There was never a question about what post I would apply for,
but it was certainly a question of how it would fit.
There was one institution I sent an application off to, for example,
who didn't even have a music department.
And I was thinking: how would that work, research-wise?
And realistically it was not going to work for me:
I did need somewhere which has a good music research department as well.
So that balance came into play in the interview process
or the application process.
But I was always able to market myself as a French poetry specialist.
- But they will have to make the case, probably,
that they can operate within one department.
- I was looking particularly at transferable skills
and thinking about how they matched up.
One of the most useful things I think I did during my PhD
was I attended a week-long UK graduate course,
that was open to anyone who had AHRC funding.
They had a whole day on that course about targeting your CV
and doing your covering letter and applying for jobs,
and they were very good because it was completely geared towards people doing PhDs
but they were looking both at academic jobs and non-academic jobs.
And I think that really helped me write a CV that was...
...where I was able to bring out my transferable skills
and in particular my research and analytical skills
rather than just thinking 'this is my discipline,
and I have to apply for a job in it.'
If you're applying for jobs and you're not...
...you feel that you could fit in in a number of areas,
or you feel that your research could cross over into a number of...
you could use your skills and your research to cross over into a number of areas
then I think it's very important when you're applying for jobs
to put a lot of effort into the covering letter
and a lot of effort into the CV, and
really make sure they match up with what's being asked for.
Because if you don't map exactly onto the person specification,
then you could end up putting in things that are irrelevant
because they're important to you,
or not proving that you have the skills to do the job.
So I think especially if you're applying...
especially if you're applying to work on an existing project,
so as a post-doc, I think it's really important
to demonstrate how you match up
to the job specification.
Almost more than it is if you're applying for
for a lectureship, say, where the important thing is to show that...
where perhaps it's more important to show
your own skills and your own potential and your own interests.
- it was advantageous in the sense that
I had more strings to my bow.
And also, the institution I've ended up in at Bangor University
is relatively small departments,
and it just works really well, in terms of
how we interact between the different departments
to get the mixture going.
It was a huge bonus for that post, yeah.
And I probably bigged it up an awful lot more
than I did in other applications, yeah, for other institutions.
- It's interesting, because on the whole
I think they probably do end up having to choose, and they do
find that there aren't all that many jobs that are completely geared
to that particular combination.
There will occasionally be jobs that are
absolutely geared to their combination; and then
they're very likely to get them.
But I still get a feeling that very often a job
has your name on it: and again just to do
my own experience a little bit,
that having done two languages equally up to that level,
out of the four or so jobs I've ever got,
two of them really required those two languages to be in parallel,
so I think that may happen.
But the student obviously has to expect to go in for jobs
which aren't an exact fit to their field,
and to make choices.
