Each PhD journey starts in the same place. You need to get a PhD position! Learn how to contact PhD supervisor and make a great impression!

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Hi! Welcome to Motivated Academic

Last week on our blog I was talking about research proposals. So I was talking about what a research proposal actually is and why do we need that in the first place. Why do you need to write one and if you want to get a PhD or in general any project in academia. Today I want to take a step back. Because always if you want to get a PhD position you would need to write a kind of research proposal and I want to talk about how do you actually initiate the contact with your prospective supervisor and how do you build a relationship that will help you to get the position you want. Before we start talking about specifics, I want to talk about what do you have to do first.

Before you take any action

So what do you have to do first is you need to ask yourself why do you want to do a PhD in the first place. So before you start contacting your prospective supervisors it’s important to understand why do you want to do it in the first place? Why do you want to do a PhD in that specific research area? And you might be wondering why do I ask you these questions. Well, you need to have a strong why and very clear why for why do you want to commit to doing a PhD. Why do you want to do a PhD in that specific research area because you need a source of inspiration? You need a source of inspiration because you’ll be committing three to five years of your life to do actually this program this PhD program in this specific research area.

So do you have a strong enough why to actually commit three to five years of your life to this specific PhD? Another question I want you to ask before you take any action in terms of writing a proposal or contacting prospective PhD supervisors is to understand how PhD fits in your career aspirations? So what I mean by this is having a PhD necessary to progress through your career? Say if you want to do an R&D, industrial R&D as your career path do you actually need a PhD to do it? Or maybe you want to be a professor and well that’s a requirement to have a PhD right? To reflect on those questions as you prepare before you actually start preparing your proposal for a PhD. And I want to emphasize having a clear why will help you to build a meaningful relationship with your prospective supervisor because if you know why you want to do it, your communication will be geared towards the outcome right? So your outcome will be to get a PhD because you want to XYZ, you want to become a professor, you want to change the world, you want to develop a solution to a particular challenge. And that’s why you really have to have why!

Step 1: Do your research (knowledge gap)

Now that you know why you want to do a PhD and why you want to do a PhD in this specific research area, I want you to do your research. You have to be very well prepared because before you approach your prospective PhD supervisor.

But I don’t want you to research them yet!  I want you to research your knowledge gap. Because even though your PhD might change as you go along it’s really good to have an idea of what you’re going to do in your PhD or what kind of research gaps you address in your PhD. And yes you got that right – well we do have to start with a literature review. Each research proposal starts with some sort of literature review because you need to know the research area you want to explore right?

And you usually do it by understanding the current state-of-the-art that is present in the present literature. So as you start doing your literature review, you will notice some sort of challenges, some sort of limitations or any other research questions that are still unanswered in the current state-of-the-art. So you would need to select what research questions you want to address or you want to explore in your research.  Once you identify those you need to have a clear rationale for why do you want to do it. Again answering the question why. So why those research questions need to be answered in the first place? Why they are timely? Why do you want to address them? It’s also good to know more or less what kind of methodologies or methods you’ll be using in your research. This is a good time to actually start thinking about methodologies, because as you do your literature review you will notice that some people use experimental methodologies, some people use theoretical frameworks to do their research. And it’s good to understand what they do and how they do it. And can you demonstrate any experience using those specific methodologies? If you can then that will make your application stronger! If you cannot think about what other skills you have that you can bring to the table and that you can use to actually learn those methodologies that you have to use in your research.

Step 2: Do your research (PhD supervisor)

Once you identified what you want to work on what’s the research that you’d like to perform during your PhD, it’s a good time to start identifying potential PhD supervisors with whom you want to work and hopefully who will want to work with you.

So you’ve done your literature review you probably identified a couple of respected research groups in this specific research area you want to do your PhD in. So it’s good to think about your prospective supervisor as someone whose expertise is relevant to your work. In fact, their expertise needs to be relevant to your work because they need to be able to advise you to do your research right? So they have to be an expert in that specific research area. It’s really good to check whether they’ve actually published in your research area and it’s good to check whether they publish recently because that will indicate that they are still active and they are still publishing and working in that research area.

