
Evaluate Academic Positions as a recruitment marketing partner.
An ambassador story was crafted to appeal to instrument scientists by highlighting the institution’s mission and featuring Lorena Ferrari, an instrument scientist at SRON. The story emphasized what drew Lorena to SRON, her role, and the unique features that make SRON an appealing employer.
Lorenza Ferrari is an instrument scientist at the Netherlands Institute for Space Research (SRON) and a project leader for the PLATO AIT phase.
Detailed audience planning and segmentation focusing on international instrument scientists and engineers, with particular attention to women.
International promotion strategy leveraging the Academic Positions Network and various social media channels to ensure widespread visibility.
Close monitoring of campaign metrics and engagement levels led to continuous refinement of the approach, improving performance over time.
views of the campaign
story readers
female candidates
Unlock the potential of your academic institution to attract and retain the finest minds in academia. Begin the transformation of your faculty and research teams, and pave the way for pioneering discoveries and learning.
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Regionally anchored in Southern Norway, which is famous for its astonishing natural surroundings, the University of Agder (UiA) offers a wide range of studies across six faculties. We spoke to Richard Lislevand, Recruitment Team Manager, and Malin Hauge, senior HR advisor, of UiA to learn more about how they’ve partnered with their municipality to help relocate and onboard international staff.
How do you help international staff relocate to Norway?
MH: For almost two years now, we have actually had a relocation service helping us with hiring international candidates, from the start of the recruiting process until they are here in Norway. They help with all the practical matters, like visas, bank accounts, tax cards, housing, drivers licences, and even applying for kindergartens and finding a job for your partner. They’re really, really good. It’s a service from the municipality’s business department, called Relocation Region Kristiansand. We approached the municipality with the idea in 2018 and now we are one of 10 partners, both private and public, helping strengthen international recruitment in the region.
How has your international academic recruitment changed during the pandemic?
RL: Recruitment itself has not been the main challenge. When it comes to conducting interviews, doing the reference checks and these things, we have managed in a good way. The volume of video interviews increased certainly. The main challenge has been to get foreigners into Norway to start their employment and set a starting date. All the restrictions regarding travel have been challenging for us. Over the last 12 to 15 months, there’s been variation when it comes to closed borders or open borders. Because it’s unpredictable, it’s been very hard to plan. You just have to react to the situation. But we have been able to bring people into Norway in some small, narrow windows.
Can you tell us a little bit about digital onboarding and what that’s been like?
RL: We have been working over a year or so to digitalize the onboarding process. We are soon launching a digital checklist which is generated automatically for managers of new employees, the new employee, and their HR advisor. Using the checklist, everyone can see what has to be done and at what time in the process. The checklist covers the pre boarding before you start until roughly about 12 months after your starting date. So we have built a system where employees automatically get reminders about the steps to follow up on with the new employed person.
It wasn’t the pandemic that made us think to do this. It has been a subject that we have been thinking a lot over a long time. It’s important to do a good onboarding process and we take it quite seriously, because it creates loyalty to your new working place. If you do it badly, the new employee could be gone in one to three years. So it’s vital, if we want to keep the person we are hiring for a longer period, to have a welcome process that gives the new employees the information they need to do the job. And also do the things that our relocation partner is helping us with, to help the whole family settle into Kristiansand and Norway. It goes extra for foreigners, but good onboarding is also vital for Norwegians.
Do you do any kind of social onboarding?
MH: Absolutely. So there are the very practical onboarding things to fix at and then there’s the social part of the onboarding, which I’m responsible for. This includes events, cultural courses, and networking meetings, which we used to have a few times a semester. We have a monthly international networking event called Secrets of Kristiansand. It’s a collaboration between the university, local chamber of commerce, and Business Region Kristiansand that gives international newcomers a chance to establish connections in their new city.
While there have been no physical events this last year, we have organized many digital events to provide social meeting points. Additionally we have also organized colleague nature walks for Norwegian and internationals. They’re popular! It’s mostly international staff who’ve signed up for them but there have been Norwegians too. We try to match people up so that those with families can meet other families. Or PhD students can meet postdocs. Everyone has enjoyed getting to meet their colleagues and see more of the area.
Balance of the Microverse is a Cluster of Excellence at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena. It is funded by the German Research Foundation under Germany’s Excellence Strategy and consists of eight participating non-university research institutes, including the Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology – Hans Knöll Institute (Leibniz-HKI). We spoke to Dr. Angela Köhler, the scientific manager of the cluster to learn more about their approach to recruitment.
Can you tell us a little bit about your role as the scientific manager of this Cluster of Excellence and as part of the research coordination team at the Leibniz-HKI?
