Applying for a position

Open position

At this moment there are no explicit open positions, but we are always willing to generate position for brilliant young scientists who come with a good plan for research that fits well in the long term plans of the group.

Applying for a position in my group

On average once or 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 spend time preparing the application. Any application from people who only present themselves and ask for a job is not take serious. 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 comprehensively 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 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. If your application letter starts with "Dear Sir" or anything like that, it is removed by the SPAM filter already. If you don't know my name you will not work here. "Please help me" is also unlikely to get through the SPAM filter.

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 they mean with that, I normally say '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 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 program 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 programmed 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 positions and see if your job is listed there, and if so, apply for the job, using the hints given above.

If you want to come for a training period, make sure you know what you want to learn while being in our group. Make sure you are flexible in the timeslot in which you want to come. Also, you should study the CMBI page(s) about 'stages' (stage is Dutch for training period; don't worry the rest of that page is in English) and select one or two stage-projects you like best. The CMBI generally does not provide financial support for students who come for training periods (and cost of living and housing gets close to 600 Euro/month and even more for short periods). My group provides a bit of money (roughly some 500-1000 Euro total) support for foreign stage-students who come for a longer period of time, but this is not enough to live from; you need to raise funds locally. Further, if you want to do a training period (stage) in our group, indicate why the stage you want to do fits nicely with your previous training and how you think your previous training prepared you to do nice research in the training period.

It is also possible to follow the class "Structure and Function of Biomolecules" (SFB) as a training period. This course takes place every year in February and March and will be presented in English. Most of the course material is available at our SFB teaching page.

Good Luck Gert Vriend