The Philosophers' Cocoon

Dealing with the collapse in the academic job market: advice for mentors and people on the job market

I was inspired by Marcus Arvan's earlier call for strategies on how to deal with pandemic job market collapse, and I want to make some remarks on that from my perspective as placement director.  Currently, I am the placement director at SLU, though all my remarks in this rather lengthy post (apologies) are made in a personal capacity and do not represent their official policy.

When I took on the role of placement director in 2019, my program was doing better than average in placing graduate students into permanent positions (see here for data), and we were doing better than many more prestigious programs in part because our graduate students frequently find their way into small, religious liberal arts colleges, and we offer a lot of training and mentoring on how to teach well (see the comments by grad students near the end of this post),  which is particularly appreciated in small liberal arts colleges. 

Nevertheless, even in these pre-pandemic happy times, and even in a program with an above-average placement in permanent positions, it was important to help students find a plan B (above average still means well above 40% of grad students do not find permanent academic placement within 5 years--we can't just neglect these people). The job market for academic tenure track positions took a nosedive in 2007-2008 and never quite went up to former levels (and was stable from 2013 t0 2019).

For this reason, in 2019 I also tried to help students prepare for the possibility of a non-academic career. This year, I have been more proactive on this front. Here are some easy, low-hanging fruit kind of things advisors, placement directors, etc can do to help their grad students deal with a collapsing academic market. 

One easy thing grad programs can do is to help students prep for non-academic careers and provide structures just as they do for academic careers. Mock interviews, help with resumé building, cover letter help are all things that placement directors already do for academic jobs, it isn't a big stretch to provide this service for non-academic jobs. For example, we organized two mock interviews for a student who applied for a non-academic job that was also part of a university (but not a faculty position) with good job security, pay and benefits. The student received the job offer.

In addition, I think it's important to make students aware that an alt-ac job is a live option for them, that there are significant advantages to an alt-ac job, that it is not a consolation prize. Thus, I organized several sessions with my students this year on alt-ac possibilities, including one with a guest speaker (a philosopher with an alt-ac position who wishes to remain anonymous, who gave my students the honest talk about how little a professor in a tenure track position makes compared to what one can potentially make outside, and what they were making outside). 

It is important to counteract stigma associated with alt-ac jobs, where professors still seem to assume that landing a livable non-academic job is something to be regretted, rather than celebrated. Thus I make a big deal out of all our placements, including alt-ac placements, which put both on social media and through our departmental channels (once the candidate is happy for me to advertise it). I also list all our non-academic placements on our placement spreadsheet, not just as "did not seek academic employment" but "Learning experience designer at Facilisgroup" and "Student engagement coordinator at St Mary's University" (two of our most recent non-academic placements). 

I think that there is a lot of negativity and pessimism about what philosophy PhDs can accomplish outside of academia. This negativity is unhelpful, and needs to go. The thinking seems to be as follows: but you aren't trained to be a learning experience designer! You were trained to be a professor! The almost universal view seems to be that we are training people to be professors, and if there are fewer professor jobs, then most grad programs ought to simply disappear, maybe only the top-10 or so (the most prestigious) ought to exist. I disagree with these claims. We are training people with a lot of transferrable skills, but we aren't doing a good enough job yet to help students realize those skills and where to look for jobs. There are no courses where you can train to be a learning experience designer. So, for a job like this people with a degree in Education might come in, and it's true that a master's might be enough. But... a philosophy grad student can bring something really unique into the role. As a philosophy grad student in our program, you'll have designed and taught your own courses, you'll have been mentored on how to teach really deep, abstract content in a relatable way, you'll have learned how to assess it effectively. Similarly, philosophy grad students learn to organize events (conferences etc), learn to talk for large audiences (soon again possible, hopefully!), learn to network and be hospitable to senior guests, to write difficult and abstract content in a clear and transparent way, etc etc. 

There are so many jobs where our skills come in handy. Sure, we aren't trained for those jobs, but any role benefits from different perspectives, and our perspective and experience as philosophy PhD is very valuable in a wide range of roles. I'd need almost a separate post to defend the legitimacy of grad education for philosophers even in a collapsing academic market, but suffice it to say here that negativity and overt pessimism about the prospects of grad students isn't helpful, you need to (as mentor etc) believe in their capacities and possibilities so they can believe in themselves too. 

Finally, for those of you who are mentoring grad students, or for those of you on the market who want to think about alt-ac careers, please see the text below of a handout I used in a recent meeting with grad students. 

The alt-ac/non-academic job market

By way of introduction:

It’s good to explore your options. Don’t think of looking at alt-ac jobs as “giving up” on academia. You can apply to both. Or, you can just go for alt-ac jobs right way. There is still an internalized stigma associated with alt-ac jobs. Some academics still think that one should only do it if one has no other options. And maybe you are only considering a non-academic position because of the bleakness of the market due to Covid-19.