I am employed by the university and have my workplace at the Leibniz-HKI. This reflects the core idea of our cluster, where the university and non-university institutes bundle their expertise and collaborate closely. I moved to Jena about four and a half years ago when the university was preparing an application for a Cluster of Excellence. They were developing the research plan so it was an exciting time. I came into a team of highly motivated scientists from different disciplines: microbiology, chemical biology, medicine, ecology, optics, photonics, material science, and bioinformatics. We were successful and got awarded this Cluster of Excellence.
As a central contact point for all cluster members and member institutes, I have a diverse range of tasks from organising scientific events to supporting the researchers with grant applications. I also deal with budget planning and reporting to the funding agencies and am highly involved in organizing the recruitments of researchers for our cluster, from doctoral researchers all the way to professorships. I really enjoy my work in research coordination because I can support the researchers and I have the chance to bring in my ideas to further develop this research network.
What is your approach for finding excellent early career researchers?
We advertise internationally, which is very important for us because we’re always aiming to increase our proportion of international researchers. In our cluster, 38% of the participating scientists are international, including 52% of our postdocs and doctoral researchers. Of course, we also recruit at the national level and support local talents, but internationalization is important for us. We generally spread the job announcements via our websites, on job portals such as Academic Positions, scientific associations, and social media channels. When it comes to the advanced group leader positions, we do headhunting as well. It has also been quite successful for us to contact candidates directly to make them aware of Jena as a research location and of our open positions.
With regards to the early career researchers, we are building upon the established recruitment process of the Jena School for Microbial Communication, a graduate school that was initiated under Germany’s Excellence Initiative. For example, we write out a couple of PhD and postdoc positions in a joint recruitment call to increase the visibility by offering multiple positions in a thematic area. We then have a multistep-recruitment process, including telephone interviews and recruitment meetings where the candidates and cluster members get to know each other in Jena. This of course now had to be converted to online meetings due to the corona pandemic. The recruitment decision is always made by the team and the doctoral researchers are supported by both their supervisors and an interdisciplinary committee throughout their thesis work.
How does hiring fantastic early career researchers support the overall goal of your Cluster of Excellence?
It’s extremely important because as with all top level research, you need the best minds. You want to recruit the most qualified, talented, and highly motivated researchers. That’s so important for the success of these research networks. You need excellence at all levels, starting with graduate students all the way to the group leaders. Close collaborations and networking are very important in our cluster, so getting to know each other during the recruitment process is very important for us.
What kinds of support services do you offer international researchers joining the cluster?
The University of Jena has a Welcome Point, and the city of Jena offers a Welcome Service to help integrate international professionals. The research coordination team at the Leibniz-HKI, the cluster, and the graduate school support the international researchers with visa applications, advice on finding housing, opening a bank account and so on. When you don’t speak German things can be difficult in the beginning, so this support is generally appreciated. In addition, the university has guest apartments, giving the researchers time to find housing after their arrival in Jena. It’s important to offer these services to make it easier for them to move, especially when they’re moving continents. There are also offers for German language courses available.
It’s important to give candidates an opportunity during the recruitment process to come and visit Jena and the laboratories and meet the research groups. This first personal impression is important for them and for us. It helps the candidates decide if this is the right location for them, but also helps our research groups to get a better impression of how the candidate would fit in with the team.
How have you adjusted your process during the pandemic when campus visits aren’t possible?
Recruitment is still ongoing. In terms of numbers of applications, we haven’t really seen a decline. We have had to move our recruitment meetings online and the applicants can still give scientific presentations and we do the interviews. When it comes to actually moving here, there have been some delays with people who would need to relocate to Germany. The pandemic is affecting all of us, but we keep going. Even though it is not the same as direct personal contact, online meetings offer the opportunity to arrange meetings very quickly and they save travel costs and preparation time. As a scientific coordinator, I also see my task in helping to overcome the limitations through optimism and good spirits. After all, our research topic also aims to provide novel solutions to better manage diseases and environmental disbalance in the future.
Header image: Foto Krumnow
Academic recruitment has become more complex and competitive, which has made it more difficult for universities to fill their vacancies. The applicant pool is the foundation of your hiring process, so how do you make sure the candidates you want end up in yours?
When you have to fill a vacancy, your first priority is probably to ensure that a large number of academics see your advert and are motivated to apply. If your university is looking for a new professor, for example, you might make some quick edits to the advert you used that last time you hired and share it as widely as possible. While this might get you applications, they might not be from candidates you’re interested in. In order to attract your target candidates, your advert needs to be tailored to them. So, if you’re not getting applications from the type of candidates you’re looking for, it might be time to ask yourself how well you really know your target candidates and what they look for in a job.
