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By Russell S. Powell

So you want to work at a college or university, in marketing or public relations? Perhaps you are an unemployed Ph.D. looking to move into campus administration. Perhaps you are fresh out of college, having majored in journalism, communications, or marketing, and are seeking your first job. Maybe you have been a print journalist until a recent round of layoffs at your newspaper, and find yourself unexpectedly needing to retool midcareer.

Or maybe you are already working in our field, but looking to move up to a position with greater responsibility, or to move on because you don’t see eye-to-eye with your new boss. Maybe you have suffered from the indignity and unfairness of being laid off, like your unfortunate counterparts in print journalism.

(I speak from experience: I was laid off from a state institution during a previous economic downturn in the mid-1990s. It was painful, but I survived. In fact—although this may be difficult to appreciate by people who are currently unemployed—it was one of the best career moves that could have happened to me, as I was unhappy in my job but failed to see it at the time. I would not have left on my own power because of the lure of economic security.)

Regardless of your motives for wanting to work in higher education, it’s a terrible time to be doing it. Advertised positions have dried up. Even some of the bigger college and university PR shops have experienced cutbacks, and are not hiring at the moment. When they do, the competition is stiffer than ever.

In that environment, how can you make your candidacy stand out?

Start with the basics. You need an impeccable cover letter and résumé. As communications professionals, even in the best of economic times we are held to the highest standards when we apply for a job. It’s not great to have a grammatical error in your cover letter or vita if you are a marine biologist or a computer programmer. But for an aspiring PR person, such mistakes can be fatal. With 100 or more applicants, in many instances, even the slightest flaw in your application can send you to the reject pile.

Don’t be proud. Have someone proofread your written materials before you submit them. We know from experience that it’s hard to remain objective about our own work. Sometimes we can look at an incorrect word or phrase in our own prose a dozen times without catching it, whereas it may leap off the page to a fresh eye. Don’t risk letting that fresh eye be someone on a search committee. Spell-check and grammar programs are useful, but hardly foolproof. Rely exclusively on them at your peril.

Too often, anxiety about getting hired blinds us to the dynamics of the search process. In trying to sell ourselves to a prospective employer, we sometimes fail to connect the dots between the job advertised and how our experience meets its requirements. The cover letter is the obvious place for that, but applicants frequently merely restate information found on their résumés rather than explain it. If the résumé is your general document of record, the cover letter is the place to supply details relevant to the requirements of the job advertised.

For most college employees, sitting on a search committee falls outside their usual duties, and they may be reviewing a stack of résumés while sitting up in bed late at night. That’s just the way it is. So don’t waste their time with needless information (of course you will provide references upon request!). Don’t make them search for relevant dates of employment, or sift through pages of routine accomplishments and interests (it’s nice that you served on a governance panel and enjoy hiking and jazz, but that’s not going to get you in the door). Keep your résumé clean, simple, and straightforward.

Interview time. If you are fortunate enough to get one, consider the challenge confronting your would-be boss and colleagues. They are in the position of offering a total stranger thousands of dollars in salary and benefits on the basis of a small sample of information. So don’t give them needless cause for anxiety. The interview is their one window into your personal appearance. If you get the job, you may not have to wear a jacket and tie to work every day, but don’t dress down for the interview. This is your best opportunity to reassure people that you can pull off a professional look when necessary.

I once sat on a search committee in which a finalist appeared at a second interview dressed entirely too casually. His misreading of the situation resulted in his dismissal from the shortlist. Another time a candidate’s cologne was so overpowering I could barely concentrate on his answers. He did not get the job.

It may seem obvious to do some research about the institution before you apply, but candidates using a shotgun approach in their job search often neglect this. Yet generic-sounding cover letters are a real turnoff, as is empty praise about our campus. If an applicant can’t take the time to know something about my college, why should I take an interest in him or her?

At an interview, the stakes are even higher. I’ll never forget the time I interviewed a candidate for a marketing position who arrived brimming with written notes and questions resulting from her exhaustive research. She had more questions for us than we had for her. Her preparation was both an asset for the position and indicative of her genuine interest in working for our college. She got the job.

Finally, remember that your timetable is not the college’s timetable. Searches slow down for a variety of reasons, from interdepartmental haggling over the job description to a shortage of money to the simple logistics of assembling a diverse search committee. You may be desperate for a job, but the process will not be hurried, so give up worrying too much about timetables, and don’t be alarmed if the search drags on beyond the original deadline. Avoid calling repeatedly to inquire about your status, lest you be labeled a pain in the neck.

