Rejected - and it feels personal

[rapthisup]

Hello, longtime lurker but first-time poster here.

I've done casual work for a few years in a professional services type of role (keeping this vague as it's a very small world). When I applied for a permanent job and got turned down I asked the recruiter for advice. She said that doing a specialist masters would give me a better chance. I've just done one in her department and I excelled - got a distinction, won a prize, been invited to write an article. I've also been doing some work in the department. I was encouraged to apply for this and have been told I've done well.

This person advertised a role in her field. I meet all the essential and desirable criteria, and I've a lot more to offer besides. I didn't get shortlisted. How would you approach this? Would you ask for feedback or would you cut your losses and walk away? It feels personal and I'm devastated.

Surely you can't completely anonymise an academic CV?
Publications are a huge part of it, and even if you remove all the names you can probably tell if you are in that field, and surely it would be unfair if those assessing applications could tell who some applicants were but not others??!

I found that often the job had been created for a specific person. Eg they had purposely applied for a grant to pay for a postdoc position, because they had someone in mind who whey wanted to hire as a postdoc. Unfortunately they would then waste people’s time because they were legally forced to advertise the job even though they already had a candidate.

In the very few cases where they didn’t have a candidate in mind, there would often still be an agenda. Eg hire a non white person to improve diversity, hire a person from another country to bolster the international profile of the department. So most candidates still didn’t stand a chance. I was once told “we don’t want any more people with British accents in this department, it’s bad for our image”.

Unfortunately OP if you don’t have an influential person creating a job for you or pushing you onto their friends, you’re probably better off giving up on academia.

The only way to get a job in academia is to be “in”. You need to be working somewhere and have a boss that pushes you for job opportunities and puts a good word in

Totally not my experience.

And I have had to give feedback to disappointed candidates several times that they were excellent but we had someone who was a better fit (including once my Masters student who'd become a good friend - that was particularly difficult conversation). It's not pleasant because I know how frustrating that information is - there's nothing a candidate can do to improve their chances - it's about the post and the field.

OP what do you want? You asked in your first post How would you approach this? Would you ask for feedback or would you cut your losses and walk away? It feels personal and I'm devastated

We answered from a range of points of view & experiences.

Then you thank us by saying

This makes the above comments about feedback redundant

If you just wanted to vent, perhaps you should have said so. Then a number of kind people trying to offer you help, wouldn't have wasted their time.

I am in academia and have sat on a number of interview panels. My experience is that it is fair. Yes some colleagues on the panel set out hoping a particular candidate gets in but the panel always makes a decision based on the candidates ' performance on the day (and strength of research if a research post). It s happened quite often that an 'outsider ' got the job.

What I have found is that quite often two candidates were neck and neck and it took quite a lot of deliberating to appoint one. It could be the case that you were a close second too.

I would definitely ask for feedback if I were you.

Why did you bother to comment?

Because I was trying to understand your mindset. I'm an academic. A scientist. We get curious about stupid shit.

It took me decades but I I have learnt some resilience. If I apply for a job I assume there's an internal candidate but there may not be. Each and every experience can be useful learning opportunity every interview is practice for the next interview. Maybe OP has learnt her mentor is a shitty person. Something else I learnt the hard way - confronting people for their crappy behaviour makes me feel afterwards so much better about them and whatever happened. Even if nothing is really fixed, standing up for myself allows me to make peace with it all and move on. I can ignore them if I see them in the pub and look them in the eye afterwards if I do need to talk to them about something -- I struggle to face them at all though, if I'm still unspoken hurt & confused & nothing was aired. If I were OP, I could not make peace with the personal rejection without confronting that person at centre of it.

So I hope you ask OP and express your disappointment. Don't have to tell us what happened. I think you'll make better peace with the situation if you do talk straight to them.

@QueenoftheAir
I did thank posters for their perspectives on the previous page. As I am new to the applications process for this sector, perspectives are what I am looking for. As far as I can see it isn't normal on mumsnet to thank individual contributors but if you feel I haven't thanked you enough please accept my apologies.