Whenever you sit down to write anything, the first question you need to ask yourself is, “Who am I writing for? Who is my audience?” The same applies to writing job adverts and recruitment marketing content. In order to create the most suitable job adverts, you need to know who those candidates are.
Do you know, for example, what motivates them? Sure, they want a job, but what pushes them to do their best work? What kinds of opportunities excite them? Would they be enjoy being one of a handful of basic scientists in a department of clinicians? Would they thrive in a small department at an institution focused on undergraduate teaching? Would they want to play a crucial role in developing a new flagship research centre?
You should also think about the factors that might influence their decision making. Are they going to be looking for a high salary and big start up package? Do they want to live closer to friends and family? Do they want to work alongside world leaders in the field? Demographic factors are also important factors to consider when looking at decision making. Might your target candidates value your institution’s family friendliness and flexible working hours? Are they looking for an institution where they will have peers that look like them?
When you go about answering these questions regarding your target candidates’ preferences and values, your answers need to be based on data and facts, not merely your own impressions. This becomes especially important when you aim to target diverse candidates, as many institutions do. Simply assuming you know what a specific kind of person might value in an employer is a grave mistake. It is therefore vital to seek out reliable sources to base your insights on. Your recruitment partner or applicant tracking system is a great place to start. Through this data you can gain objective, valuable insights into who actually visits your adverts.
And, why not also talk directly to the people who actually made it all the way through your university’s recruitment process? Surveying your colleagues (especially your recently-hired colleagues) will give you valuable insights about their motivations and preferences. You might also ask them about their time as a job seeker. Where did they hear about your university or find your vacancy? What motivated them to apply? Why did they choose your institution over other offers?
Your university probably already uses candidate insights to attract students for their undergraduate programs. In the private sector, hiring teams oftentimes take these insights a step further and create entire candidate personas, fictional characters that embody their targets’ characteristics. They use these to create highly targeted job ads that attract job seekers who will thrive in their company.
Gathering these candidate insights shouldn’t be a one-time activity. You should make it a habit to frequently reevaluate and update your candidate insights. Bear in mind that society is constantly evolving, and so will candidates’ priorities. The pandemic, for example, has made many employees question what they’re looking for in their careers.
Candidates are not one-size-fits-all. A certain type of content or communication that motivates one candidate may do nothing to pique the interest of another. During any recruitment process, you should always have in mind what kind of candidate you are trying to attract and ultimately hire. The more you know about the candidates you’re targeting, the easier it will be for you to create content that speaks to them. Candidate insights will also help you to choose the right recruitment partners for your university, as well as the right social media strategy. Your target candidates will feel like the job advert was written specifically for them and be excited to apply.
Using candidate insights will make your recruitment more efficient and strategic. While gathering these insights certainly requires time and effort, this investment will pay. You’ll know where to advertise, and in what way, in order to get the attention of the most suitable candidates.
In 2021, over four million job seekers visited Academic Positions to look for PhD, postdoc and faculty positions, including Oldouz Nejadi-babadaei.
Oldouz is an urban and regional planner in Iran, and this September she will be moving to Stockholm to start a PhD in sustainability pathways and challenges at Södertörn University. Her PhD project, which she found on Academic Positions, will look at how people in marginalized communities are affected socially by climate change.
She talked to us about her experience using Academic Positions to find her dream PhD project. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
When did you decide you wanted to do a PhD?
I was always interested. Even when I was studying for my master’s at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, I was applying for PhDs. I wasn’t successful so my husband (who was also a master’s student) and I went back home to Iran. We thought that once we got back to Tehran we would start working and continue to apply for PhD positions in sustainability pathways and challenges. Then we both got really involved in projects in urban studies–our field of study. But still, I looked at PhD positions just for fun. However, because of the pandemic and some changes in the social, economic, and political atmosphere in my country, I had more time to think about what I wanted to do with my life. I thought maybe it was time to try applying for PhDs again, and, happily, I was successful.
Were you always interested in going abroad again for your PhD?
Yes. My priority was Sweden and I preferred to be in Stockholm because I enjoyed living there during my master’s at KTH. I know the place and I have friends there and so forth. In general, I was looking for positions in Europe where I could study in English, so countries like Britain, the Netherlands or Belgium which have programmes in English. But mostly I was focused on Sweden.
What websites did you use to look for PhD opportunities?
