Acing the Academic Job Market: Practical
Advice for Applicants
At the AAASS 2003 convention in
What Search Committees
Eve Levin,
In
twenty years as a faculty member, I have served on numerous search committees,
and I chaired or co-chaired four. Typically, the applicant pool numbers well
over 60, even for one-year, non-renewable positions. Most candidates have the
required credentials; over half have promising profiles. How, then, do
employers distinguish among them? What should applicants do to increase the
odds that they will number among the
For a
successful application, preparation is the key, and it needs to start early.
Begin by choosing a graduate program that has an established reputation—and
high-quality training to match. Select your fields with an eye to
employability. Formulate a dissertation topic that will intrigue a broad
audience in the discipline. Gain the requisite experience. Of first importance
is teaching, not only as a discussion section leader, but your own classes.
Develop a scholarly presence, through conference presentations and successful
grant applications. Publish. An article in a refereed journal is best, but book
reviews (including on-line), translations, encyclopedia pieces, and NewsNet articles
all count in your favor. Professional service adds luster, too, on department
committees, in AAASS or its affiliate organizations, or with community groups.
There is no substitute for solid accomplishments.
But in
addition to accomplishments, candidates must be able to negotiate the job
market adeptly. There are usually three selection points where successful
contenders pass muster while others are eliminated. Although you cannot
guarantee that you will be chosen, at each point, you can position yourself to
look attractive to the search committee.
Avoiding
the “inactive” drawer
Usually
members of the search committee won’t know you personally, so it is essential
that your dossier present the person you know yourself to be. The job ad will
tell you what the employing institution is looking for; shape your materials to
match.
Your
application should be timely, complete, and uncluttered. Many committees work
on a tight schedule, and they begin reviewing applications even before the
deadline. Get your materials in early. Don’t hold off hoping for some new
accomplishment to add. If there is a major change in your C.V. (such as an
article accepted for publication, or Ph.D. awarded), you can send a
supplementary note.
Send
all the materials requested in the job ad in one neat packet, except the
confidential letters of recommendation. Check with your recommenders yourself;
don’t expect the search committee to chase them down or tell you that something
is missing. Don’t send materials that aren’t requested; they aren’t likely to
be read, and their presence in the file will annoy the committee.
Most
dossiers will contain the following materials:
Letter of application, which should be
succinct—two pages, maximum. In consideration of readers’
middle-aged eyes, use 12-point font. Describe your specialization in terms
matching those in the advertisement; otherwise, the institution would violate
Federal Equal Opportunity guidelines in hiring you. For a teaching-oriented
institution, describe your teaching interests and experience first, then
present your scholarly interests. Reverse the order for a research-oriented
institution. Use the letter to put a human face on the factual data in the
C.V., don’t just repeat it. In addition, talk about what you can offer this
particular institution—something you can learn by checking its Web site. State
that you are available for interview at the institution’s convenience.
C.V., which should be set up in an accessible
manner. Committees want to be able to retrieve the information they
need easily. Make sure that current institutional affiliation, address, telephone,
and e-mail are up front. Forget the subterfuge of combining “Presentations and
Publications;” the first thing committees do is sort out which is which. List
your fields of specialization, defined broadly (e.g. Russian history) rather
than narrowly (e.g. Hapsburg political history). List the foreign languages you
are able to use professionally. Degree dates are important; don’t hide them. So
is a complete enumeration of teaching experience and other professional
employment. List grants and awards, but don’t pad the list with $50 book prizes
you received as an undergraduate.
Letters
of recommendation, which should come from established faculty members who know
you well and genuinely respect you. Don’t pester faculty for letters if they
are less than enthusiastic; such letters rarely do applicants any good.
Recommendations must be up-to-date; when a letter reads “X will certainly
defend by June” and it’s now six months later and no degree, committees
distrust both the recommender and the candidate. Your own professors are
expected to endorse you heartily, so the most effective letters come from
senior scholars at other institutions; they aren’t obligated to support you.
Don’t solicit letters from pundits or politicians; search committees aren’t
impressed. Most ads request three letters, but you can send a couple of extras
if they contribute additional perspectives.
