As part of an academic couple I have had my share of applying for jobs, but not recently. However this year I applied for a position at a university in Paris. The whole experience was interesting and frustrating. France really seems quite different from anywhere else I have dealt with. I did a lot of background reading and have seen that the current government have tried to shake up the university system substantially – it is underfunded, poorly adapted to student needs and overly rigid, perhaps exacerbated by the existence of the grandes ecoles. On the positive side, French research is still very good in many areas.

Academics at French universities are civil servants with many things about the job completely prescribed. For example, the number of hours of teaching, the salary and the application procedure. The last was unusual – fill in an online form, but also send 3 copies of the application by snail mail; send a CV but no letters of recommendation or even names of referees. Included in this is the requirement that the PhD degree certificate be translated – I did this myself and took to the head of the French department here, who said “Oh, I thought you had French” and proceeded to rewrite for me. My application was rejected because of the failure to meet the 3 snail mail copies requirement – luckily, some apologies and merging of two applications (I had applied for a related job on the advice of my local contact) saved the day. The selection procedure involved a committee of about 16 people, many of whom were researchers at the university concerned but with several other specialists in the research area from other nearby institutions. This was unusual in my experience and seems like a good idea. I was chosen for an interview in Paris, but since no costs for travel are reimbursed (apparently a standard French procedure!) I opted for a “visioconference” which was held at 11pm in Auckland (1pm in Paris). In my 20 minute presentation and interview I managed to speak French well enough to convince them I could handle teaching there, and was ranked first in this “concours”. Another very unusual feature was that the rankings of the candidates were semi-publicly available – surely against privacy laws in many countries. I was asked to accept or reject the offer during a fixed week, several weeks after I had been told that I would be offered it. In all that time, I never managed to find out the exact salary and benefits that would be offered, and was told that it would not be decided exactly until after I had been working there for a while!

In the end personal reasons meant I had to turn down the offer. From the point of view of experiencing Europe and being less isolated in research, not to mention the challenge of teaching in French, I have some feelings of regret. However, I am sure there would have been many negatives. I have gained some good experience for the future.