I keep applying for jobs. It has been a constant of my life since before I finished my PhD. While I have been employed most of this period, my contracts have ranged from one year to four months, to part-time, and so I cannot rely on staying employed without applying for jobs constantly.

Even when I am offered a job, I keep applying for jobs until I have a signed contract in my hands, because such offers have been overturned in the past. And once I do have a contract, it is generally for such a short period, and the application process in academia so long, that the work on new applications starts again immediately.

Now, you could legitimately question how academia is helped by young academics using so much of their time on job applications instead of actual research in what could (otherwise) be some of our most productive years. And I could go on at length about that, but it is not my topic today.

Today, I handed in an application to a Norwegian higher education institution which shall remain unnamed because I would like to be offered the job. And before I get to my point, I will say one thing for applications to Norwegian institutions: they all use the same system, which you will recognise as a miracle if you have tried applying for jobs in the UK, where every university seems to stake its pride on having invented a new and more convolutedly strange online application system which requires you to fill in anew each and every time not only all the places you have worked and what you did there, what you have studied and what you studied, and what you have written and where you have talked about what you have written, but also anything from your high school grades and which subjects you studied, to (I imagine through logical extrapolation) a list of your teachers and their grades in descending order. That is rather a long sentence. I apologise: The rant seems to have started prematurely.

Back to my point, the Norwegian online application system ensures that once you have entered your details, you do not have to re-enter them (simply update them if there is something new to add); and you can upload any documents required by the application. It is a wonder. You still have to work on the supporting statement, but it is a wonder.

Today's application used this system. In addition it