The
writing sample, if one is requested, should ideally be an article,
published or unpublished. If you send a dissertation chapter, send a one-page
synopsis of the entire dissertation and a table of contents, too, so the
committee will have a sense of how the chapter fits with the whole. The writing
sample should manifest your best work, revealing both its breadth and its
depth. It needs to be polished—not just a preliminary draft. Don’t send your
entire dissertation; that’s an invitation to the committee to read nothing but
a sentence here and a paragraph there.
The
teaching portfolio, if one is requested, should contain a
statement of teaching philosophy and a well-chosen array of sample syllabi.
They should be from courses pertinent to the position, and can be from courses
you have actually taught, or that you would be able to teach. Include summaries
of student evaluations of your courses—numeric scores on key questions, and a
sampling of comments. Don’t send stacks of students’ evaluation sheets.
Teaching awards and a couple of thoughtful testimonials from students have more
of an impact with the committee.
How do
search committees assess the files and choose candidates to consider further?
First, they look for a good match between the candidate and the job—not only as
described in the advertisement, but more importantly, the way the department
sees the position. Usually departments envision a new appointee filling a
variety of different niches. The department may need someone to teach world
history or women’s history, making candidates with this expertise attractive.
It may wish to reinforce existing strength in military history. Or it may hope
to find someone who can soon qualify to take on administrative tasks. But
departments rarely can afford to duplicate current faculty. If a place already
has a medieval Russian historian, it’s not likely to hire another one.
In
addition, search committees try to discern from the file the quality of the
scholar and teacher. The committee looks for evidence of originality, in how
candidates designed their dissertation topics, for example, and their courses.
They look for evidence of competence—in this, flawless writing is essential, as
are strong recommendations. They look for indications of the candidates’
genuine interest in the institution. At research-oriented institutions,
committees scrutinize time to degree, taking it as an indicator of whether the
candidate would be eligible for tenure in six years’ time. Because no
institution wants to commit to a candidate who will still be ABD when the term
starts, graduate student applicants must present compelling evidence that they
will, indeed, be done on schedule.
Based
on the files, the search committee selects about 6–15 candidates for further
consideration. Some committees break the screening of files into two stages,
requesting minimal materials at first, and then contacting the top two dozen
applicants to ask for more.
“Survivor:
Convention”
Once
the search committee has identified its “long list” for further consideration,
it will arrange for preliminary interviews with them. Some institutions, facing
financial constraints, now conduct these interviews by telephone, and may even
hire for one-year jobs on this basis. More often, though, committees meet
candidates in person at large conventions, such as AAASS, the AHA, or the MLA.
Some job-seekers rationalize not attending (it’s inconvenient or expensive), but
if you want the job, you have to go.
The
committee will be interviewing a lot of people, trying to coordinate members’
schedules and use of the interview room. You need to be flexible about the time
of the interview. Unless you’re on a panel at that hour (or in another
interview!), accept the time proposed. If you are speaking at the conference,
let interviewers know when; they may well try to come. It’s reasonable to ask
in advance how long the interview will be, and who will be present.
For the
interview itself, think carefully about the kind of image you want to project,
and dress accordingly. Academics don’t need to wear navy-blue suits, but you
want to look like someone the provost could introduce with pride to a
conservative major donor. Maintain a professional demeanor throughout the
convention; and resist the temptation to vent about interviews (or anything
else) in the bar in the evening. You don’t know who might be at the next table.
Arrive at the interview exactly on time, but don’t hover in the hallway. Scout
out the location in advance.
Prepare
for the interview carefully. Read up on the institution, and find out about the
scholarly interests of the interviewers. Practice answers to the usual
questions: “What is significant about your dissertation topic?” “What is your
teaching philosophy?” Don’t assume that the committee will have perfect (or
even imperfect) recall of your C.V. at the time of the interview, so integrate
subtle reminders into your spiel. Because convention interviews are usually
short—half an hour, possibly 45 minutes—make sure that
your answers are brief—2–3 minutes, no more. (Committees will let you ramble
on, but they’ll mark it against you.) Keep in mind that the interviewers are
not specialists in your area; if they were, they
wouldn’t be looking for you! Present your research in the context of the “big
picture”—the field as a whole. Have a spare copy of your C.V. along, but don’t
give it (or anything else) to the interviewers unless they ask for it. They
don’t want to haul a dozen dissertations home in their hand luggage.
