Editor’s Note: Faculty and administrative careers get plenty of attention, but that’s not been the case for staff members in higher education. This is the first in a series of essays on staff career paths.
When I decided to move from the faculty ranks to a staff position, I was only tangentially aware of the possible career paths I could take while remaining in higher education.
Back then, the nascent (and controversial) “alt-ac” movement — Ph.D.s opting for alternative careers because of a weak tenure-track job market — was beginning to gain both traction and visibility. I had yet to identify a new path that would fit my skills and interests. And I was leery of traipsing blindly into a new profession. I didn’t want to be perceived as an interloper with a Ph.D., treating a staff career as a “plan B” while more experienced and knowledgeable people rolled their eyes at my presumptuousness.
So before I switched careers, I spent a lot of time talking with friends, colleagues, and peers, largely on social media but also at conferences and over Skype (yes, it was that long ago now). I learned about institutional structure and about the different types of work being done — unbeknownst to most faculty members — by staff members in far-flung corners of the campus. Finding my “what’s next” job became my full-time side gig.
It was through the kindness of relative strangers that I was able to break into the academic-staff sector and, specifically, into the field of educational development and academic technology. I found mentors, sponsors, and even champions who answered my many questions (like “Where do I find job listings in my new field?” and “How do I write a cover letter for a staff position?”) and wrote recommendation letters on my behalf. I’ve always wanted to repay their kindness and share my experience with others. Hence this series on staff careers in higher education.
Every career track within higher education has its own norms and nuances, which often differ across institutional type, too. I am aiming to provide general advice here, but also to help you develop specific skills to manage the variance and adapt accordingly. I want to demystify the staff hiring process — to help you make better decisions about the jobs you want to apply for, to craft better application materials, to do better at interviews.
An important caveat: The pandemic has radically changed the landscape of higher education, especially in terms of the availability of jobs. Covid shined a spotlight on staff professions, especially in student-support offices, but it also put a tremendous amount of strain on everyone doing those jobs. The result, as a recent article in The Chronicle documented, has been burnout. And just because our worth became more visible, and visibly valued, doesn’t mean that institutional budgets have allowed for expanded hiring and support of those staff members. It’s unclear what hiring is going to look like this academic year or in subsequent hiring cycles.
In short, it is tough out there right now. I don’t know if it’ll get easier or just keep getting tougher. What I do know: When good people leave higher education — because they can’t find tenure-track positions, because of burnout in teaching or staff positions, or because they don’t know how to match their teaching-and-research skills to a staff position on a campus — they take their wealth of knowledge, experience, and ideas with them. Academe needs all of those good people now more than ever.
So let’s start this series with a couple of exercises to help you understand your full skill set, including experience and abilities that may have been devalued or erased when you were looking for teaching jobs. In future columns, we’ll work on how to create a new professional identity as a staff member (including your digital persona), how to understand what to look for in a staff or administrative position, and how to draft your application materials.
Do a skills inventory. That was one of the most valuable things I did when I was first looking to transition away from teaching positions. Start your skills inventory by making a list of all of the tasks, jobs, and activities you’ve done. If you are a former instructor, include in your inventory all of those skills you probably excluded from your academic CV — such as volunteer work, hobbies, social activism, sports, and the like. No activity is too small or too inconsequential. On my inventory, I listed every workshop I offered or took, every volunteer opportunity I participated in, every freelance article I wrote. All of it. I especially wrote down all of the things that would have made me seem “less academic” had they appeared on my CV.
Under each task, job, or activity, leave space for three columns:
- Skills: What skills did you learn, practice, or improve while doing this?
- Likes: Which aspects of it did you like?
- Dislikes: What were all the parts of the experience that left something to be desired? Feel free to use strong language here.
This exercise serves a few purposes. For graduate students and Ph.D.s, it allows you to start thinking beyond “all I can do is teach and do research” and identify other skills you have inevitably developed over the years. It can also help you unpack the parts of teaching and research that you enjoy the most, and the least.
As your inventory starts coming together, look for patterns in the data: Which skills keep emerging? Which likes or dislikes turn up again and again? Next, translate the data into a list of your strengths, looking in particular for skills that are essential in a staff career. For example:
- Event planning. In your undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate years, did you (like me) organize conferences, fund raisers, new publications, seminars, or other events? I really enjoyed the collaborative nature of event planning, as well as the sense of community it can foster.
- Public speaking. Teaching and conference presentations give you experience in public speaking. Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re good at it. But in examining your career history, if you find that you enjoyed speaking on panels at conferences, workshops, and webinars, and that your talks were well-received, list it. It’s a valuable skill in any profession.
- Strategic communications. Can you write well? Especially for multiple audiences? Can you read complex materials and quickly and clearly communicate what they say? Are you good at figuring out how to reach specific and varied audiences?
- Leadership. This one can be difficult to demonstrate for people early in their careers. In my case, I wasn’t sure my yearlong stint as president of a graduate-students association could legitimately be counted as “leadership experience.” But try to think about other ways you may have shown leadership: Did you come up with project or seminar ideas and then shepherd them to fruition? Were you an early adopter of teaching innovations that you then demonstrated for others?
- Digital skills. If you’ve got them, list them in detail, including the names of digital tools you feel adept at using. Compared with your most tech-savvy colleagues, you may view your own digital savvy as inadequate. But most graduate students and Ph.D.s possess a skill set that is both uncommon and in demand. Another valuable skill: being able to explain technology in an accessible way.
Draw a skills matrix. Maybe you need a more organized visual tool to guide your career search. Try creating a 2x2 matrix — essentially draw a square and divide it into four. Title each square with one of the following four categories:
- Things I love and am good at.
- Things I love but struggle with.
- Things I don’t like but am good at.
- Things I don’t like and struggle with.
Fill in the matrix with all of the various tasks and activities that have characterized your professional life up to now. You can also do this exercise using your skills inventory.
The idea is to start to see the types of work that you both love and are good at, and use those to home in on how to proceed in the next phase of your search for relevant staff positions.
The reading list. There is almost too much information online about career transitions, making it difficult to know which books and articles are most useful for a transition into a staff career. Here are some of the books I was inspired by then, and that still inspire me now:
- My favorite: A career guide for graduate students and Ph.D.s called So What Are You Going To Do With That? Finding Careers Outside Academia, by Susan Basalla and Maggie Debelius. While the book largely focuses on off-campus careers, it includes a chapter — “How Do I Figure Out What Else to Do? Soul-Searching Before Job Searching” — that is invaluable for the early stage of a career transition.
- For a comprehensive overview, try Going Alt-Ac: A Guide to Alternative Academic Careers, by Kathryn E. Linder, Kevin Kelly, and Thomas J. Tobin. The book offers information on staff and administrative careers in academe.
- In her book, Putting the Humanities Ph.D. to Work: Thriving in and Beyond the Classroom, Katina L. Rogers has a chapter called “Students: How to Put Your Ph.D. to Work,” and an afterword, “Ten Ways to Begin,” that offer good advice applicable regardless of discipline or career stage.
Graduate students and Ph.D.s have a tremendous skill set and knowledge base that is of value — outside of the classroom, yet still within academe. Starting with these activities can help you begin to imagine yourself in a career elsewhere on campus.