As you identify several prospective PhD supervisors either because you want to work with a specific person or maybe you want to work at a specific university or specific country you shortlist them.

It’s good to check the web pages of prospective supervisors because if they have funding, they will usually advertise PhD positions. So you can you may want to check their university website. There is also a very useful web page FindAPhD that lists all the opportunities that are available worldwide. And well more often you can find opportunities to do a PhD on social media.

If you identify a specific PhD supervisor they might be active on social media and they might be posting opportunities for PhD. Definitely, I do it so if you follow me and if I post a PhD opportunity well that means I have funding for it.

Step 3: Write a research outline (with a PhD supervisor in mind)

Step three – write your research outline. I specifically say “write research outline”, not a research proposal because you don’t want to spend time writing 3 000 words of research proposal before you actually contact your prospective PhD supervisor.

That’s mostly because you often work with your PhD supervisor to develop the full research proposal that is usually tailored towards that specific research group. And you don’t really want to go through weeks or even months developing your research proposal and then to have it changed you know completely.

A research outline is completely different from a research proposal. It is also different from a research interest. Research interest is kind of a broad statement of what you’re interested in and what research you want to do. A research outline is you know kind of a little bit more specific than research interest. The research outline will say what it is that you want to do during your PhD so that will be based on the initial work initial research that you did. 

It will be roughly 500 words or two pages a4 double spaced or 1.5 spaced. That outline would include the context in rational so it will include WHY for your research. Why do you want to do that research? why it’s important that you do that research?

It will include research gaps, kind of reflecting on WHAT it is that you want to do and what you want to address in your PhD?

And finally, it will include the hypothesis or hypotheses that you will test in your PhD program. So that’s the HOW because you will also mention uh the methodologies that you want to use.

You can see that having done the literature review and having reflected on what has been already done in the literature, you will be able to write a very strong research outline. Each prospective PhD supervisor will be very happy to actually see that research outline because that means you’re committed. That means you’ve done the work and basically you are eager to do a PhD.

Step 4: What is your funding status?

Now each PhD supervisor either has funding or doesn’t have funding. But in most cases when the prospective supervisors advertise positions that means they do have funding. If they don’t advertise, they might not have funding. But still, they might be willing to help you get funding.

So let’s be honest! regardless of how novel your research project might be, it still needs to be funded in one way on another. Well, you may have noticed that some supervisors have advertised funded positions as I mentioned but in those cases, those positions might have some predefined scope and objectives. So you might not have as much flexibility in terms of doing the research and in terms of developing your own ideas. If the supervisor doesn’t advertise from the PhD positions so if you cannot find any indication that they have any funding or they have any open positions, it is likely that they don’t have funding. It doesn’t really mean that they cannot help you! It’s worth to talk to them, it’s worth to get in touch anyway if you really want to work with that specific person.

In step four I really want you to explain what is your funding status as well. Because as I’ll discuss later, you will see that funding status is quite important to actually allow you to do a PhD or enable you to do a PhD with that specific supervisor. You need to know exactly what is your funding status and whether there are any research opportunities or funding opportunities that you can apply for. So to increase chances of working with that specific PhD supervisor or that specific university even though they might not have a specific funding source, it’s really good to do some research again.

So it’s really good to research the potential funding sources. If you know look at the web pages of the universities or any other if you just do a simple google search saying “university” + “PhD” funding you will be able to identify at least several sources for PhD funding. What is really important is when you’re shortlisting these schemes the funding schemes that you can apply for make sure that you check the eligibility criteria. So make sure that you meet the eligibility criteria because there isn’t you know a very unique form formula for that. Each funding source has different eligibility criteria so please do check that before you actually propose this to your prospective PhD supervisors.