@MedSchoolRat I would like to have a frank discussion with the person who encouraged me to spend my own money on a masters. Unfortunately I can't as I might need to use her as a referee and she is influential in the field.

@OneKeyAtATime In my previous career (public sector) I knew of a few people who had been the internal candidate but they didn't interview as well as other people and didn't get the job. My hunch is that in academic, as @BlueSoop and @CeibaTree say, there will be a preferred candidate who has been prepared for the interview. If you have progressed then you may not be aware that other equally good candidates are frozen out. In my albeit limited experience, candidates whose politics align with management are more likely to be successful.

And I also agree with BlueSoop's comments about diversity. In my previous career I also saw candidates being shortlisted and the reason stated, in writing, was "to increase diversity".

I suspect it's a number of things - you're new to the sector. Doing short term or consultancy contracts within the sector may mean you're not as aware of some aspects of the external landscape we're working in - and it's changing very fast not for the better

The recruiter will not have specific experience of the role, particularly as it's a niche area. Don't rely on them for expertise.

Don't rely on having the MA as being your shoo-in. The vast majority working in HE have qualifications coming out of their ears. Senior often a PhD. In fact plenty of low grade clerical students have PhDs!

And get feedback. It might be totally bogus - in which case you know it was because they had someone earmarked, and it wasn't your poor performance. It could be a bit bogus, but you could read between the lines to get something constructive. Or it could be very useful and tell you that your application didn't address a, b or c, or you didn't highlight how you'd translate what you'd learnt in your MA or prior experience to the role, or you weren't aware that the department was about to launch a big project or....

I would like to have a frank discussion with the person who encouraged me to spend my own money on a masters. Unfortunately I can't as I might need to use her as a referee and she is influential in the field

Could you ask her for feedback without telling her what you really feel? It should be quite possible to ask about the process, why you weren't shortlisted, and what else she might advise you to do, while staying polite & not burning any bridges!

And no I was not carping about you not thanking anyone; I was commenting on what seems to be your general lack of generosity in responding to the advice given here in good faith. You seem to have made up your mind about academia.

The picture you paint of the academy is not my experience of 35 years of PhD study and subsequent standard teaching & research posts in 3 different countries. And I graduated with my (Humanities) PhD into a recession, when there were maybe 2 posts a year in my broad field, and no post-doc schemes or funding for Humanities post-docs. I am very well aware I got into academia by the skin of my teeth, and staying here, even at a senior level, still feels the same.

@BlueSoop

In my experience when an academic job is advertised they ALWAYS have a preferred candidate. Often it’s an internal candidate who they want to bring on board permanently. Other times they have an candidate from another university suggested by a close colleague, and they pick them to strengthen links between the two universities.

The only way to get a job in academia is to be “in”. You need to be working somewhere and have a boss that pushes you for job opportunities and puts a good word in. Often your boss has to offer a sweetener - employ my ex student and I will sign up to do a joint project with you. It’s an old boys club. If you don’t have a boss who’s actively promoting you and trying to get you a job, you have no chance on your own.

This is why I left academia, because my boss didn’t like me much and wasn’t pushing his friends to give me a job, wasn’t selling himself to get me in somewhere, so basically I had no chance. They know who they’re going to hire before they interview anyone, the interview is just a box ticking exercise to make it look fair and comply with the law.

Exactly this. This happened a lot in our department, our boss would advertise jobs but the job is already meant for one of us. Sadly a lot of the times it's who you know or friends with in academia

@QueenoftheAir Thank you for your continuing feedback on my "general lack of generosity". I have said thank you to respondents and I highlighted this in response to your first complaint. I am at a loss to understand what other form of generosity you expect, or why this is relevant.

Of course it is possible to ask for feedback without saying what I really feel. I posted in response to @MedSchoolRat 's suggestion to have a frank discussion. That comment was addressed to her by name.

You have managed to sustain a 35-year career. Others here have been frozen out. This happens in all professions.