For
research-oriented institutions, a key question concerns the candidate’s ideas
for a second project. If you want to compete successfully, describe a topic
that is different from your dissertation, not just an outgrowth of it—that is,
the same methods, just a different locality or the next 50 years. It should be
equally ambitious, and potentially even more significant. In this way, you
demonstrate that you can define projects on your own, outside the tutelage of
your graduate advisors. Second projects that involve writing textbooks or doing
translations send the wrong signals to research institutions, although they may
be quite suitable for teaching-oriented institutions.
Because
you will always be asked if you have questions for the interviewers, make sure
that you do. It is best to ask questions that express familiarity with the
institution and an awareness of what you can contribute, e.g. “Do you get many
non-traditional, older students?” or “Are history majors interested in
government internships?” or “What outreach programs are there for nearby
Slavic-American communities?” Avoid asking questions that make you look like
you want the job solely to benefit yourself, e.g. “How soon can I get paid
leave?” or “What’s your spousal accommodation policy?” (These may be important
considerations for you, but there will be time enough to ask after you have an
offer!)
At this
stage, search committees are attempting to assess candidates in three areas:
scholarship, teaching, and collegiality. In the area of scholarship, they want
to gain a sense of the breadth of your knowledge and interests, and how open
you are to intellectual growth. They are measuring your ability to enunciate
what is significant about your research. In the case of applicants who are ABD,
they need to know exactly how far along your dissertation really is.
In the
area of teaching, the interviewers want to get a sense of how you’d work out in
the classroom. Can you give concise, lively, informative answers to questions?
You’ll need to do so with students. Most importantly, are you willing and able
to teach what the institution needs? If you are asked about teaching a specific
course, the answer should be “Yes”; the committee wouldn’t ask if there wasn’t
interest in having you do it. If the course in question is far from your
current expertise, a good answer might be, “Yes, but not the first year; I’d
need time to work it up.” Show that you’ll be willing to grow into the job.
In
terms of collegiality, the interviewers are trying to get a sense of what you’d
be like as faculty member. Would you do your share of committee work, including
the dull stuff? Would you enliven the intellectual milieu? Would you nurture
the students? Would you be comfortable living in that area for the next 35
years? No institution wants to hire somebody who will resent the students, the
faculty, or the locality.
On
campus at last
An
invitation for a campus interview means that you are among 2–4 finalists for
the position. In order to succeed, you will need more of the same efforts that
helped you through the convention interview. Be flexible about the
arrangements. Check your external image. Learn everything you can about the
institution and the community. In particular, acquaint yourself with the
profile of department members; if possible, glance through their publications
and identify common intellectual interests. Find out about the students and the
curriculum. Craft the presentations you have been asked to make, and practice
them several times with faculty and fellow students, including the question
period.
In most
cases, you will be asked to give a “job talk.” If it is supposed to be based on
your research, choose a manageable topic. You want to show your originality and
intellectual richness, and also connect your work to the larger questions of
the discipline. Don’t go over the time limit; it is better to stay 5–10 minutes
under it. Whether you read the paper or speak extemporaneously, make your
presentation polished and engaging. Don’t worry about showing a bit of
nervousness; departments expect it and sympathize. Give succinct, direct
responses to questions, and don’t get defensive if some of them seem to
challenge your work. One point of the interview may be to see how prospective
colleagues take well-intentioned criticism.
Quite
often, especially at teaching-oriented institutions, candidates are asked to
teach a class. Find out what the course is about, what level the students are,
and how many will be there. Try to design a lesson that fits readily into the
syllabus. Bring audio-visuals (appropriate to the available technology), and
prepare a pertinent anecdote or two to engage the students. They’ll be
uncertain, too, with an unfamiliar instructor. Although it’s hard to ignore the
faculty who will be sitting in, keep focused on the students.
Sometimes
candidates meet separately with students—especially graduate students, at
research-oriented institutions. While students don’t dictate whom to hire,
faculty do listen to their opinion. A candidate who alienates students has lost
the job. Take an interest in them, and don’t treat them dismissively.
The
meetings with the department chair and dean may feel perfunctory. They will
talk mostly about teaching loads, salary range, benefits, internal grants,
tenure clock, and such. Listen and ask for clarification, but this is not the
time (yet, you hope) to negotiate. Have a knowledgeable, general question or
two ready. At most institutions, the chair and dean can’t dictate whom the department
will hire, but they can block candidates who displease them. Respect the power
they represent.