Step 5: Draft email copy

Now that you know what you want to do with whom you want to do it and how do you want to fund this well it’s time to start drafting the email cop. When drafting the email copy well you have to consider the perspective of the PhD supervisor so think about what kind of information they would like to receive in your email. What kind of information they will be interested in? In most cases, PhD supervisors receive a couple of such emails per day or per week.

I get at least one or two emails like this per day. From my perspective, and again that perspective might be different for different PhD supervisors, but from my perspective I encourage you to think about why the research you want to do is relevant to the research of that specific supervisor And that’s why you need a research outline. So you attach that research outline with your email.

Think about your skills. Do you have relevant skills or can you demonstrate your ability to learn those skills pretty quickly in your PhD? And that’s why you attach a CV for with that email.

Finally, think about your research funding status. That’s why you need to identify opportunities to fund your project and whether that’s funded internally by the university externally by some sort of funding body.

So think about these three options these three ideas: Why the research is relevant? Do you have relevant skills? And do you have funding or do you know sources of funding that you can work with your supervisor together and apply for together?

And as I said I receive a couple of those emails per day. There isn’t a perfect structure for this email. It’s a general email I would say and everyone has a preference regarding email. I cannot give you know the golden standard for writing this sort of emails. But I can give you more or less a rough structure of what this email should include.

Well at the very beginning you should introduce yourself and introduce your background. But please don’t write you know essays like 100 words or something like this. Keep it short keep it crisp. Maximum one to three sentences because you don’t really want to talk about yourself you want to talk about the research that you want to do.

Next, once you introduce yourself, you’ll be talking about the research idea and the rationale for that research. So please do refer to your research outline use that document it’s a very useful document that you will be working on before you contact your supervisor. You need to introduce your research idea and inspire your prospective supervisor because they need to understand that idea and they need to know why that research is important?

Finally, it’s a really good idea to mention your funding status. Whether or whether or not you have funding. If you don’t have funding that’s also okay but please be ready to actually identify the potential funding sources that you can work together with your supervisor to apply for.

Again if they don’t advertise any specific positions. If they advertise possessions, please mention that you are interested in that specific position [and] in applying for that specific position. 

A good practice for writing emails to potential PhD supervisors

I want to finish with good practice for writing this sort of emails. Because usually this is the very first point of contact that you make with your prospective PhD supervisor, unless you met them somewhere else on LinkedIn or conference, but in general this first point of contact is your opportunity to show the willingness to drive the project forward. You really want to you know use your research outline and present the funding options just to give your prospective supervisor an idea that you are very eager to do a PhD and that you are very eager to drive the project yourself.

Because at the end of the day PhD is about transforming you into an independent academic. Be as brief as possible. Keep your email crisp, to the point and avoid very vague statements. You really want to convey a very single message and that message is you’ve got a research idea, you know you’re the best person to deliver that research, you know what funding is available and you just want your supervisor to work with you throughout three to five years and collaborate on that specific research.

You want to impress your prospective PhD supervisor with your driving ideas.

And that’s why you will be you know very positive about your product but please don’t go too extreme! Don’t use hyperboles or superlatives when you address your prospective supervisor.

You want to be known for your research ideas and not how good you can sell yourself. Then, it is the important point that I need to raise here is you really have to tailor your email to a specific supervisor. Don’t use generic forms and don’t butter up your supervisor It will come up! It’s very easy to identify whether the email has been tailored or whether it’s been mass-sent to many people at the same time.

Finally very important, please proofread and spell check and grammar check your emails because you want to give your PhD supervisor a professional impression. 

You want to be seen as someone who cares about these small details and someone who can deliver the project to a high standard. Very small things matter sometimes. 

A final word…

In summary, you need to build a strong relationship with your prospective PhD supervisor before you even start working with them. You have one chance to do it in most cases.  The best way to do it is to give them the information that they need. Rationale and novelty of your research project, why you’re the best person to deliver that research project, and how this project will be funded. I want you to present yourself as an eager and professional researcher who is willing to drive the project forward.