I had a look at the staff page of my old university. The faces are pretty much the same as they were ten years ago. A couple at the top of the ladder have obviously retired. The “new” faces at the bottom of the ladder are people who were my fellow students, ie internal candidates. Not a single new person has joined the department in ten years. That speaks volumes about who they appoint when a post becomes available.

Not that many do become available - it’s very much a case of dead men’s shoes. Academic jobs are so hard to come by that people stay at the same university for 40-50 years. You’re literally waiting for someone to die or retire in order to have a job you can apply for. When I was applying for jobs ten years ago there were 50-60 candidates per post. Now it’s more like 100. The number of qualified people vastly exceeds the posts available, so 99% of applicants will NEVER get a job in academia.

The other issue is that academia is a tight knit community and if you piss off even one person you can be black balled. It only takes one person to tell their professor friends that you’re a pain in the arse and you’ll never get an academic job ever. In my case, my professor didn’t approve of the research results I got because they conflicted with his own work. He started telling people he didn’t agree that my results were correct and I’d published it against his advice (I had no choice, I had to publish it in order to be awarded my qualification for the work - what was I supposed to do, put years of work in the bin and start again?). So he refused to help me get a job because he was annoyed and he didn’t want me continuing a research theme that conflicted with his own. I heard he was giving his professor friends a “heads up” that I was applying for jobs and just saying no, I wouldn’t employ her, trust me. That was the end of my academic career. I got awarded my qualification but my results were brushed under the carpet. My professor is still researching and publicising the opposite point of view that my results disproved. He has removed our joint work from his portfolio so basically I never existed, because I dared to disagree. That’s the power that one person has in academia.

@BlueSoop

In my experience when an academic job is advertised they ALWAYS have a preferred candidate. Often it’s an internal candidate who they want to bring on board permanently. Other times they have an candidate from another university suggested by a close colleague, and they pick them to strengthen links between the two universities.

The only way to get a job in academia is to be “in”. You need to be working somewhere and have a boss that pushes you for job opportunities and puts a good word in. Often your boss has to offer a sweetener - employ my ex student and I will sign up to do a joint project with you. It’s an old boys club. If you don’t have a boss who’s actively promoting you and trying to get you a job, you have no chance on your own.

This is why I left academia, because my boss didn’t like me much and wasn’t pushing his friends to give me a job, wasn’t selling himself to get me in somewhere, so basically I had no chance. They know who they’re going to hire before they interview anyone, the interview is just a box ticking exercise to make it look fair and comply with the law.

Really not true as a generalisation.

I won't deny it sometimes happens, particularly in "bad" departments where a giant ego tries to run the place like an empire, but most depts are not like that.

I'm a senior academic who has been on selection and interview panels from casual RA to lecturer / SL to professor level. The vast majority have been a regular open competition where the best of the applicants were shortlisted and hired. In one case, that best applicant was a current postdoc in the dept (for a lecturer post), but they genuinely beat the other applicants on publications and interview.

Imo, you can usually tell a fit-up a mile off from the suspiciously specific job criteria that ensure only one person will score well. I was on the panel for one of those once, where a job was effectively invented for a new hire's spouse... I actually didn't mind so much that time, given that women usually come out the worst in the two-body problem, but I can see it's not exactly equitable.

@BlueSoop What kind of person listens if an associate phones up and says don't employ her, trust me?

I'd be more likely to think the associate was dodgy rather than the candidate.

When you’ve known someone professionally for 20 years you tend to trust them. I was at a conference with my boss but instead of introducing me to people and arranging dinners with them to try to “sell” me, instead he was avoiding me. People were saying “isn’t she with you?” and he was saying “technically yes, but I have nothing to do with her work, she published it against my advice” (shaking his head) “she’s best avoided, I can’t recommend her”. One very nice chap approached me and informed me that my boss was black balling me, and basically said don’t trust him. Unfortunately his lack of support wrecked my chances of an academic job.

He actually said "she's best avoided"?

Did you complain to the university?

I would say in our dep't we have a lot of people coming from outside for positions, probably 1/3 are inside/people we already know, but the opportunity to acquire good new people from elsewhere always tempts our appointment panels, I am not sure though at Masters level or for admin posts.

