those on the 2nd go on the job market: how broadly

[Harbringer of Doom]

Reading through the venting threads this year and last, and reading through the chronicle of higher education forums, there are increasingly common posts where the applicant has numerous publications, teaching experience, comes from a good department, and still has no job after a year or more of trying.

This is, of course, discouraging. Even more so for someone on the second go around on the job market.

However, the great unknown when it comes to this sorts of posts is where exactly the person complaining applied to. Being jobless after only applying to ivies is different from being jobless after applying everywhere.



So I thought it would be a good idea to gauge these things by asking those on the second go around on the job market to provide a little bit of information on how selective you were last year. Did you restrict your applications by geographical area? type of institution? Did you change that this year?


Personally, last year I had 1 peer reviewed publication at a small journal, and 2 under review, plus a random assortment of encyclopedia entries and book reviews. I applied VERY selectively. 10 Positions in total. 5 of those ended up being cancelled. I applied to 8 r1 universities and 2 master universities, all close to the coasts where I thought I would like to live. I got one interview, and no job.

Right now, I am deeply regretting not having applied more broadly last year, and this year Im applying to places I never thought I would, even with an additional publication at a top specialty program.

So share away

[2ndGoSally]

I graduated from a Very Well Regarded campus in California. At the time, I had 4 single-authored articles in mid-range journals, numerous book reviews, and two prestigious grants.

I applied to 40ish jobs and had two interviews (one at a Well Known Liberal Arts school and another at a Large Private Research University, both in the south). I also landed on several long-short lists (and even a short list) when the jobs were canceled. I did not apply to any Ivy League schools, nor did I care to.

This year there are significantly less positions available in my area of study (e.g. I've applied to 3 soc. positions so far--one liberal arts, 2 R1s).

My advice: don't beat yourself down about not having applied broadly, it was a rotten year. Good luck to you and everyone else!

[damastes]

I think its important to keep applying. My best read on the economy is that we could be in a rough patch for a few years [at least if this is an extended retooling of production typical in a Kondratiev cycle or U-shaped recession]. The good news is that there are a number of postdocs and opportunities for training, if things do not work out on the market. For example, a friend graduated from a top-10 last year and, lacking a job after a similar experience, took a postdoc in crim. Its provided her with a much broader range of jobs to apply to, & I think she will do well this year. Not sure about your field or interests, but there opportunities to do things you may not have even considered just a few years ago.

[Harbringer of doom]

Im not discouraged per se. Im just looking for some insight as to how bad the market really is. And I mean bad beyond just the cyclical part of it.

Ten years ago, a couple of publications and teaching awards would comfortably land you not only on an r1 university or top SLAC, but a top 50 at that, provided that you applied geographically broad enough. That was no longer necessarily true even before the crisis hit.

Recently, a lot of published and well regarded people are having a hard time getting a job, and I was just wondering if it was because of selectiveness or because it is just that crappy a situation.

I.e., are people with publications and experience not getting a job because they are only applying to r1 jobs? Or are people with multiple publications and experience having a hard time finding a job at tatooine university (if there is a bright spot in the academic world, tatooine university is as far as you can be from it)?


Now, I know experiences will differ and all that, but at least we can compare notes.

[damastes]

My read is that things are definitely getting harder. When I am talking a Kondratiev cycle or U-shaped recession, I am saying the economic environment could be like the 70s in the US, the Great Depression, or the collapse of the USSR. I hope I am wrong & the jury is very much out on the macro-environment. But, I think it is a reason why there is a major disconnect between qualifications and jobs that would ordinarily result in being hired. With state budgets and endowments WAY down, its making positions in higher ed much less plentiful for all disciplines. Generally, I think the resurgence of our discipline since the 80's makes me more positive about the job outlook in the longterm, relative to some fields.

I do think last year was unusual... the collapse of the economy resulted in many universities advertising positions they could not fill. I do not think that will happen again... departments don't like to spend all those resources on a search for naught. This year, I think almost all positions will be filled that are advertised, though the number may be reduced from earlier years because of known budget shortfalls.

I am on a second search this year also, & my apps are all over the board [R1s, LAC, & 4/4 states]. I do not know what to expect. I am just going to keep applying until I get a job. From c.v.'s of hired faculty, I think I would have been competitive in an R1 search from 2002-2007. I might not currently even be competitive at a 4/4 by last year's standards.

I am an earth-person, so I may settle for a remote Pacific island with "Wilson" as my companion!

