Hi everyone, and welcome back to the 52 Career Actions series. I hope you had a good summer! I took time off to write the bulk of my new book, The Professor Is Out: The Essential Guide to Leaving Academia. I did get a few chapters done! But I did not finish a draft as planned, because when a family issue unexpectedly arose, I prioritized that. Thankfully, my editor at Random House, and agent, were both very understanding. I hope they remain as understanding when they realize this might mean a delay of a full year! Of course, a delay might not be the worst thing for the book, because I sure could use a bit more insight into just how AI is going to play out in the world of employment. It is not an easy time to be trying to give advice, I’ll say that…

In other news, Kel and I made an impromptu trip to Paris to celebrate their 65th birthday and it was wonderful. I write a bit about it in my new Substack, which is the third piece of news from the summer! Yes, I’m now on Substack, and you can subscribe! I’d love to invite you to be a paying subscriber because every sub helps me prioritize writing time on the book. In fact, Substack is where I’ll be sharing the writing process of the book, and other unscripted and more spontaneous thoughts about managing work and careers under our wider conditions of systemic collapse. To that end, I made a special discount link just for readers of this blog. BTW, paid subscribers get perks too: webinar recordings and more.

Anyway, let’s turn to the topic of the day: the writing sample portfolio. You would be surprised how much time I spend coaching and consulting on writing samples! It’s a real conundrum! A job application asks for it and suddenly you’re digging through folders at midnight trying to decide whether the 42-page chapter is too long or whether you should send the published article even though it no longer represents your current project. You have the seminar paper that became a dissertation chapter. The dissertation chapter that became an article. The article that is still sitting in revise-and-resubmit limbo. The conference paper that contains some of your sharpest thinking but has never quite become anything else. And then of course, published articles.

That’s why, this week, we are going to think about preparing a writing sample portfolio, that is, a selection of your written work. The portfolio contains more than one example of your writing, because different applications require different evidence. A research-intensive position may call for your strongest piece of original scholarship. An institution that is teaching-oriented would respond better to a piece that demonstrates clarity, accessibility, and an obvious connection to courses you could teach. A fellowship committee, however, might want to see the work most closely connected to the project you are proposing.

So, clearly, there is no one universal writing sample. It’ll help you process and peace of mind (and writing strategies in future perhaps) to have options ready before the application request hits you.

Your portfolio should ideally contain approximately three polished possibilities:

1. The flagship sample. This is your strongest piece of scholarship, the one that best demonstrates the intellectual contribution you want associated with your name.
2. The project-aligned sample. This is a piece that clearly represents your current or next research project and supports the story you tell in your research statement.
3. The adaptable sample. A shorter or more broadly accessible piece that can work when an application specifies a tight page limit or when your flagship piece is too specialized for the likely readers.

These categories may overlap, which is fine because the goal is to have choices, not to manufacture three completely different scholarly identities.

When curating these samples, something academics need to stop assuming is that ‘published’ automatically means ‘best’.  Or, conversely, that ‘published’ is ‘verboten.’  A published article does have some obvious advantages: it has survived peer review; it is polished; it looks finished because it is finished. It also demonstrates your professional identity. However, there are other considerations. You may not have a publication because you are still ABD (although I hope you do!) Or, your publication may date from some prior topic and not reflect your most current work. Some applications even specifically request unpublished material because they want to see your more “raw” thinking and writing, prior to peer review and editing. In short, publication status does not automatically make something your best writing sample.

So looking out across all the different pieces of writing you have, you need to choose the samples strategically. Ask yourself: if a committee member read only this piece, what would they think I do? Then ask the harder question: is that what I want them to think I do, for the purposes of this job application? Your writing sample is both proof that you can write, and evidence for the larger scholarly identity presented throughout the rest of the application.

Another consideration: a dissertation chapter is not automatically a writing sample. This is because it was written to function inside a dissertation, whereas a writing sample has to function independently. That means that you don’t want to just extract pages 87–117, save them as a PDF, and declare the task complete.

