Back in 2006, when I was just a few weeks away from defending my dissertation, I applied for a job working as a closed-captioning editor at one of Canada’s television broadcasters. It was a job that I was well-qualified for: it required top-notch English language skills, plus some computer literacy and organizational abilities. Best of all, the job was pretty mindless; it required absolutely no analytical skills whatsoever, and I got paid to watch TV for a living. For someone who was stumbling out of a Ph.D. program feeling battered and bruised, the job was ideal.

How did I get this job? Networking.

In my case, the old adage about “who you know” held true. But the person who helped me get my foot in the door wasn’t some old windbag I met at a greasy-palmed meet n’ greet. It was a woman my age I’d met at a rock show. She was an acquaintance of my husband’s, someone he’d known in the indie rock community for several years. The first time we met was probably about a year before I finished my degree. We hit it off, and it turned out we were both grad students at the same university, and we had a lot in common (other than musician-type boyfriends).

She told me about her job, and the fact that she did this work on the side must have stuck with me, because when I ran into her on campus some months later, I asked her about it. I told her that I was going to need a job after defending my dissertation, and was looking at non-academic labour. She told me more details about the nature of the work, its ups and downs and how I could apply.

In the interests of public service, I’ve sorted through the dusty rabbit warrens of my computer and retrieved the actual cover letter I used to get that first non-academic job. And more than anything, with three years of hindsight, it actually reads like a prime example of what not to do when you’re trying to secure that first position.

To wit: just look at the length of that cover letter! That’s terrible!

Sure, we all know I tend to be a little long-winded, but come on! An entire page to list my many great accomplishments? What’s actually really terrible about this cover letter is that, although I claim to be some super-literate mistress of the universe, it’s clear that I wrote the damn thing in the most white-knuckled way. Don’t try to enlarge this letter and think that you’ll get some tips on how to write a solid cover letter from it. You won’t. You will be tortured by my incredibly inelegant turns of phrase like, “I have a high degree of literacy,” and “I am a highly educated person.” Oh, god, give me purchase!

You know that I am only sharing deeply embarrassing phrases such as these with you so that you will save yourself from sounding like such a knob. Seriously, if I read a cover letter from a near-PhD that used those kinds of expressions, I would toss it in the recycling bin simply because that kind of language only affirms stereotypes about PhDs. So academics beware! Try your damndest to talk like a normal person when you’re carving your cover letters!

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’ll know my well-established views about networking: it doesn’t have to be sleazy. It’s actually happening all the time, all around you. Whether you’re chatting with an acquaintance at a party, a worker at the health food store or a colleague at a conference, you’re networking. Networking doesn’t mean you’re trying to get something from someone. It just means you’re exchanging information and that you’re open to the opportunities that that exchange might hold.

And I feel compelled to risk the broken record rep and say it again: you do actually know people outside of academia. Sometimes academics feel as though they’re insulated from the “outside world.” You’re not–you’re right in the thick of it. Even if most of your closest friends are academics, there are plenty of people you interact with every day who might know about job opportunities in their field. And if they don’t, they know people who do.

In the case of my first post-academic job, networking helped me skip past HR. Because I had the name and contact details of the power who actually had the power to hire me, I avoided the HR folks who might have tried to screen me out. This was useful for a former academic like me who might have beeb seen by HR as too over-qualified or under-qualified (or that paradoxical mix of the two). Now, I did still have an interview with HR, but it happened after the interview with the head of the department, and I got the distinct impression that it was merely a formality.

When I got that job, I converted my seven-page CV into a one-page résumé. As you may well be aware, there are scads and scads of books out there will all kinds of up-to-date information on how to write a résumé. But some of the best advice I can give you is to not do this:

Hoo, boy. Now, this is not the actual resume I used to go out on the job market, but it does look something like it (the real thing is just sooo embarassing–plus I don’t want to have ALL of my info hanging out on the internets).

Where to begin?

1.  It was total news to me when I finished school, but apparently the rest of the world does not exclusively use a Times New Roman 12 point font for absolutely EVERYTHING they do. When you leave academia, the world of fonts opens up to you…somewhat. You still want a crisp, tidy font that conveys professionalism, but you can sex things up a little bit by breaking away from the essay-style look.

2. Consider how you can collapse all of your teaching experience into one line. While it is relevant to you and your academic colleagues that you taught three different sections of Intro to Sociology over the course of three years, do not put “Intro to Sociology” three different times on your résumé. Just don’t. If you taught that course from September to April, you will not be lying if you cut out the months and collapse it into one line:

2000-2003  Course director, Introduction to Sociology, U of Hellride

Really, no one will assume that you’re trying to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes by not specifying the months.

3. All of those dinky little research assistantships, graduate assistantships and marker/grader positions you’ve had? Mush those up into one line, too. Again, the distinctions matter to you, but probably not to anyone outside of academia.

4. Spare yourself the teeth gnashing about how obvious to be about your education. If you think it’s relevant to the position, put it at the top. If it’s not that relevant, put it beneath your work experience since this is (apparently) the convention, these days. Either way, the potential employer is going to see you are ABD or a Ph.D., and that will be only one factor upon which they base their decision to interview. Oh, and don’t waste a bunch of space by separating out your degrees (the way it is above, there). That’s just stupid.

5. Proofread like you’re scrutinizing your most-hated student’s paper. I’m sure the eagle-eyed among you have already noticed this, but see how the dashes between the dates for the education are all inconsistent? Don’t do that. For god’s sake, just don’t. If you’re not an “attention to detail” person, get a handful of people who are to look at your résumé. Ask them to specifically check for stuff like that.

6. You will need to consult a résumé book, a career coach or a job-search service for the best advice on this, but gone are the days when the little blurb about what you did at your job was supposed to read like a job description. Now the fashion is all about framing your accomplishments. Instead of saying, “Marked and graded assignments, helped students with writing skills,” you’re supposed to say things like, “Increased class average by 20% through individualized coaching during office hours.” You know–stuff that really demonstrates how heroic you were in your job (don’t let my cynicism about this rub off on you–just consult someone about how to do this best).

7. Finally, don’t damn yourself with faint praise. You see the “Computer skills” section and how very, very empty it is? It’s better not to say anything at all rather than draw attention to the fact that, oh, gee, you know how to use Word, just like 98% of the rest of the population.  And don’t say vague shit like, “My typing speed is well over 80 WPM.” Be specific (but stop short of “My flaming fingers can produce at the rate of 110 WPM, which is how I got my dissertation done”).

Tagged as: cover letter, job hunting, resume

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