[anony]

i'm on my second go-around this year. Last year I was ABD and applied selectively to 9 colleges, 7 of which were advertising jobs in my subfield and 2 open positions. At the time I had 2 peer reviewed publications (1 first author in the #1 journal in my subfield) and 1 single authored paper under review that was accepted about half way through the job market season, as well as a published abstract and a paper published in a non-peer reviewed college journal. I also had 3 semesters experience teaching my own class, and am in a top 10 university. I mostly applied to lesser ranked R1 and R2 universities and did not have geographical restrictions.

I had one interview at an R2 and no offers. I later looked up the person who got the job I interviewed for and ze had 6 publications, 3of which were encyclopedia entries. Ze was also not in my subfield at all, although the job was advertising for my subfield only.

This year I am still ABD and have 3 peer reviewed pubs and one under review. I also have an additional book review that is forthcoming. So far this year I am applying to 40 schools and 2 postdocs, with no geographical or college-type restrictions.

[harbringer of doom]

Oh, yeah, that is a good bit of info to bring up.

I, too, ended up checking the person who got the job I interviewed at. He had no publications, but he did have a few things in the pipeline. What he did have, which was relatively impressive, was 3 years as a VAP at a top liberal arts school.

[takeout]

I too have experienced the issue of jobs hiring outside of the area mentioned in the ad. Just to give an idea, last year I was on the market ABD from an R1 with one first-authored peer-reviewed publication in one of the top general journals and two under review. I also had taught my own course for three semesters and had a prestigious dissertation fellowship. I applied to 40 or so jobs at a wide array of schools from R1 to SLACs with no geographic restrictions.

The end result was three campus interviews and no offers. But all three interviews were at SLACs. At every interview, without fail, at least one person asked me why I applied and why I wasn't more interested in an R1, given that I went to school X, published this article in journal Y, and got this grant Z. Well, that's not the way that I felt, I was really interested, but even more so, it indicated how out of touch many of these individuals were with the realities of the market. I suspect that I (and many other candidates) are betwixt and between--not competitive enough for an R1 but with a background that is very research oriented that could potentially put one at a disadvantage in terms of being considered by places that focus more heavily on teaching. I've bee thinking a lot about how best to deal with this issue when I present myself, especially in this year's tough market.

I've also had the experience of others on this board with schools hiring outside of the job description, but it was more complicated than that. In at least two of the jobs, the candidate who was hired was in a different subfield than the job ad. Usually, there was *some* connection in their work (there almost always is in soc), but I definitely wouldn't have characterized the person as having a speciality in that subfield, at least not compared to myself. As a made up but accurate example of what I experienced, the job ad may ask for a person who does quant. work in criminology, which you've been doing ever since you entered grad school and there's no question in anyone's mind that's why you do. But they end up hiring someone who does macro historical work in international development, but just happened to have something in their dissertation about international crime, but otherwise does work on completely different topics. It's kind of bizarre. It makes me think that I should apply to jobs outside of my substantive area and write a cover letter that attemps to spin how one tiny thing I've done makes me an expert in that subfield. It's almost like departments value diversity of interests (which is good) but in an extreme way.

[anoner]

I think the issue is that departments want to feel like they are getting "something they have never seen before", and weird tangential interests can look that way. This could be good or bad, depending on your perspective....

[Harbringer of Doom]

I think takeout brings up an interesting point, one which I alluded to in my last post. In our job market, we have this weird situation in that if we rank jobs in terms of prestige, as you move down the list the required qualifications change dramatically.

As such, it's almost like two completely distinct sets of qualifications: the ones you need to land and r1 or r2 job, and the ones you need to land a teaching job. This might explain the number of people who are published and 10 years ago would have no problems getting a job at an r1 university going jobless this time around, as competition for r1 jobs increased, but teaching universities fear that the person is too research oriented.

The questions I was asked at the interview last year were very similar to those Takeout describes. And, given how they hired someone with no publications, but a stellar teaching record, that seems likely to have played a role.

Which is my biggest fear, really. Being in this limbo where Ive published too much for one set of employers, but not enough for the other.

And I agree completely that many in the SLACs and smaller r2 universities are not aware of the realities of the market, and thus very suspicious of those they think are overqualified for the positions. I remember last year there was a thread on the chonicle of higher ed. forums where assistant professors were freaking out that candidates for new jobs had so many more publications and grants than they had, and were afraid that that might impact their promotion chances.

