Why not make the first stage of the application process (for a lectureship/postdoc, etc) a simple CV review?

Once your long list is decided, you can then request a letter of application and further materials.

This will save me, you and basically everyone in the process a huge amount of time.

Sorry, what's that, you think that's not a good idea? You don't like this idea because you enjoy [bleeping] wasting my [bleeping] time and energy on long pointless applications?

Fair enough. I understand. It's not your fault that you feel the need to "judge" 100+ application letters by spending 30 seconds on each one to make yourself feel special and important.

Kind [bleeping] regards,

Dr. disillusioned with this ridiculous charade that is academia

Because they want you to explain in more depth (than is available with a CV) how you meet the desired and essential criteria? To give you more room to explain who you are, rather than a list of grades..?

I think he/she means that this should come after a prior selection. CVs contain not just grades but your whole education, practical experiences, main subjects and so on. Basically everything you need to know to select the most suitable candidates. Among them you can then further select in terms of motivation etc. There are always applications that are discarded because of the CV, no matter how good the statement is. Nobody reads 100+ applications that are 10 pages long completely. If you would pre select the people with an appropriate CV, others would not have to spend time on statements of purpose for positions they won't be considered for. You always have to adjust the application to the employer, which takes an enormous amount of time.

I agree that this would be easier and less time consuming, but I don't get what the thread is for.

OK
1) there are HR rules to ensure compliance with equal opportunities legislation - that means some of the stuff is needed to ensure equality of treatment. Those annoying online forms for example - that's HR.
2) Most of the candidates applying have very similar cvs. A covering letter allows you space to make a case for why your publications have merit etc, and also most importantly gives a sense for the committee of whether you have a research strategy moving forward, and whether you have a clue about the expectations of the role.

Good, so you agree that a great deal of time and energy can be spared in this process. This thread simply registers the point, and that Is what it is for. Thanks for your reply.

1) Thank you for explaining HR to me. I was not aware what it was.

2) Yes we all understand what a cover letter allows us to do. The point is that hardly anyone creates a long list after reading the statement because there are so many applications. Why do you support wasting applicants' time by making them write statements which only become meaningful at the long list stage? It makes no sense at all. It is administration which appeals only to those religiously devoted to HR.

I am a member of staff and recently served on a selection committee and I can assure you that if you are a competitive candidate then that letter will be read. An average UK lectureship in my social science discipline will get c.120 applications. Maybe 50% will be uncompetitive as they lack a completed PhD and/or REFable publications (i.e. a university press book or articles in top quartile journals - my employer's expectations) and so are easily knocked out. The other 50% do have those things but largely have very similar cvs, so that's when we read the cover letters / statements carefully to look for the things I mentioned in my last post. We cannot waste time interviewing someone who can't articulate where their research is going next for example. It would lengthen the timeline of a job application process considerably to only demand a cover letter after an initial sift, which given we are normally working to a tight timeline is tricky, and would open up all sorts of cans of worms about fairness, I suspect. What do you do if a really good candidate is on holiday and so misses the cover letter deadline for example? It's easier if there's one deadline for everything.

If you want to see a real waste of time, look at the North American system and at what they demand applicants for academic jobs send in. I applied for a job in the US that wanted a cv, cover letter, three writing samples, a teaching statement, a research statement, three reference letters (sent separately by each referee in a particular format), transcripts from all degrees, certified copies of my degree certificates and two equal opps forms, all sent hard copy.

In that case, it's very simple: the job specification should be honest. It should state that REFable publications are essential not desirable. That would stop wasting the applicant's time, which is more precious than someone on a selection committee, whose salary compensates her/him for the time spent reviewing applications.



This line of argument is totally unconvincing. There is an entire summer over which academics can recruit. The point is not to waste the applicant's time. That is, the person with a PhD who is queuing at the job centre. THAT person's time.

There is no can of worms. A candidate who is touring Venice and is thus too busy to formulate a statement of purpose when it is requested does not need the job enough.

It is easier if there is one deadline for everything, yes. It is easier for gatekeepers in academic departments who have either 1) lost touch with the unnecessary demands placed on applicants, or 2) have no experience of what it feels like to be on the bread line.

And no one is calling for undeserving candidates (e.g. those who have not articulated a research plan) to be interviewed.



Let's concentrate on fixing the broken UK system first shall we? Our system is no better because it is slightly less ridiculous than the US one. Our responsibilities are with this one. This is especially true for you, seeing as you are a privileged member of a selection committee.

Isn't that exactly what we were talking about? That would mean that 60 people wasted time on a statement for teaching and research and are not considered due to the lacking PhD degree or relevant publications. The CV would have shown that too ;)

I also don't believe that the CVs look all the same. Not everybody has the same grades, the same amount of teaching experience, the same amount of internships and so on. There will be definitely some differences and even if not you could just send a standardized email to those 60 applicants left that their CVs generally qualify them for the position and that they should send the rest. I see no real disadvantage. It is of course something the selection comitee does not benefit from but the applicants sure do. Sometimes you even spend several days for 1 application (rethinking, rewriting and so on) to make it the best possible and then it is discarded due to stuff that the CV would have shown. Especially when you are still working and have to search for a following position, time is a limited good.

