Prospective postgraduate research students are an important audience for many academic profile pages. In this post, I look at some practical steps that academic staff can take to make their profiles more useful to this audience.

In our research project looking at staff profile pages, we’ve heard from colleagues about the most important audiences they have in mind when putting together their profile pages. For academic members of staff, one key audience is potential postgraduate research students who are looking for a supervisor.

“What audiences do I expect to be looking at my profile? It’s mostly potential PhD students.” – Academic staff member, College of Science and Engineering

In this post, I’ll look at some practical steps you can take to make your profile more useful for this audience group.

Research at the Business School helps us understand the needs of prospective PhD students

About this research

At the University of Edinburgh Business School, research by Ben Marder and colleagues provides insight into how prospective postgraduate research students use profiles while looking for a supervisor. The research involved interviews with 19 students on MSc by Research and PhD programmes, who described their hunt for a supervisor.

Prospective postgraduate research students use profiles to get an impression of competence and warmth

Interviewees described how their search for a supervisor started by focusing on two factors:

• research alignment, or finding someone who works in a field that aligns with the potential PhD topic
• institutional attributes such as prestige or location.

They would then use this to produce a shortlist of potential supervisors.

From here, students use any available sources to find out more about the academics on their shortlist. This could include looking for an academic’s publications and social media profile. But the starting point is often the academic’s institutional profile page.

Looking at these profile pages, more subjective first impressions come into play.

First, interviewees described how they would use a profile to assess the competence of the academic they were considering as a supervisor. This might involve looking at job titles or publications – anything that would give information about whether the academic in question will have the required level of experience and expertise in a given area.

Second, interviewees described how they look for cues to indicate warmth. Will the academic be an interested mentor willing to devote time to the student? On an interpersonal level, is the student likely to gel with the supervisor? Does the academic come across as friendly or a bit scary?

For PhD recruitment, the research found that the most effective profiles struck a balance between projecting a high level of competence while still providing cues of warmth. Competence was found to be the more important consideration, but when looking at two equally competent supervisors, it was the impression of warmth that made the difference.

How to communicate warmth in an academic staff profile

Communicating warmth is not an exact science, but there are things you can do:

• Think about your profile photo. A friendly, professional profile photo helps to create a positive first impression.
• Write in the first person. Using the third person in profiles creates a sense of distance that can seem less welcoming to prospective PhD students.
• Include a video. A link to a video is a quick and credible way to demonstrate what you’re like as a person. A video that gets across your teaching style could be especially useful here.
• Include some outside interests. A brief indication of what you like doing outside of work helps to add an extra dimension to your profile.

Read more about this research

Ben Marder’s blog post summarises the research and provides advice on actions you can take to improve your profile:

Is your University staff profile turning off PhD students? – Eight tips to get more applications

Read the full paper here:

Impression formation of PhD supervisors during student-led selection: An examination of UK business schools with a focus on staff profiles

Tell prospective PhD students how to apply

Currently, the existing profiles in EdWeb have a tick box that displays whether a staff member is open to PhD supervision:

In our research, we heard from interviewees that students need more information at this point.

“But I think from a recruitment perspective, what you want is a little bit more guidance along the lines of what do I do next. Can I contact this eminent person or do I need to fill out a form that’s used in some areas? What do you want me to do? Do I send my research proposal that’s 20 pages long, or do you just want a CV? Or is it something in between?” – Professional Services staff member

Some academic staff were keen for prospective PhD students to get in touch directly about their PhD proposals, while others expressed frustration at receiving an excessive amount of emailed enquiries.

On its own, the binary yes/no box does not meet the needs of prospective students, who need to know more about what to do next if they want an academic to supervise their PhD. And it doesn’t meet the need of academics, who have differing preferences for the best way for prospective students to put in an enquiry.

Many prospective PhD students have low knowledge how to find and apply for a PhD, according to research by Nicola Dobiecka for the Prospective Student Web Team.

User research into the prospective postgraduate research application experience

With this in mind, it’s a good idea to include some information on what a prospective student should do next if they want to work with you as a supervisor. Should they email you directly with PhD enquiries, or should they check in with your School’s postgraduate office first?

“If you look at my website, there is a sentence, it’s like if you want to do a PhD with me, click that link. So that points you to another page that has a detailed instructions, like how to apply for PhD.” – Academic staff member, College of Science and Engineering

There isn’t a single approach to PhD applications across the University – it varies depending on the subject area. So it’s important to link to guidance on how it works in your area.

Test your page

As with any kind of web content, it’s always useful to get an outside perspective on your staff profile. Ask someone to have a look at your profile and find out what they think. Does it represent you in the way you want to come across? Does it include the information that your audiences will be looking for?

Further reading

The UX Service recently ran a training session for staff on how to improve profile content. Read the write-up at:

Making staff profiles more effective – what we covered in our May Content Improvement Club session

Read more about our research into staff profiles here:

Blog posts about the Role of Profiles project