Candidates hunt for clues
Faculty pages, lab sites, publications, social media, funding pages — and still no clear picture of the working relationship.
Why I built Research Portage
Research recruitment should make fit clearer before the inbox fills up.
Researchers are already good at explaining their scholarship. What is often much harder for a prospective student, postdoc, or research staff member to see is what it is actually like to work with the person leading it.
The contradiction
Beautiful research website. Same old recruitment process.
Faculty profiles are built to document academic careers. Personal and lab websites can do an excellent job of showcasing research. But recruitment is still often reduced to one line: ‘Email me if you’re interested.’
That leaves candidates to piece together whether there is an opportunity, what the supervisor is like to work with, what expectations matter, and whether the fit makes sense — usually through a cold email and several rounds of back-and-forth.
Research Portage does not replace a faculty profile or lab website. It adds the recruitment layer they were never designed to provide.
The inbox becomes the process
Long inquiry emails, repeated questions, inconsistent information, and multiple exchanges just to decide whether a conversation is worth having.
Fit stays mostly invisible
Research alignment is only part of the decision. Expectations, communication, supervision style, independence, and ways of working matter too.
Why fit deserves more attention
This may be 2–4 years of working together. Sometimes more.
Academic preparation and excellence matter. But grades and credentials cannot tell you how someone prefers to work, what kind of guidance helps them thrive, how expectations line up, or whether the research relationship is likely to work well for both sides.
Research Portage is not designed to replace admission standards, academic judgment, HR processes, or human decision-making. It adds structured information about the relationship that those systems were never designed to capture.
The idea
Make the first recruitment conversation better before it starts.
I built Research Portage from the perspective of someone who has supervised students, led research teams, reviewed prospective applicants, and watched how much of academic recruitment still happens through improvised email exchanges.
The product is intentionally focused: a recruitment page that shows the opportunity and the working environment, an evidence-informed Fit Check that can be tailored by the researcher, and a structured expression of interest that gives both sides better information before deciding what comes next.
Show how you supervise and work
Surface fit before the first meeting
Review interest in a consistent way
A better first step