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Jo VanEvery

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careers

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Taking on a leadership role

Posted on October 5, 2015 by Jo VanEvery Leave a Comment

 Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Taking on a leadership role Taking on a management/leadership role, even at the department level is a big deal. You might be really excited about the possibilities and have all kinds of plans for how you can make things better (for some value of “better”). But you also know […]

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Be an amateur.

Posted on March 26, 2015 by Jo VanEvery Leave a Comment

Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Be an amateur I’ve been thinking about the term amateur. I’m particularly drawn to the origin — “French, from Italian amatore from Latin amator lover”. I note that prior to the 19th century, usage is merely: “A person who is fond of something; a person who has a taste […]

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Applying for promotion: Research Trajectory

Posted on March 19, 2015 by Jo VanEvery Leave a Comment

While helping a client with her application for promotion, I was reminded of a conversation I had with a senior colleague when I applied for a promotion many years ago. “The promotion committee will be looking for a trajectory in your research.” I checked the guidelines for promotion from my client’s institution. Sure enough I […]

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Goals and magical thinking

Posted on January 1, 2014 by Jo VanEvery Leave a Comment

Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Goals and Magical Thinking You will not be surprised to learn that I read blogs which provide business advice and decided to hire a business coach to help me with my career. Naomi Dunford at IttyBiz wrote a series about goal setting back in 2013 (it’s no longer available […]

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Start thinking about your post-doc early

Posted on April 5, 2013 by Jo VanEvery 1 Comment

Are you within 12 – 18 months of finishing your dissertation? I know that’s a hard question. And you can’t really know with any certainty. Do you feel like you are approaching the end of this process? Have you considered a post-doctoral fellowship? Even if you are closer to finished or have already defended your dissertation, […]

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PhD programs are not career training

Posted on November 19, 2010 by Jo VanEvery 2 Comments

A degree may be necessary but it is never sufficient

There is no job for which an educational qualification is enough to get you hired.

There is no job for which an educational qualification provides all the necessary skills and knowledge.

A degree, whatever it is, is always but one piece of a complex puzzle.

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Ever considered being a program officer for SSHRC?

Posted on June 17, 2010 by Jo VanEvery 4 Comments

They are advertising. Some of their program officers have been around for a long time but all of them start on short term contracts. You could focus on the short-term part, and the lack of security, or you could see it as a good opportunity to try out a job that is related to your […]

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What it means to say the job market is “competitive”

Posted on April 22, 2010 by Jo VanEvery Leave a Comment

It means that it’s a competition, just like the Olympics. It means that you can be among the best in the world and still not get a medal job. It means that you have to go out there and do what needs to be done to the best of your ability anyway. Potential employers don’t […]

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You don’t have to know what you’re going to be when you grow up

Posted on April 16, 2010 by Jo VanEvery 1 Comment

It is not uncommon to hear glib statements about how the era of the job for life has passed. And yet, people still routinely ask kids what they want to be when they grow up. And we still talk about education as if you get educated in your youth, which prepares for the job you’ll […]

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A job search is a 2-way process

Posted on April 5, 2010 by Jo VanEvery Leave a Comment

In my last two posts, I suggested that you can decide what kind of academic career you want, and that it’s a good idea to get information and advice from a variety of sources, including informational interviews, to help you figure that out and learn more about the kind of academic career you want. When […]

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How an academic job search is like any job search

Posted on March 31, 2010 by Jo VanEvery 1 Comment

In my last post, I proposed that you are likely only interested in a subset of all the academic jobs that are advertised in your field (no matter how sparse or plentiful those jobs may be). If this is a new way of looking at your academic career, it might be unsettling. You might be […]

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A PhD doesn’t prepare you for a career

Posted on December 8, 2009 by Jo VanEvery 1 Comment

There is a lot of talk about whether doctoral programs should do more to prepare students for careers outside of academia. When you think about it, most doctoral programs don’t even prepare you for a career inside academia. Universities are not really in the business of training people for careers Many of us roll our eyes whenever […]

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