Basic as those job-seeking practices are, they are often overlooked or taken for granted. But in the current job market, it is more important than ever to take them seriously if you want to be taken seriously. Beyond such generic aspects of your job search, what are the critical qualities employers seek in their communications staff members? Here are a few:

Enthusiasm for your product. You simply can’t practice good public relations unless you believe in what you are doing. You can’t be ambivalent. Part of being an effective PR person is to serve as an internal critic, so that you can promote your college or university without having it backfire on you. But if you don’t fundamentally support an institution’s mission, it’s better not to apply, or if you are already working there, it’s time to move on.

Initiative. A portion of any PR job is reactive. Events regularly happen on and off the campus that require a response, often on tight deadlines. We have to be nimble and prepared. But there are many stretches when we can initiate action or not. Few things are more frustrating to an employer than discovering that employees have been sitting on their hands because their supervisor didn’t tell them exactly what to do next.

Most employees chafe when given too much direction, anyway. So if we want the freedom to operate as we see fit, it is incumbent upon us to take judicious steps to advance our institutional and departmental goals, without always needing to be told. You can’t just go off on your own and take unilateral action, of course, but your ability to anticipate what needs to be done and act on it could make the difference as to whether you get—or keep—your job.

There’s always something you can do to get to know your institution better, or the people who report about it. Sit in on a class. Meet with a professor. Visit a journalist. Attend an event. None of those activities exceed your authority, and they all contribute positively to your reputation with all concerned. And your reputation is perhaps your leading asset. That’s why doing research for your cover letter, and preparation for your interview, is so important: It shows that you are invested in your work and able to take independent action.

Adaptability. You have to be flexible in today’s job market, in recognition that the public-relations industry is in transition. The higher-education marketplace and the tools we use to communicate with our various publics are changing, and in ways that hold the potential to give us greater control of our messages and where they are going. It is an exciting, if challenging, time to be in the field.

A willingness to acknowledge and embrace this shifting landscape is a key to succeeding today. You don’t have to have all the answers, but you should share the curiosity for learning that characterizes the scholars whose work you will be asked to promote. Enthusiasm for learning is an asset for a PR officer in almost any field, but it can show that you are particularly well suited to work in higher education.

But don’t go overboard in stating your qualifications on that front. Few people, for example, can claim expertise in all areas of Web-site development: content,design, and programming. Most of us specialize in one, or at most, two of the three. You may want to make yourself indispensable to a future employer, but it’s best not to lay claim to skills you don’t fully possess. You are far better off acknowledging what you do well and relying on other people’s expertise where needed. That doesn’t mean that you can’t supervise a Web site’s development, but it is unrealistic to think that one person is going to carry off all aspects of that task equally well.

“Social media” is the phrase on everyone’s lips these days, as higher education tries to tap into its vast potential. Yet despite the somewhat grandiose claims of some people, no one has really gotten a good handle on how best to employ social media (Facebook, MySpace, blogs, etc.) for higher education, or can predict the future of this mushrooming field. Changes in communications technology are unfolding faster than we can adapt. We should be wary, then, of definitive answers and instead adopt an open-minded attitude, while honing our ability to think on our feet.

This is no time to be a Luddite, or its opposite: so enamored with gadgetry that you forget the users on the other end. To succeed today, it is essential that we drop some of our most cherished assumptions about what works and what doesn’t, and demonstrate a willingness to sacrifice our comfort level as we simultaneously learn how to tap the potential of these powerful new tools—and prepare for new ones.

Writing skills. Despite the huge transition taking place in our industry, writing remains the core of any communications position. From memorandums to strategic plans, press releases to alumni periodicals, Web sites to speeches, the written word will always be the foundation of nearly everything we do. Becoming a good writer is a lifelong undertaking; regardless of where we are in terms of experience or ability, we can always improve.

The way we view ourselves as writers should positively reflect a range of the qualities sought most by prospective employers: a desire to learn, a willingness to take initiative, a passion for our subject, and a capacity to adapt to change.

In the end, however, finding a job is one of those areas in life where you have to trust to fate. You can and should prepare and put your best candidacy forward, but job searches are not a science. They are often subjective and can hinge on the smallest of things, and much of it remains invisible or out of your control. You can take solace in two things: You have a good chance of ending up in a job where you belong, and, more important, you only need one.

Russell S. Powell is a public-relations officer at Elms College, in Chicopee, Mass. He previously worked as director of public relations at Hampshire College and at Greenfield Community College, and as a consultant. He writes for On Message, our column on career issues in academic public relations. If you would like to write for the column, send your ideas to careers@chronicle.com.

(Source from http://chronicle.com)