Writing an application for non-academic role

[notlisteningwithmother]

For the last 10+ years I've only ever applied for academic roles (teaching and research.) I'm looking to move on following changes in personal circumstances and job insecurity. I have department leadership / management experience which I hope might be portable into other university roles, along with transferable skills from research and teaching presumably.

I need to remodel my CV. But where do I start? Beyond employment history and qualifications, and should I structure a CV by putting my experience into sections that match the headings in the job description e.g. management, strategy, handling a budget, communication skills? Use the 'essential' and 'desirable' criteria to structure a cover letter?

A lot of online CV templates seem to commend short applications - one side of A4 - that list key skills and provide a summary of employment history. That seems a mile away from the standard academic promotion application! Is less really more if the only instruction is CV plus covering letter. I'm not about to apply for anything specific, but probably need to get my head around standard practice if there is such a thing.

Any advice appreciated.

From my experience, the cover letter is the most important part of the application for a non-academic role. Yes, you should structure the cover letter by addressing all the criteria on the person specification, with examples. Some applicants even put the criteria as headings on the cover letter.

On the CV side, I have found these aren't scrutinised in as much detail as the cover letter during shortlisting but you could think about restructuring it so it is focused more on the transferable skills.

Hope that's useful and good luck!

Agree with pp that it’s all about the covering statement.

Academic CVs can be very long, running to 6-8 pages if there are a lot of papers or prizes or conference proceedings.

With ‘admin’ roles in a university you want a short and snappy CV (no more than two pages) which focuses on the areas of relevance to the role being applied for and then to draw out your relevant skills and experience in the covering statement, addressing the competencies in the person specification.

Our university has actually started doing anonymised applications for admin roles which means a CV isn’t needed at all, you just fill in qualifications and previous roles into the online application form.

I'd say 2 sides of a4 max for the CV. Emphasise skills rather than responsibilities. I would focus on the project management aspect of self-directed research too (planning, mitigating risk, meeting milestones etc etc.)

I'm a careers advisor for a university and I agree with the good advice you've had above!

Academic CVs really are the outliers in terms of length. Two page CV will be fine for most non academic jobs in the UK. You can structure it around the headings in the job description (this is often called a skills CV, Google it for some examples) or you can take the more common chronological approach and list your most recent roles in reverse date order and make sure the bullet points are relevant to the job description.

Your university careers service is likely to have some examples or advice for PhD students looking at non academic jobs so it might be worth seeing if you can access it as there will be some useful pointers about the differences between application styles and how you can reframe teaching and research for different roles. Some university careers services have open access websites so if you can't get into your own, see whether you can find someone else's! jobs.ac.uk also has good 'leaving academia' guides

Good luck! I enjoy working in an HE non academic role- much less stress but still a nice environment and student contact

Thank you very much. That's really helpful advice on all fronts. Focus on skills makes good sense and makes it easier to target visibly the key requirements of any role.

That point about the difference between skills and responsibilities made me think. My draft CV does read like a list of roles and duties without making it clear why these matter and what skills are involved and learned. Our internal promotion process expects not just a list of 'what I did' but a clear statement of the impact or outcome. I need to present my experience with that mindset.

At the moment I'd like to stay in a university environment, for the reasons the pp suggests. And I feel a bit less thrown in at the deep end thanks to friends in the administrative and professional services who have given me some generous insights.