Its been more than a month now, and i still havent heard anything. They just seem to have vanished. I emailed the main supervisor a few days before the easter break and again about 4 or 5 days after. Havent heard anything back...no rejection either. The 2nd time I emailed, I cc-ed to the HoD who also sat in during the interview. I got an "out-of-office until 20th April" autoreply.

Should i just assume that it was unsuccessful?

Thanks IntoTheSpiral. Will get to you about how to send the files to you.

If anyone else would also be willing, I'd be really grateful. Would be useful to have more feedback and perspectives.

Hi guys,
Its been 2.5 years now that I've been applying for PhD positions, and still not a single bit of luck. I haven't even managed to land 2.5 interviews! I've written and re-written research proposals, cover letters, and CV's a hundred times - each time looking into alllll the advice I can find online. Nothing seems to be working. It seems it works for other people, but nothing works for me.

I'm really desperate now, so I want to ask whether anyone out there would do me a reaaaaally huge favor, and please go a few of the things that I send in my applications, and please tell me what exactly the heck I am doing wrong. It will be somewhat long and somewhat specialized, but I really don't know what to do. Absolutely any comments would be helpful (even that its too long!).

Please PM me if anyone is up to it. I am an electronics engineer, so most of it would be regarding that subject, but really any ideas would be useful.

Thanks a lot for your feedback!
The university is in Finland. I had hoped that the supervisor could let me know - even if informally - which direction the selection was leaning from their side. But, I'm not sure what the procedures are there, and since I'm a foreign applicant, it could be that there is just some administrative delay (I'm really hoping that is the case!).

Hi guys,
I had a Skype PhD interview on 6th March for a position I applied for. The interview request came very quickly - around 2 days after I had applied.
The interview itself went reasonably well. There weren't many technical questions or anything, just a nice casual chat for about half an hour. I had sent in a proposal (which they had even printed out and showed me), and I basically explained how my ideas fit in with their department, and why and how I came up with it. Since it is in another continent, they even talked to me about the weather, and food and how many students their have from my background in their research group and how they work, etc. At the end, the prof and head of dept said that they will discuss and get back to me about their decision.

The problem is, I still haven't heard back from them - its been 10 days. I am wondering if I should contact them about it, or continue waiting. The interview took place on a Friday, and so I kind of forgot to send a thank you email after the weekend, and now it will look kind of weird. I do have another excuse to email them, as I recently became a full member of a professional society, and this can be a update for my CV, but I don't know if I should pester them.
Despite a very quickly arranged, pleasant interview, should I be worried that I haven't heard back from them yet? :-(

Thanks for the replies.
Yes, it was a very frustrating experience. I know that there isn't any set interview questions and they vary highly, but what really got me was the questions on my university's ranking and my publication indexing. I have already put my university's world ranking (which isn't GREAT, but ok), and my citation count (which is quite ok) in my CV. But the bothersome interviewer kept asking "how is it ranked in the region? in the country? for engineering?". I just don't see how that's relevant to the position. Or questions about why I didn't submit to the best journals.

He even sighed several times and asked the other guy about how much longer they have for the call, and ended with "well, all the best with your future endeavors". The nicer guy tried to cut him short with a "you'll hear from us by about end of next week". I'm not quite sure there's anything left to hear - or that I want to :-/
Well, experience.

Had a telephone interview for an industrial PhD position with two supervisors yesterday, which was an interesting experience. Had been studying the whole week for it, but didn't go quite as I had planned :-/

I liked one of the interviewers who asked direct, to the point, specific questions. I could answer most of them correctly and he was quite encouraging about it, but unfortunately, he's not the main supervisor.
The other prof (who is the main supervisor) asked very general, vague questions like "tell me what you know/studied about subject X". When I would answer, he would just say "That's OK, but its very general/basic, not specific/advanced". At one point he named a subject which isn't on my transcript. I pointed out that I may still have studied it under a different subject or name (which after googling it later, I found out I have), so if he could give me the name of a specific topic or technique he has in mind, I would be able to confirm if I've done it. I asked him this twice, but he kept on saying "oh, no no, just in general about subject Y". He kept on repeating the titles of the subjects he wanted, without asking anything specific - and if I gave a general answer, he'd say it was too general/basic.

Then he also asked me about my university ranking and how indexed my publications are (ISI, impact factors etc). I must say it was all quite unexpected for me and left me feeling a bit negative about the whole experience.

Was wondering if these types of questions are usual in PhD interviews??

I spent about 2+ years after masters looking for a job/phd. I didnt manage to get into a phd position, but I did land a job recently. I had tried all the stuff peopl advise...review and tailor your cv, write amazing cover letters, join professional networks (I still have paid subscription to LinkedIn). In my experience, these days, you must reach out to someone in the organization, past all the walls that HR and administration put up. Its like a battle really...you trying to get a message to someone inside, HR trying to stop you. Things like LinkedIn may help in establishing this contact, or in seeking advice - but otherwise are limited in their usefulness.
My break came by complete chance at a career fair when i managed to speak to a research engineer who had come along with HR. At first, the HR people didnt even let me talk to him, despite him standing a few feet away! I dont know what they see themselves as...guards for the company?
Also, i read some good advice once about how to market your phd well. The article had written, tell your prospective employer that you know they probably wouldnt be interested in the topic of you dissertation, but they might probably be interested in the methods you used to complete it. So instead of the knowledge, emphasize the analysis, techniques, equipment, approach, experimentation, etc.
All the best!