Keep in
mind that the interview schedule is likely to be grueling, starting with
breakfast meetings and going through late dinners. Even during the “informal”
times, you are being scrutinized for your suitability. In all too many
departments, “passing lunch” becomes the sine qua non for candidates. Be
cordial, but not overly familiar, and avoid contentious topics. Safe topics
include foreign travel adventures and “aha!” moments in the research process;
all your meal companions will be able to relate to these things.
After
the interview, you have no alternative but to wait. Other than a courteous note
of thanks accompanying the receipts you’ll send for reimbursement, leave it to
the department to reinitiate contact. Try to be patient. (Unless, that is, you
have another, less appealing offer—in that case, let the search committee chair
know.) The department may have other candidates to bring in, or may have to
wait for the dean’s approval of an offer. Quite often, the first-choice
candidate declines the position. If you’re No. 2, don’t feel insulted; an offer
represents a vote of confidence by a critical mass of the department. From the professional perspective (although perhaps not from your
personal standpoint), any full-time faculty position, whether temporary or
tenure-track, is better than the alternatives.
With
two decades’ experience, I can aver that there is no single measure for
determining the “best” applicant. Departments sometimes agree easily that one
person in the pool corresponds most closely to the desired profile. But in
other cases, there is no more agreement on the profile than there is on the
merits of individual candidates, resulting in an offer to a “dark horse”
contender. The system is imperfect. We all know of outstanding applicants who
received no offers, and of cases when departments came
to regret their choice. We do the best we can, and hope for a bright outcome.
Eve Levin is
an Associate Professor in the Department of History at the
Four Things about the
Stephen Bittner,
A
friend once told me about the career-planning workshop in the history
department where he was a graduate student. The faculty representative at the
workshop was a senior professor of considerable repute. His task was to
convince a group of Ph.D. students nearing the completion of their degrees that
they had not made a colossal career mistake. He noted at the outset of his talk
that he had applied to only two academic jobs during his career. Both jobs were
at prestigious universities, and both applications had resulted in offers. He
joked that his credentials as a career advisor were thus impeccable: he was
batting an unbelievable 1.000 on the job market!
My
credentials as a career advisor are very different. Over the course of three
years, I submitted nearly forty applications for jobs in the
1. The
majority of young scholars who get jobs will find themselves at universities
and colleges that differ fundamentally from their Ph.D. granting institutions.
These
differences are frequently cast in terms of research and teaching. But in
truth, the “research” university and “teaching” college are ideal types. The
majority of institutions lie somewhere in the middle, and expect a combination
of teaching and publication from their faculty. Nonetheless, most young
scholars will find that their employers place greater emphasis on teaching (measured
either in the size of the teaching load, or the level of interaction with
undergraduates) than their Ph.D. granting institutions. This reflects the
profile of the American academy. Job applicants, therefore, must prove that
they are versatile. Ph.D. programs are very good at training scholars. They are
less successful at creating teachers.
But even self-identified “research” institutions want to be certain that
their new hires will not be disasters in the classroom. Many “teaching”
colleges expect a great deal more. While teaching experience always helps,
equally important is evidence that a job candidate has been reflective about
teaching. What makes for a good teacher? A good class?
What skills does the candidate hope to instill in an introductory survey? A graduate seminar?
There
are no singularly correct answers to these questions, since there are as many
ways to be a good teacher as there are good teachers. Yet if my own experience
is at all representative, many job candidates do not begin to think about these
questions until they are asked during an interview. Our lack of preparation
reflects the priorities of graduate study. When I was a graduate student, I
viewed teaching as a necessary distraction. It helped me pay rent and buy
groceries until I finished my dissertation. My attitude did not foster much
introspection about pedagogy, nor willingness to innovate in the classroom. The
expectations of the job market required me to think very differently.
Regardless of where I found a job, teaching would be a major component of my
career, both in terms of time commitment and professional evaluation. While
universities and colleges may value teaching differently for tenure and
promotion, very few will consider hiring a young scholar who is openly indifferent
to or dismissive of teaching.
2. Many
graduate students have trouble speaking about their research in a sensible way
to non-specialists.