First - everything I say applies to the UK and to research-intensive universities.
@ literarytheorist - sorry you're unemployed and not having much luck with your applications. It's horrible and if it's any consolation many people who have got academic jobs in the last decade have been there. I certainly have. The academic job market has been dire for a long time now.
@ Dunham internships and marks don't count - they don't say anything about someone's ability to make a good academic. So long as you have some teaching experience, it's really publications and research income for those a little further out from the PhD that get you longlisted, What I mean about very similar is that people are all trying to publish in similar places and chasing the same grants, and so you argue about whether a Marie Curie or a Leverhulme postdoc fellowship is more impressive, or whether a minor difference in impact factor makes one person's article stronger than another's. This is why the extra information in the cover letter / statement is useful.
@ both of you, you both agree that the hiring department should inconvenience itself so you don't need to write a cover letter. OK from my perspective there are some issues with this. 1) I get you're not interested in the fairness element, but legally that is really important. Universities don't want to get sued. 2) You don't seem to understand that here in the UK we operate on a tight schedule. Permission to advertise is maybe Feb, we need to interview by May at the latest, as most people we interview will need to give 3 months notice and we need them in September. We also need a senior faculty member on the panel - that really limits possible dates. Adding another stage makes it unviable timewise. 3) You need a cover letter to apply for a basic uni admin job (in my region more competitive than a lectureship) - what makes ECRs so special that it's a terrible burden for them?

The rules are different for academic and academic-related positions. With academic positions, there is dishonesty in the job advert and the playing field is not level. Indeed you have demonstrated this with your own insights. Just look at what you have said.

According to you: committees “argue about whether a Marie Curie or a Leverhulme postdoc fellowship is more impressive”. Why then is something along the lines of “a funded postdoctoral fellowship” not an essential point in the job specification? (I have never seen it and neither has any ECR I am sticking up for by writing this thread.)

Why waste our time time, and your own? If your answer is because it would be unfair to include “postdoctoral funding” in the job specification, you would be right. But the way to tackle unfairness and bias is not to defer it to later in the recruitment process whilst waving your credentials as a champion of equal opportunities. You can choose to do something about this dishonesty, or you can remain complicit. What you are doing is the latter and quite frankly I think you should be ashamed.

And as for “basic admin jobs”, I wouldn’t describe them that way, I would have more respect.




I think you might mean well, but based on what you have said in this thread, I doubt that you understand poverty. I doubt that you understand its implications. It is a privileged person who argues that a hiring department is being “inconvenienced” and that a good candidate might be “on holiday” when a statement of purpose is required and that such a scenario is a potential “can of worms”.

No Madam/Sir: there are good candidates who cannot afford a holiday. There are good candidates who have paid for their own education. Every penny. These are the candidates who are removed from your initial sift because you look for candidates who have won postdoctoral funding. It is a system of appalling elitism which valorises the already privileged.

Mine is not a solitary voice. Countless ECRs feel this way, particularly those from less privileged backgrounds. This thread is their voice as much as it is mine.

If the hiring department is being “inconvenienced”, then it should be ashamed. Neither myself or @Dunham has argued that ECRs should not prepare a cover letter at all. In fact we have both argued the opposite: that a cover letter is perfectly necessary but only AFTER an initial sift based on the CV. Your own claim is that your hiring department establishes that 50% of applicants are uncompetitive from the credentials in the CV and it only THEN reads cover letters to long list from the remaining 50%. (“The other 50% do have those things but largely have very similar cvs, so that's when we read the cover letters”).

It is therefore quite clear that 50% of applicants are wasting their time. This can easily be avoided with 1) a more honest and precise job specification or, in its absence, 2) my proposal of an initial sift based on CV alone.



There is no need to sidetrack the conversation with dishonesty. No one has suggested that equal opportunities is not important. On the contrary, it is absolutely crucial. And neither is anyone suggesting that one should be unwilling to fill out an equal opportunities form for administrative purposes. The problem is that there is a horrid double standard at play.

You are being shown how equality of opportunity is actually NOT being extended. This is because a statement of purpose is quite obviously not essential at the application stage because of all the reasons you have already outlined. That is, there are discrete criteria (not in the job specification) which give ECRs false hope and waste their time.

How we think about fairness should not be about how it can help us to avoid lawsuits. We should think about how we can make the system actually fairer. By presenting the actual criteria for a lectureship in the job specification (according to you: postdoctoral funding, a monograph, journal papers, etc), we would ALL save time.

Again, a matter of the department being inconvenienced whilst others work through hardships the department does not understand. That’s fine. We wouldn’t want to disturb a well paid academic from a summer in France.

This argument, and those who extend it, are a major part of the problem. It is not at all difficult to recruit to a schedule without wasting the applicant’s time. The thought that this schedule is impossible because a department first invites CVs is not at all convincing. It is ridiculous.

To be honest, a lot of the frustrations being described in this thread concern things that are rife within recruitment in general, and not specific to academia. To give a couple of examples off the top of my head, I used to work in a field in which no academic qualification was necessary, but I would get jobs fairly easily (as would others) by having a degree - ie the shortlisting criteria were in practice more stringent than the ads suggested. Recently, my partner spent several days completing the most arduous application I have ever seen, and was later told she was not short-listed because we live 'in the wrong postcode area'. Recruitment is difficult and frustrating at the best of times and more so when you really need to find something. However, given that shortlisting can often seem to be done on a rather 'fuzzy' basis, I tend to see the annoying personal statement/cover letter as my chance to give it my best shot and possibly just hit the right note with the recruitment panel.

Dear all, long time reader, first time writer. I have felt compelled to register on this forum to lend my thoughts on this matter. As a seasoned academic at an RG university I dare say I find the situation alarming for early career researchers. I agree with the plan put forward above by LiteraryTheorist and Dunham and I shall pass this thread on to colleagues. It is slightly disappointing that the concerns of new academics are so easily dismissed by staff already in post. This may not be intentional, however the net effect appears to be very negative. Something can be done if one but tries.