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How to Optimize Your PhD Adverts for Digital Recruitment

Advertising your PhD position online is as simple as writing your job ad and publishing it online, right? Wrong. Having your ad online is no good if candidates can’t find it or don’t click on it. To make sure that promising PhD candidates find your ad, you need to optimize the text for digital recruitment. Here are our top tips to get started.

Make it searchable

Whether potential candidates are using Google, your university’s career page, or an external job board, they search for PhD opportunities with keywords like, “PhD position papyrology” or “PhD in language acquisition Germany”. So when you sit down to write your ad, try to think like your candidate and use the terms that they will search for throughout your advert. Search tools look at several parts of a web page to determine what it’s about and repeating keywords in the ad text is an easy way to signal who the ad will be relevant for.

Be specific with your title

Try to also think about what keywords candidates might be searching for when you choose the title for your ad. Titles like “PhD position” or “PhD position in the Department of Engineering” are too broad to rank highly in search results and don’t signal to potential candidates that this position is relevant to their interests. Stellar candidates won’t click on your ad if you make them guess what field the position is in. Instead, try a title like “PhD position in electrical engineering at University X.” 

Your ad’s “slug” (the part of the URL that identifies the specific page) usually matches the page title (in this case, the ad title) which makes it even more important to use keywords in your title. The slug is one of the clues Google uses to determine what the page is about. If your title/slug is too broad, potential candidates won’t be able to easily find your PhD ad. 

Start strong

You’ve probably been told it’s important to start your ad off with a catchy opening sentence to get potential candidates’ attention and convince them to keep reading. This is true, but a strong opening line also serves another purpose in digital advertising. Google, external job boards , and social media platforms automatically excerpt the opening line as the “meta description” or page summary. This means your first sentence has to not only convince potential PhD applicants to keep reading your ad, it also has to convince them to click on it. When you start writing your ad, try to think of a 150 to 160 character opener that will look good in a Google snippet, search results list, or a social media preview. 

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Use section headings

When writing for digital, it’s important to break up your ad text into paragraphs with section headings. Many people read job ads on their phones and walls of text are off putting and difficult to read.  Using section headings makes it easier for PhD candidates to skim your ad and find the information they’re most interested in, like the requirements, or application deadlines. Using bullet points in your ad is another way to make it easier to read on a mobile device.  

One PhD position per ad

Try to avoid advertising multiple PhD positions in the same job post unless they’re for the same project. Combining multiple PhD opportunities into the same advert might seem like a savvy way to save money when advertising outside your university’s career page, but it’s not very search-friendly. Your ad will be irrelevant for half the people that find it and you’re making potential applicants do unnecessary extra work searching through the page to find the vacancy that’s relevant to their research interests. 

This advice goes double for combining both a PhD and postdoc vacancy in the same advert. These are two different keywords with distinct audiences. Don’t make it hard for potential applicants to find the PhD opportunity they’re searching for. 

Now that you know how to write a PhD ad that’s web friendly, why not take it a step further? Download our PhD advert toolkit to learn how to write a compelling job ad, create awareness of your vacancy, and measure the success of your recruitment efforts.

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While there is no magical solution when it comes to getting applications, there are several things you can do to increase your chances of filling your position.

• Find Your Perfect PhD
• Finding a PhD

Find Your PhD, Fast Finding a PhD has never been this easy – search for a PhD by keyword, location or academic area of interest. Search Now

• When looking for PhD research projects, a great place to start is with our comprehensive and up-to-date database .
• Speak with lecturers within your area of interest about potential PhD opportunities they may have.
• Attend Postgraduate Events . Whilst there, speak to current PhD students and career advisors to get an awareness of what PhD projects are on offer.
• Visit the postgraduate section of university websites and the PhD Research Council section of the GOV.UK website

Finding A PhD

Searching for PhD research projects can sometimes feel like daunting process. Often, it’s difficult to know where to find a PhD position or where to even start.

To make this searching process as easy as possible for you, we’ve curated a collection of the best places to search for PhD projects. By using our recommended collection, you should hopefully gain a greater insight into where your interests lie and which programme is best suited for you.

Our Comprehensive and Up-To-Date Directory

We can’t create a list of great resources and not include ourselves! At DiscoverPhDs, our primary aim is to connect great students to great PhD projects. To enable this, we provide a comprehensive database of PhD projects offered from universities all across the UK.