I had a wonderful supervisor in my engineering M.Sc. who had a brand new, stupid idea for my project every time I met him. They were almost always wildly out of my project scope, hugely difficult to experiment on properly, or sometimes just completely impossible (given the current physical laws of the universe). On top of that, the prof had a bit of a personality issue - he wasn't too popular with the department anyway.
I am however, grateful to him. I learned how to deal with difficult people who can be a pain. Here are some of the ways I used:

1) Just humor them. Often they forget and will never follow-up on what they said.

2) On the off chance that they are the type that remember, find some small bit of evidence by next meeting which will show them that what they are saying is ridiculous. Never say it yourself. Make sure you implicate some piece of literature.

3) In the long term, accept the fact that you will have to finish this project largely on your own. Do lots of reading on the topic, identify what can be done, figure out a good "story" that you can tell with your work, and just formulate your scope, problem statement and objectives around that story yourself. Once its on paper in black and white and they can read it, it becomes harder for them to say something against it (because they'll need to give a reason, which they won't have anyway).
Even though I'd been repeatedly telling him, one day I just got fed up with my supervisor and wrote the scope and objectives of my M.Sc. myself. He had nothing to say against them because he had nothing better to offer in their place.

Aside from the degree, I guess dealing with such people is also a learning experience. Good thing they don't charge double fees ;)

First of all, you're doing PhD - not many people get this far. That should give you a bit of confidence.
Second, if you end up comparing yourself with people around you in academia, then just remember, there's nothing wrong with being average. Most people are. Don't let it become a fear.

As a bit of an achiever during my undergrad and M.Sc., I haven't really felt the benefits of having things under your belt anyway. Much of life is luck. I don't think of myself or others having much intrinsic talent. We were just born with average abilities, and had the chance to work hard at developing them.
As a friend of mine said: "If the village idiot spent 5 years working on my research question, even he'd get some results". Remember to keep things in perspective.

I always ask before submitting a proposal whether the project is already fixed due to funding or the professor's interest, or whether I am expected to submit my own proposal. At times, when I have been told that the project is fixed, I just apply like I would to a job - crafting a tailored CV and cover letter. When I'm encouraged to send a research plan, I take the 3 or 4 ideas that I have and mould them towards the advertised area, department's expertise and facilities.

As I said, neither approach seems to be working for me. What seems clear is that professor's aren't really interested in hiring outside their lab.

I think it depends on the country and the funding.
I'm in engineering, and have been trying mostly in Europe (I looked into Australian engineering PhD's, but they have a different focus and approach than what I would like to study). When I email professors, they usually tell me that I must apply for an advertised position. Some of the advertised positions are on already planned and developed projects. I usually still ask if I may propose my own ideas for the position. Sometimes the professors say that the project is fixed, other times they say that I can attach my research plan, and they'll judge.
Other positions are open calls - you can send in your own proposal.
Usually, all the positions are paid employment. And almost no professor has agreed to look through my proposal individually, they all say it must be sent with the application.

In my experience, it doesn't seem to matter either way :-/

Met up with a good friend recently who told me something interesting (and rather depressing!) that I thought about sharing here. She's been working for several years at one of the largest oil and gas services providers in the world, based in nearly 100 countries. Some while ago, she got promoted into management from engineering, and got to see how the company runs, and how they recruit. Apparently, they have a "list of recommended universities" which they hire from. And if you haven't finished your degrees from the list, your CV won't even be looked at. She was lucky to have gotten in before our university got knocked off the list. And so a new level of discrimination seems to have started.

This comes at the tail of another series of rejections for my PhD applications, so I'm extremely frustrated. I'm quite sure that universities have adopted this too. The latest position I applied for, I custom-wrote a 14-page, 32-references research plan for exactly the expertise and equipment the research group has, extending a method the European Space Agency published just a few months ago this year (so it wasn't complete nonsense). But, of course that isn't good enough - because I wasn't a former Masters student. Everyone says you should put in time to tailor your application for the place you are sending it. My proposal was so tailored for the research group, it is practically useless for me to use in applying elsewhere, and all my time and effort is gone to waste. Its nigh on impossible to get a position these days without having done your Masters at the same place!

Academic discrimination has reached appalling heights everywhere!

Hi chickpea,
Yes, I agree with your idea about saying I want to test two different hypotheses - it makes quite good sense with what I'm doing. I think I'll use that.

Thanks! :-)

Hi guys,
So I'm still trying to get a phd position, and at the moment I'm re-writing my proposal to some extent, just to make it better. Now, I've got this issue:
Basically, what my proposal is about, is using a technique A on a type of problem B in the context of application C. Now, currently, the technique A IS used on problem B, but not in the context of C - it is used in other contexts. The reason I'm suggesting to use it in context C also, is because I'm drawing some parallels between the context C, and other contexts. Now, this suggestion of mine...to use technique A on problem B IN THE CONTEXT of C because it has worked well in other similar contexts....would this be called my research philosophy, or approach, or hypothesis or what?

Now, additionally, technique A can be implemented in different ways. For example, you could use method A1 to implement technique A, or method A2, or A3, etc. All these methods are the same class of methods (i.e., all end up implementing technique A), but vary sufficiently enough to be easily distinguishable. Now remember that technique A was being used to solve B in other contexts...well, the researchers are using, say, method A5 to implement A...but I'm suggesting to use method A3 (because I'm saying A3 is faster/cheaper). Would this be called my research philosophy or approach or hypothesis?

So, to recap, my contribution would be proposing to use technique A USING METHOD A3 to solve B IN THE CONTEXT of C. What would be my research philosophy/hypothesis/etc

I'm really sorry to use A's and B's and C's, but it would get complicated if I used the actual engineering terms. Any help is HUGELY appreciated.