People applying for doctoral programmes need more in their pitch than academic achievement – they need to demonstrate abilities, notably communication, research and interpersonal skills

To identify what PhD programmes look for in candidates Lilia Mantai (Uni Sydney) and Mauricio Marrone (Macquarie U) analysed selection criteria in 13 500 advertisements for PhD places on a European research recruiting platform. In a new paper for Studies in Higher Education they report, “many attributes requested in PhD student recruitment are what is commonly referred to as transferable skills.”

While attribute rank varies between countries and disciplines, prior teaching and work experience, “are considered least important.”

As to PhD’s employability, “our data shows that successful PhD applicants may possess a breadth of attributes transferable to other careers already.”

Which is good, what could be better is universities, “communicating how the attributes required for PhD admission will be applied and further developed during the PhD.”

“To further one’s employability and become ‘more well-rounded researchers, practitioners and leaders’ is so far left up to the doctoral candidate’s initiative and ability to firstly, locate formal or informal development opportunities and secondly, accommodate these in already busy PhD schedules, they write.

“We recommend embedding an explicit career development focus in PhD programmes and promote candidates’ work-readiness building on and furthering the attributes that we found might already be present at PhD admission.”