I keep getting asked by assorted people about the academic job market — when to go, how to do it, is my cv ready, etc. It’s not at all clear why people are asking me. I did the test-run year, applied to about 6 places that varied widely in terms of rankings and assumed I’d end up going out again the next year once I had some more pubs. I ended up getting interviews at almost everywhere I applied and took the highest ranked offer at an R1. All this suggests that my experience was somewhat unusual and violated some of the job market rules your advisor will tell you about… That said, here is what I tell people — you shouldn’t take this as advice, only one more experience to add to the pile as you decide whether or not to give it a whirl this year.
1. When am I ready?
I dunno, ask your advisor. The stock answer is… It depends on what kind of job you want and how much your CV maps on to that goal. If it doesn’t, what’s the likelihood that it will in one year? If it will, wait. If it won’t, adjust your expectations. Is your diss far enough along that you can do a great job talk? If it is, go for it.
The more complicated answer comes with a story… My last year in grad school, I was on a panel for other students about the academic job market and the discussion was about the importance of being “ready.” By “ready,” the faculty meant your diss is far enough along to yield a good job talk, you’ve got some pubs, and some significant teaching experience. While the DGS, the chair, and assorted other faculty (including my advisor) said all this, those of us on the panel (each having successfully navigated the job market the year before) starting eyeing each other nervously. All of us had violated at least one of the criterion and we did well. Very few of us have EVERYTHING but you can’t be lacking on every measure and expect to get multiple offers.
In terms of being ‘ready’ to be a professor, grad school should chafe at some point. Worry if it doesn’t… You ought to be a little bugged by the hoops. You ought to be gunning to be left alone to do your work and you ought to have a plan for how you will spend the next few years. NOTE: this won’t actually happen — once you start, you’ll just need your chair’s signature on everything instead of your advisor’s and you’ll also be much busier, but you should at least dream of it this way.
Had I waited a year, I probably would have had as many choices in terms of offers but the mix of choices would have included more highly ranked schools. That said, the offer I took would have ranked just as highly among them and I suspect I would have made the same decision — your first placement matters, don’t rush to the market over a year when it can cost you a lot in the long-term.
2. Where or to how many places should I apply?
I dunno, ask your advisor.
My experience was that my advisor had high standards for when he allowed me to go, but was pretty hands-off once I did. This strikes me as the most reasonable course. He, after all, had to write the letter and ’stump’ for me so it makes sense that he have a lot of control on the when part. After that, however, it was up to me. I know he wasn’t thrilled by one place I applied to and bothered by a few that I left off the list, but to his credit, he didn’t say so. You have to balance a lot of desires — hitting the highest ranked place, finding a place that suits your substantive interests, balancing teaching or research, possibly your partner’s career, possibly the happiness and well-being of your children, meeting your advisor’s expectations (this one comes up a lot, btw), the long-term effect on your career and your ability to move, and so on. That said, you are the one who has to go to work every day. You need to be satisfied with where you go and you also need to come home to a family that isn’t miserable. If that means 50 or 100 applications, great. If it doesn’t, that’s fine too.
3. Better to make decisions pre-application than post-offer.
Related to above, my spouse was prickly about where he would go and where he wouldn’t. I gave him the ASA employment bulletin in August and told him to make a list of vetos. Once he did that, I had total control when it came to offers. In the end, it didn’t quite work out this way but I headed off a lot of potential arguments. This strategy would probably also work well if you have others in your life that insist on you applying to school x, y, or z. You should never apply somewhere you wouldn’t go. This especially applies if you do what I did (the test year with few applications).
4. What’s the job talk like?
I dunno. Go to a bunch of them and see.
Job talks are tough but, viewed correctly, also fun. There are very few situations in which you get to present your work to a broad audience as a graduate student outside of the academic job market. I loved doing job talks. The best compliment I got was from a dean who said my job talk was wonderful but that I really turned it on during the Q & A. Why? Because I felt good about my diss, its design, and I was really interested in what people had to say. I didn’t view job talks as a forum for people to ‘catch me’ in an error or as a strategic exercise in avoiding looking stupid. A graduate student at one place asked me something I’d never thought about — this question excited me the most and the faculty got to see me work it out in real time. Because I didn’t view his question as a ‘gotcha!’ moment, I wasn’t flustered by it. You shouldn’t view them as an experience to survive — view them as an opportunity to wow the audience. You may not, but at least your attitude going in will be better. I’d also point out that I have never heard of a department spending the time and money to fly someone in for an interview in order to tell them that their work sucks.
My only real advice to is to DOa practice job talk in your home department. And not just for your advisor, committee members, and your friends. Make sure to get faculty who may know you and like you but don’t really know anything about your diss or your research. This talk should be the toughest one you give — make sure to fill the audience with a wide range of people.
4. What am I supposed to ask during the individual meetings or at the ASA employment service interviews?
It doesn’t really matter, I’ve found. Check the Chronicle of Higher Education, they have suggestions. The important thing to understand is that you will [often] do most of the asking during them — this surprised me. Ask about teaching, collegiality, research support for assistant professors, the place of the department within the school, the grad students, the area, whatever — but don’t think up new questions for each meeting. The way to learn about a department is not to ask inappropriate questions or to think up many different ones, but to ask mundane questions and see if you get the same answers to them from different people. If you don’t, you’ve learned something potentially valuable about the department.
5. Should I do the employment service?
I dunno, read Scatterplot. I did it and found it helpful. The highly ranked R1s generally don’t participate so I also set up informal meetings at ASA with faculty at these schools. Even if you are gunning for a very highly-ranked R1, I think the employment service can be useful because it gives you a taste of what the interviewing process will be like, gives you experience talking about your diss and research plans, and affords the opportunity to widen your network. Especially now when it is online and you can decline meetings before ASA with relatively little cost, you can meet with as many or as few people as you want by restricting your available time slots or conveying interest in only a few schools. (BTW, I found blaming the spouse’s career a good go-to reason not to meet with an interviewer if they expressed interest before ASA — I would say it would be difficult for us to go there and I didn’t want to waste their time but most appreciated the invitation).
I also think there is an exception to the ranking-employment service conventional wisdom. In some subdisciplines (criminology comes to mind but there may be others) there are schools that may not be very highly ranked overall but also have very good programs in a subarea that do participate in the employment service. I met with a few sociology departments that had phenomenal criminologists in them but were not in the top 40 of soc departments. One of these yielded a very attractive job offer. Depending on your area of interest and if you hope to end up at an R1, you may be surprised at the places that do participate.
UPDATE: I’ve had the same question asked by three people via email so I thought I would add it.
6. When/Do I disclose my family situation?
I can’t help if you have a two body problem and I don’t know when to disclose this. As for kids, I didn’t hide the fact that I had one (Junior was 1 while I was interviewing) but I didn’t make a point to talk about it either. A few people asked (not people in my current department) and a few times kids came up so I disclosed that I had one. This doesn’t appear to have influenced my experience on the market in any way that I can discern. My own thought was that I didn’t really want to work somewhere where kids were viewed as a problem so I didn’t have much incentive to hide her. Others may give you different advice on this.
The main thing about the market to remember is that very little of it is under your control. Much of it is random and you often won’t get the interview you want because of factors that often have very little to do with you. If I had to do it all over again, I would do many things differently but I also suspect I’d end up in the same place. At the end of the day, I am incredibly lucky. To the extent that you are able to do this as well, feel good about it. To the extent that you are not, don’t beat yourself up about it.