The main way that I was looking for them was with my list. I had a list of favourite links to universities which I knew had programs related to urban studies that I was checking regularly. But I was also receiving job alert emails from Academic Positions, I think since 2012. I never stopped them all those years. I liked to check them to see what positions were out there. That’s how I learned about Södertörn University. I didn’t know that Södertörn had departments and programs related to my field of study. My impression was that they were more focused on other areas. But then I got the job alert and looked them up and applied.
It’s great to hear that you were able to use our job alerts to not only find the type of position that you were looking for, but also discover a new university that you didn’t know was doing work in your field.
I thought that in Sweden, or at least in Stockholm, I had everything under control. But apparently I didn’t. I didn’t know about Södertörn so it was good to have Academic Positions. My keywords were sustainability, development, and urban planning. And sometimes there would be a position that included these keywords, but it wasn’t relevant to me at all, but at the same time I also learned about other positions in departments that I hadn’t thought of that were a good fit.
What are some of the advantages of using Academic Positions to search for PhD positions?
Academic Positions has so many offers in one place which allows you to find positions that you wouldn’t have expected or that you wouldn’t have come across on your own, because you just couldn’t know that they exist. For example, I came across a few interesting PhD projects in Italy and France. I usually don’t look there because most of the time their programs are not in English. But through Academic Positions, I found some and applied.
Do you have any other advice to share with other people who might be looking for a PhD?
You think that you will find the research project that fits you in a specific department, but nowadays, that’s not the case. Because of the multidisciplinary aspect of research projects, it’s really good to use Academic Positions, which gives you the opportunity to discover PhD projects in a variety of departments. Maybe there’s a project in your area of interest that really, really fits you, it’s just a department you didn’t expect. Academic Positions gives you more chances to find the right project.
In 2021, over four million job seekers visited Academic Positions to look for PhD, postdoc and faculty positions, including Fabian Schmidt. Fabian is now a doctoral student in computer science at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, a position he found on Academic Positions. He’s part of a project aimed at developing machine learning methods to improve treatment adherence, efficiency, and efficacy in clinical psychology. He talked to us about his experience job hunting on Academic Positions. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
AP: When did you decide to do a PhD?
FS: I had it in mind for some time, but it was during my master’s thesis that I decided I really wanted to do it. I worked on quite an applied research topic with Charité, one of the hospitals in Berlin. The focus was on applying deep learning techniques on medical images. My supervisors were really good and they helped me understand what you need to do research. That’s when I decided to apply to PhD positions and not go into industry.
AP: Were you always open to going abroad for your PhD?
FS: At first, I applied to positions in my home country, mostly in Berlin. But then I realized that that was quite a narrow search so it became clear that I needed to look abroad. Plus, I like studying abroad. I went abroad during both my bachelor’s and master’s so I was not reluctant to go abroad.
AP: How did you first start looking for PhD positions?
FS: I looked for positions on university websites. Back then I didn’t know about Academic Positions yet, so I was basically just Googling keywords for the position or domain that I was interested in plus the cities, which was time consuming. I would end up on university websites, which only show opportunities at one university. Plus the user interfaces weren’t always up to date. I had a few cases where I would find a position that was really interesting, but the application period had already expired.
AP: How did you find Academic Positions?
FS: When I started looking for positions abroad in Sweden, I came across a position in one of my searches that was hosted on Academic Positions. I started looking at the website and saw the advantages of using it. On the left hand side of the job search page, you can filter for which level of position you’re interested in as well as the field and location, which is way nicer than Googling. And it wasn’t just positions, the website also had tips about, for example, what to do once you arrive in Sweden and how to get settled.
AP: What was the experience like looking for jobs on Academic Positions compared to the university websites or other job boards?
FS: I really like clean design and that there are no advertisements. It’s not just that I have ad blocker on, there are no advertisements by default. Other job search websites are way too cluttered with irrelevant information. The filtering capabilities are really good too. You can refine your search as you go if you want to add another city for example.
AP: What made Academic Positions stand out?
FS: It’s great that Academic Positions is quite specific and has only academic jobs. I’m not interested in industry jobs, which might come up on Google based on the keywords I’m using. Maybe for somebody who’s undecided between academia and industry it might make more sense to look somewhere like LinkedIn, but if you really have narrowed it down to just academia, it’s so much better to use Academic Positions.
AP: Speaking as a candidate, what would you say are the advantages of advertising a job on Academic Positions?
FS: It’s a win-win for both sides. It makes it easier for students who want to apply for a PhD or any other academic position. And from a university perspective, you get more applicants for that position. There were a few times I only found a job by visiting the university website. It wasn’t mentioned on any other platform, which means it wasn’t accessible to many possible applicants. It doesn’t make sense to just publish a job in one place. There’s really no reason to not use Academic Positions.