I am
not trying to be derogatory. This was as true of me as many of my graduate
school friends. For years we immersed ourselves in the most arcane details of
Russian and Soviet history. We wrote immense dissertations for limited
audiences. We spent hours arguing about issues that in hindsight can only be
characterized as trivial. The job market, however, places a premium on a very
different skill—the ability to extrapolate from arcane detail to broad
significance in a cogent and succinct manner. Usually this is done in a formal
presentation (the “job talk”) or conference interview, but it also occurs in
the countless casual meetings that occur during campus visits. Departments are
invariably concerned with relevance. Does the candidate’s research complement
what other scholars are doing, both within the geographic field and especially
beyond it? What components of the candidate’s research might interest the Americanists in the department? The Asianists? Small departments are as keen to hire a
colleague as they are a teacher. Is the candidate interesting? Will I want to
have a cup of coffee with the candidate once a week for the next twenty years?
Yet all
too often, young scholars treat job talks like conference presentations. They
are not the same! The purpose of a conference presentation is to share highly
specific data with an audience with similar scholarly interests. The purpose of
a job talk is to highlight the significance of one’s research for an audience
with different scholarly interests. At small colleges, moreover, this often has
to be done in a way that is accessible and interesting to undergraduates. Performance
can count as much as content. This means more than simply explaining terms,
ideas, and interpretations that are foreign to non-specialists. It also means
framing a topic in a way that will have broad appeal. For instance, a lengthy
description of the intricacies of Soviet bureaucratic politics in the 1930s is
unlikely to elicit much enthusiasm. But an analysis of the way these
intricacies affect our understanding of Stalinism and political tyranny more
broadly probably will. Many job candidates have unwittingly ruined their
chances with narrowly focused, overly detailed, boring talks. Many might have
saved their candidacies by considering beforehand the purpose of their talks.
3.
There are things about the job market that candidates can and cannot change. It
is important to distinguish between the two.
When I
was on the job market I sometimes fantasized about a world where departments
were so overwhelmed by my qualifications that they bid for my services,
regardless of need! The reality, of course, is that very few young scholars are
so stellar that they manage to transform entirely what a department is looking
for. It makes sense to apply widely to jobs—even to those that are a
stretch—because the marginal cost of a few additional applications is small.
But most candidates have little control over what a department wants, and
rejection often stems from departmental needs rather than personal
qualifications. Fortunately, candidates do control the way they present
themselves: cover letters, curricula vitae, writing samples, and so on.
Obviously there are limits to the malleability of self-presentation. Yet in a
profession where search committees are frequently overwhelmed with
applications, a sloppy or ambiguous dossier usually lands in the waste basket.
4. Some
good candidates will not get jobs.
This is
an inescapable fact. In strapped fields like Russian and Soviet history, the
number of new Ph.D.s exceeds the number of tenure-track openings, in some years
by a substantial margin. Considering the backlog of unemployed Ph.D.s, and the
number of employed scholars looking for bigger libraries and smaller teaching
loads, the odds of finding a job become truly daunting. I cannot claim that I
was ignorant of the job crunch while in graduate school, but I always managed
to rationalize why I was an attractive candidate and why I would beat the odds.
Similarly, when I was on the market I frequently justified why I was the
perfect candidate for the especially attractive positions! I am sure many of my
friends did the same. Our confidence was a defense mechanism. Unfortunately,
the truth is that the job market cannot accommodate all, and many good scholars
are left wanting. Candidates need to be realistic. They should not become
attached to positions they do not hold. They should assume that nearly all
applications will prove futile. They should keep in mind careers outside the
academy. And they should be proud when they receive an offer.
Despite
all the difficulties of the job market, there are still reasons to be
optimistic. My own experience suggests that the longer one is on the market,
the more adept one becomes at surmounting its many hurdles. Unsuccessful
interviews (and there will likely be many) can be chalked up to experience.
Limited-term appointments and post-doctoral fellowships can be used to fatten
resumes with teaching and publications. And a process that seems traumatic and
mystifying to a novice becomes easier to a veteran. During my final year on the
job market, when I was ready to consider a career outside the academy, I
confided my frustration to a friend who was happily employed at a university.
“It wouldn’t be so hard if it weren’t such a good gig,” she reassured me. I see
now that she was right.
Stephen Bittner is
Assistant Professor in the Department of History at