As you consider the dissertation segment to share, you might want to remove dissertation scaffolding that makes no sense outside the larger document. You do not want to make the reader hunt through references to previous chapters to understand your argument, or assume they know terminology you defined 60 pages earlier. It should ideally be a clean, stand-alone document. Now, that does NOT mean I’m telling you to rewrite a chapter for this purpose!  Job applications are already so onerous and time consuming that this would be a bridge too far. But a short introductory note explaining the sample’s origin and context will not go amiss. Keep it brief. Just enough so that the committee grasps what they are reading and why it matters. Remember: they are meeting you and your writing for the first time. Don’t dump them in the deep end without a raft.

The next thing: keep it concise, and remember they might not read the whole thing and the first five pages are critical. I say it over and over, but faculty members are just as distracted and exhausted as everyone else. They have no time. Your sample may be competing with dozens (or hundreds) of other documents for attention. You therefore cannot assume that every reader will carefully work through all 30 pages before deciding what they think. Look hard at your opening, and ask yourself does the problem appear quickly and is the intervention identifiable? Could an intelligent academic outside your precise specialization understand what is at stake? Does the reader know what you are arguing rather than simply what topic you are discussing? Your central contribution needs to clear at the top. A good intro signals the topic, the context, the approach, the methods, the conclusion, and the significance!

A big one: you must must must obey the page limit. If an application asks for 20 pages, send 20 pages. And it is my view that endnotes count (although if readers have different takes, please share them below). But close academic readers refer to notes, so the notes are part of the sample.  When no length is specified, resist the urge to demonstrate seriousness through sheer volume. That’s the undergraduate mistake! A tightly argued article-length sample is often more useful than an enormous dissertation chapter.

Last: proofread! Your writing sample is an application document, so treat it as your would any other application document. This means going through it with a fine tooth comb. Check the title. Check your name. Check page numbers. Check citations. Check the bibliography. Make sure you have tracked changes and comments. Eliminate stray dissertation formatting. Check figures and tables reproduce properly. Check that footnotes have not migrated onto the wrong pages during PDF conversion.

Now proofread it again.  And get two friends to read it. While one typo will not destroy an otherwise brilliant candidacy, a document full of obvious errors communicates intellectual sloppiness.

And regarding AI: I’m seeing some writers are now adding AI disclaimers and it’s probably a good idea. But read more in your field to find out conventions, and remember, they are shifting quickly.

So, now it’s time to build the portfolio.

First of all create a dedicated folder, then put your three strongest candidates in it and give them sensible filenames that include YOUR LAST NAME. For example:

Lastname_WritingSample_Article.pdf

Lastname_WritingSample_Chapter.pdf

Lastname_WritingSample_Short.pdf

Keep clean editable versions as well as PDFs. If for your own organization you need to add a topic word, do that, but keep it to just a keyword.

Then create a simple note for yourself recording: the word and page count of each sample; its central argument in one or two sentences; the types of applications for which it is best suited; whether it needs shortening for common page limits; whether publication information should be included and the date you last proofread it.

Application season turns minor administrative decisions into exhausting ones because you have to make dozens of them simultaneously. The purpose of this 52-week process is to move those decisions out of crisis mode.

So, this week, identify three potential writing samples, ensure they work as written, put them into saveable form with submission-ready file names, and put them all into a single folder. Presuming that one stands out as your main sample, here are steps to work through:

• Confirm that it represents the scholarly identity you are presenting on the market that is appropriate for the job at hand.
• Make the opening intelligible to readers beyond your narrow specialization.
• Remove dissertation-specific references or other contextual debris.
• Check that the topic, argument, method, theory, argument and stakes are evident in the opening pages.
• Prepare a clean title page if appropriate.
• Verify citations, notes, bibliography, tables, and figures.
• Proofread the final version.
• Export and inspect the PDF.
• Save the editable master and application-ready PDF with clear filenames.
• Prepare shorter versions if your field commonly requests different page lengths.

Then identify your second and third choices and note what work each still needs, you do not want to wait until an application deadline to discover that your “obvious” writing sample is 12 pages over the limit, contains six references to earlier dissertation chapters, and hasn’t been proofread since 2023.

While all of this is stressful and time consuming, you can make it less so. Remember that you have already done all the writing!  Now is the task of making sure that when somebody asks to see it, you can send the right piece without middle-of-the-night scrabbling around to adapt, correct, and proofread it.  I promise Future You will thank Past You for this level of organization, and the benefits will be obvious in your job search outcomes.