Applying for a position in my group
On average twice per year I hire a PhD student or a post-doc to work with us on one of the two main topics of the group. This stands in a marked contrast to the average of two people per day who ask if I have a job for them. So, what should you do to make more than the 0.5% chance that you have by luck alone?
First of all, I am not different from any other group leader. I only look at applications from people who show immediately in the first three lines of their letter that they have actually spent time preparing the application. Applications from people who only present themselves and just ask for any job are not taken serious. Applications that start with "Dear sir" will not be read. It is YOUR duty as applicant to find out what my group is working on, what kind of people we are looking for, and what you can mean for the group. To do so, look at our WWW page and look at the articles written by the group members over the last three years. If that gives you the impression that you could add something to the group, then you should think how to formulate that concisely and comprehesively without looking very dumb or very arrogant. Make sure the things I must know are on page 1 of the application. Useless information like hobbies, the family name of your mother, the fact that you went to some high-school somewhere, the fact that you have a drivers license, etc., should be skipped, or at best placed on the last page. Make sure that you explain which of your previous experiences you think are relevant for working in our group.
If you work outside 'the west', you have an extra handicap. Not that we simply assume that people from south-america, africa, or south-asia are by definition dumb, but it is very difficult for us to judge what your papers and courses are worth. And flying you in for an interview is too expensive. Coming from outside 'the west' your best bet is a letter of recommendation from a professor with extensive experience in 'the west'. Obviously, a few articles in international journals with you as first author will help very much too. If you write your master-thesis, write it in English and put in somewhere on the WWW so we can see 'how good you are'. There are several other trivial tips. But in general, make sure that we get a good opportunity to judge you, because that is your major bottleneck, being properly evaluated.
Make sure you understand how science is organized in the country where you want to go to. For example, I often get letters from people from India and Pakistan who want to do an internship. As I don't have any idea what that means, I normally answer 'no, sorry'. Obviously, to you it seems stupid that I don't know what an internship is, but my country organized science differently. And as it is you who wants something from me, and not the other way around, you should make sure that I know what you want and what you have to offer.
The points listed above are very general and hold for each job application. If you want to explicitly work with me, you should be a smart scientist, but also a good programmer. We design software to solve biomedical problems. And we will not spend time teaching people how to write software. You should be able to start programming on day 1. I therefore want to see the source code of your last programme of 10000 lines or more. No need to apply when you cannot provide that. (It doesn't need to be scientific software, a game, or a programme to administrate the inventory of the student club is fine too; just as long as it is your software).
Obviously, you can try to write an open application, but that only makes sense if you are a very exceptionally brilliant person, the kind of person so much worth having that we just raise the funds to hire you. Otherwise, look at the list of open position below and see if your job is listed there, and if so apply for the job, using the hints given above.
Good LuckGert Vriend
http://www2.cmbi.ru.nl/groups/modeling-and-data-mining/jobs/
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