We regularly add to our database to ensure you’re getting the latest opportunities and the most relevant information and programme details. On top of this, we’ve created our database to be as easy to use as possible; all our PhD listings provide a direct ‘apply’ link or contact email address of the lead supervisor. This enables you to:

• Request further information about any aspect of the position,
• Enquire about the specific applications process,
• Connect directly with the supervisor

Universities Websites

Search on the website of the universities you are interested in as some many only be listing PhD research projects internally or may link you to other opportunities such as Professional Doctorate Programmes. As examples, have a look at the research pages of The University of Cambridge , Cardiff University , University of Leicester , Sheffield University and The University of Glasgow .

Your Current Supervisor

If you’re currently undertaking a research project or dissertation as part of your undergraduate or master’s degree, it would be a good idea to speak to your current supervisor. Not only would you have already built a good rapport with them, but having worked with you they will have a good idea on what PhD positions would utilise your strengths or best interest you. In fact, a noticeable percentage of past and current PhD students came into their PhD programme because of being recommended by their undergraduate supervisor. Your supervisor will be well-connected – make sure you take advantage of these opportunities.

Tip: Don’t just limit your discussion to your own personal supervisor. All supervisors are within their field of work because they have a natural passion for research and teaching. As such, most supervisors will be more than happy to help any student who wishes to follow in their footsteps and make their own impact.

Postgraduate Events

Nearly all universities hold regular Postgraduate Fairs and Open Days. As part of these events, current postgraduate students may be on hand to share their experiences of their projects and university. This is a fantastic opportunity to not only find out what PhDs the university is offering but to find out more about their facilities, research labs and library collection, etc. Given that you will be heavily relying on these resources during your PhD, it’s important that you know what’s provided by each university. Hearing student stories about what PhD life is really like, what to expect from supervisors and some of the challenges that current students have encountered can be really useful in your decision making process.

Besides the above, career advisers may also be available at these events. Speaking to them will help you understand what you can do with a PhD, whether a PhD is right for you, what degree class you’re expected to hold and how best to prepare for research projects. Seeing as they would have helped many PhD candidates through the decision-making process before, they will provide you with some invaluable insight that you would otherwise be oblivious to.

To help bring all Postgraduate Fairs and Open Days offered across all universities together, we’ve created a helpful Postgraduate Events page which we highly recommend you check out.

Research Councils

Research councils are nationally funded agencies which offer sponsored PhD research projects (also known as a PhD studentship). Different research councils cover different areas of research, these include:

• The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC),
• The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council ( BBSRC ),
• Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC),
• The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council ( EPSRC ),
• Natural Environment Research Council ( NERC ).

The GOV.UK website has a full list of nationally-funded research councils available online. You can find further details on these councils on the GOV.UK website.

Although our database includes PhD programmes offered by these research councils, it would be a good idea to regularly browse the website of the ones you are particularly interested in case they list some internal only. These councils play an important role in supporting and encouraging doctoral researchers and they regularly hold calls for applications for PhD funding. If you or your potential supervisor have a PhD project proposal defined but need funding, then applying to these calls may become a key first milestone in your postgraduate research journey.

For example, the EPSRC offers a Doctoral Training Partnership programme in which a research student is given funding to pursue postgraduate study with a research question that aligns with the Councils core engineering and physical sciences themes. These awards often have eligibility criteria linked to them, impacting which postgraduate research students can apply; an international student, for example, may not be able to apply to a certain UK based scholarship scheme but there are several other options that can still help you fund your doctoral research; this may involve taking out a postgraduate loan (or more specifically a postgraduate doctoral loan).

To make this searching process as easy as possible for you, we’ve curated a collection of the best places to search for a PhD. By using our recommended collection, you should hopefully gain a greater insight into where your interests lie and which programme is best suited for you.

Further Resources

As you continue your search of PhD research projects, be sure to check our our PhD advice articles, including how to prepare for your PhD application, and interviews with current and past doctoral students. Many of the people we’ve interviewed have completed degrees within a STEM discipline; they offer a wide range of advice on their individual approaches to applied research and independent study, as well as sharing some the impact their work has had. Many have continued the research of their projects within academia after finishing, whilst some have developed successful careers in industry and business sectors.

It’s worth noting that when you apply to undertake doctoral study, you may first be registered as an MPhil researcher, depending on the specific doctoral programme you apply for, officially become a full PhD student after passing an upgrade viva. At the upgrade stage, some students do decide to graduate with an MPhil research degree rather than pursuing further PhD study however this is less common.

We hope the above list will help you find the perfect PhD position and earn your doctoral degree.

If you have any recommendations besides these resources, please let us know at [email protected] so we can look to add it.

If you’re ready to start your search for your PhD, start now with our  PhD database .

Browse PhDs Now

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