[anony]

I applied broadly last year - 60 or so applications - mostly masters and liberal arts but some r1/r2, with very moderate geographic limitations.

Top 20 school, 1 co-authored pub at a top journal, two more co-authored pubs (1 first author) under review, lots of teaching experience, ABD but not very far along on the dissertation. Got 3 in-person interviews and no job.

Nothing much has changed so far for this year other than being confident of graduating next spring/summer. This year I'm applying to more r1/r2 positions and also being even less selective in geographic limitations - have only ruled out one school so far on those grounds.

[Anotamused]

This is my THIRD go-round, first after having my PhD in-hand. I have six articles (in specialty journals, almost all single-authored) and a number of book chapters. BUT, I went to a lower-third-level PhD program. First year I had one on-campus interview and an offer, but it was at a school that I ended up not liking much. Second year (last year) I had two phone and two on-campus interviews, but nothing came out at the end. Almost one-hundred applications... and 20 schools *never* even sent me a rejection letter (talk about nerve-wracking)!

I think we need to get over the sense of entitlement that we are all taught to develop about getting a faculty position after graduating (and for, top-tier PhD programs, the sense of entitlement of getting a R1-position). PhD programs crank-out too many of us for available faculty positions -- higher education is not being supported (financially, at least) to the level it was a generation ago. Perhaps we should be adjusting our identities and what we perceive as our employment possibilities.

I know this ain't the venting thread, but all this really freaks out my partner and I. We're willing to move practically anywhere for jobs and our standards for jobs are going down quick (and the permissible teaching-load is going up, up, up). We've been where we are for so long and we've been wanting to leave for a few years now, so we're talking about leaving whether we get jobs or not. It's scary, especially given how crazy all the rest of the economy is, too. We'd naturally gravitate towards non-profit organizations, but those have been even more decimated than universities because many NGOs foolishly put their money in the stock-market.

So, to increase my chances: I'm spending even more time on job letters (between 1 to 4 hours per letter); beautifying my CV; spending more time trying to get faculty in my department to network for me; tweaking my classes in every conceivable way to raise my already good teaching evals; and (of course) trying to crank-out even more articles (in higher-ranked journals). I think I'm a nice, friendly person. If I can't get a job this year, it'll be due to a sh*tty economy or the low status of my PhD program.

C'est la vie.....

[tnrd]

The following is probably a bit too late for those on the job market right now, but in case there are others reading, I thought I'd mention it. Many graduate students seem to underestimate the importance of recommendation letters. What we tend to see mentioned in discussions is number of publications, quality of program from which one is applying and teaching experiences. Of course, it's impossible for most to know what kinds of letters their recommenders are writing. But there are lots of things that students do during their time in graduate school that will influence what types of letters their advisors write for them. And these letters are often a very crucial part of application packets with real implications for whether somebody makes a short list or not. (Once flown out for an interview, this component matters much less, but in getting to that stage, it can be quite significant.)

[harbringer of doom]

It seems like every year someone writes a post condemning people on the job market for feeling "entitled," and Im sorry, but that is bullnuts.

I don't know a single person on the market who feels like the world owes them their preferred job regardless of qualifications and competition. If anything, people are keenly aware of how difficult the situation is, and how many more qualified candidates are out there.

People get upset when they don't land a job, and often express that frustration, but that doesn't mean any of them are being "entitled." Jobs aren't luxury items, they are basic necessities, so it is only natural that people feel discouraged when the types of jobs they went to grad school to get are much harder to come by. But that is human nature, not entitlement. It would be unrealistic to expect that people facing financial uncertainty would be indifferent to rejection letters.

And I find the swipe at candidates from top programs, who apparently feel entitled tor1 jobs, especially baseless. As we've seen in this discussion itself, it is quite likely that all these candidates from top programs are more than willing to work at a teaching university, but are not getting those jobs either because of the requirements of a distinct set of credentials and a suspicion about his real level of interest on the job (that is based on nothing more than outdated information on the status of the job market.)

[damastes]

I think Harbinger is right about a new market emerging in the last few yrs. There are associate profs who had no pubs, but were still hired at top schools in the early 00s based on letters and working papers. Now, that's almost unheard of. I know some people at a non-ranked soc program who did not get jobs last year, & sent out 60-80 apps.... Anotamused's story hence does not sound unique to me. At the same time, I do see people at top-10 programs taking jobs they probably would not have accepted in earlier years.