This morning I’ve been dealing with telling candidates for a PhD or postdoc position that we would not proceed with their application
It’s a part of my job I hate

Some reflections on why...

We had a student drop out 1y into their PhD. It happens.
I received > 20 applications in the 7 days that the advert was online...

About half have a profile that could be a decent fit, the other half clearly not but they try their luck...
I think the situation is tense for postdocs and PhD applicants, folks try and they are right to do so
A lot of this is a gamble

That makes me realise how privileged I was never having to do this - I got a scholarship because there were 2 and if you ranked in the top 2 of that year’s master degree you would get one
I was ranked 2nd but out of 8
And could enrol for my PhD

I didn’t have to pimp a CV or try to pretend that this topic was the most interesting ever or that I would be a perfect fit for that position or get into an awkward situation of begging Profs to provide me with a support letter
I didn’t have to try and impress

What we get told in these support letters by senior profs sometimes makes me want to be physically violent - from the “they can work until 11pm each day” to “she is servile”
And the applicant uploads these letters
They know that their job relies on them being accepting this

And that’s what they put forward in their applications - “I promise to work even harder than now” and “i promise we will have a joint paper in less than 3m” or “look o have these 9 papers already from my master degree” underlined and in bold!
WTF! Seriously!

I now am trying to give constructive feedback and tell them why this may not be appropriate and that maybe the kind of stuff they project is not what we seek but that’s difficult to do in a way that won’t make them fee even more shit
But folks you’re better than this!

In short, sometimes my job rocks but sometimes we have to face the fact that academia is fucking broken
we have a duty to make things slightly less shit, maybe an email at a time is slow but we got to do it
We have to realise our privilege and fight for others to have a chance