I don't feel I can advise here as I am not entirely sure what type of job this would be for, because if for academic, usually a Masters is not enough, for long-term teaching/lecturing career, and I just don't know for admin/research management (e.g. of projects) type work.

It may be they said you need a Masters as a pre-requisite, rather than if you get a Masters I will employ you. You won't ever know the whole truth of any of these situations but it is worth asking. However, these days there are no certain jobs, and even if in the past you might have been the best candidate, these days there are more candidates than ever who have the same type of qual and perhaps different experience which is valued. I often think I would not get my job if I applied for it now.

It sounds to me as though it is personal and she wants you to move on. This is twice she hasn’t hired you? You stayed after the first rejection and did a masters in her department? Whatever is going on, could be political, she doesn’t want you. She probably thought you’d be put off when she suggested the masters degree. It might be best to just move on. Sorry OP.

@Toilenstripes

It sounds to me as though it is personal and she wants you to move on. This is twice she hasn’t hired you? You stayed after the first rejection and did a masters in her department? Whatever is going on, could be political, she doesn’t want you. She probably thought you’d be put off when she suggested the masters degree. It might be best to just move on. Sorry OP.

Yes, there's an element of truth in this. I took advice from a number of people in the sector before I did the masters and it would be expected for a permanent role. I didn't do it just because she told me to. But the scales did fall from my eyes when I asked for career advice and she told me to do even more expensive qualifications. Some people are taking her at her word and doing those qualifications but for me, it's time to step back.

Did you complain to the university?
Yes I complained. Shortly afterwards my boss accepted a job elsewhere. The university said they couldn’t progress my complaint because as an ex-employee he’d be beyond their jurisdiction.

Part of his severance was the requirement to fulfil his supervisory obligations to his existing staff so they could complete their qualifications before he left. He completed everyone except me. So when he left the university sent my work to his new employer and said he has to do this, we have a contractual obligation. He refused. As a compromise his new employer paid for a third party to complete me (not helpful because the third party was a stranger who didn’t know my work and wasn’t such an expert in that specific field). I eventually qualified but I still feel like he got off the hook and got away with black balling me and putting a stop to my career. Just an example of the power that one influential person can have on your academic career.

I would think that methods of recruitment at quite different between professional service roles (that the OP is talking about) and academic roles. Presumably for professional services, recruitment is more 'normal' than for acadmic roles? Less dependent on reputation etc.

@GeorgeMichaelsEspadrille

I would think that methods of recruitment at quite different between professional service roles (that the OP is talking about) and academic roles. Presumably for professional services, recruitment is more 'normal' than for acadmic roles? Less dependent on reputation etc.

Please don't presume. I've stated a couple of times that I am being deliberately vague about the role. It does depend on reputation and on having a mentor. I used to think that I could create my own luck by working hard. Now I know this was hopelessly naive.

@BlueSoop

Did you complain to the university? Yes I complained. Shortly afterwards my boss accepted a job elsewhere. The university said they couldn’t progress my complaint because as an ex-employee he’d be beyond their jurisdiction.

Part of his severance was the requirement to fulfil his supervisory obligations to his existing staff so they could complete their qualifications before he left. He completed everyone except me. So when he left the university sent my work to his new employer and said he has to do this, we have a contractual obligation. He refused. As a compromise his new employer paid for a third party to complete me (not helpful because the third party was a stranger who didn’t know my work and wasn’t such an expert in that specific field). I eventually qualified but I still feel like he got off the hook and got away with black balling me and putting a stop to my career. Just an example of the power that one influential person can have on your academic career.

He sounds deranged.

My experience is the opposite. Departments specifically don’t want to employ their own students. It’s considered to be intellectually ‘incestuous’ I heard this opinion on many occasions, from many people and departments. I’m in the Humanities.

There's certainly more to career progression than working hard. Particularly if you want to be promoted/employed internally.

I presume (there I go again!) you aren't as abrupt IRL as you are on this thread OP?