That’s fair but I want us to think a bit about the alt-ac job market in a different light, namely as a serious alternative to academia in any case. 

Grappling with the COVID-era job market

In the comment thread on my post on publishing advice for grad students and other early career people, a grad student writes:

As a graduate student, I do appreciate the time and effort made to help us figure out how to best go about trying to publish papers. My biggest concern is that such posts utterly fail to take into account the current moment. Maybe such advice will be applicable in the future (we can hope!), but for right now, I'd love to see advice that explicitly takes into account the fact that the academic job market has simply collapsed.

This is a great point, and I'd love to offer more posts and discussion how to grapple effectively with the post-COVID reality. I just haven't been quite sure how to do so. I'm definitely open to suggestions! One graduate student planning on defending their dissertation made one suggestion, namely:

I just mean it could also be good to talk about the nuts and bolts of building a plan B.

For example: if I have to devote half my working hours now to developing a set of skills for plan B, as I in fact am, which of the more purely academic skills should get cut first, that are also the least likely to just totally tank my prospects (however antecedently dim) of getting a job in academia?

For me, I've basically leaned into the research and forsaken any hope of developing a compelling teaching portfolio.

My research habits have also changed. I've gone more in the direction of, write and try to publish papers I'm excited to write, don't worry about the bigger picture or how this stuff hangs together. Because all indications are that I've got maybe 18 months left in this profession, and none of that big picture stuff will pan out.

You can hopefully see how serious, and scary, these sorts of decisions can be.

I wonder what readers think: first, on the nuts and bolts of preparing for a plan B, but also, second, on whether this person's decisions are good ones.

I myself don't have any advice on the nuts and bolts of building a plan B. But I have a few thoughts on the other issue. Personally, I think the decision to focus on publishing stuff you're excited about is a great one. It's more or less the strategy that I adopted when my time on the job market looked like it was running out--and it not only made philosophy again; I started publishing a lot more than I ever did before. My rationale was basically this: "If I'm going to flunk out of this profession, I might as well go down doing work that I enjoy and believe in." It was pretty transformative, and I've never looked back.

On the other hand, I'm a bit less sure about this individual's decision to lean into research and forsake any hope of developing a teaching portfolio. I think whether this is a good decision probably depends on three things:

1. Whether the academic job market is likely to be equally catastrophic in future years.
2. Whether this person is willing to stay on the market beyond this year.
3. Whether they are interested in community college jobs.

On (1) & (2): given that effective vaccines seem to be on the horizon, and people are likely to be vaccinated en masse, it seems to me highly likely that the academic job market will recover. Of course, this job market was already brutal before COVID, but that's a different story. The point is, the market seems to me like it is likely to recover pretty significantly--so if this individual's decisions are predicated upon the assumption that the market is going to be consistently like it is this year, I think that may be a bad bet (one anecdote: it looks like my department will probably hire a tenure-track person once COVID is resolved--and I expect many other universities are waiting to do hires as well). So, it seems to me, if this person is willing to stick on the academic market for at least a couple of years after their defense, the drastic decisions they are making now (focusing on research rather than developing their teaching portfolio) might be really short-sighted.

On that note, it's worth thinking about (3): community college jobs. As this discussion revealed, community college jobs can be really great; you just need a wealth of teaching experience (and ideally, experience teaching at a community college) to be competitive. I personally know a few full-time tenure-track faculty at community colleges, and they love their jobs (seemingly more, in fact, than some of the faculty I know at 4-year universities). Moreover, from what I have heard, community colleges are expected to flourish post-COVID. During times of economic uncertainty, people seem to flee 4-year universities for community colleges, and so the latter are likely to need more faculty, not fewer (indeed, I've already seen some of my own students say they are taking time away from university during COVID to take community college classes for economic reasons). So, it seems to me, if this reader is seriously interested in an academic job and they might be happy with a CC job, their decision to lean into research at the detriment of developing their teaching portfolio seems like it could be doubly short-sighted (though, of course, they might not want a teaching-heavy CC job).

But these are just my thoughts. What are yours? Also, if any readers have any suggestions for other topics the Cocoon might cover to address the first reader's concerns (how to better help early-career people in the post-COVID reality), I'm all ears!

Addressing ability to attract outside funding?

In our November "how can we help you?" thread, Mary writes:

Writing applications now, [currently a] post doc, second year on the market [applying for TT jobs]. I think I finally have a handle on how to address what hiring committees are looking for with one big exception: evidence of ability to attract funding. I see this frequently in Europeans jobs (yea I’m including the UK in that). Not only am I confused what exactly they are looking for and why, but I simply don’t have anything that can be squished until it kind of looks like evidence for external funding when you squint. It’s just not something that ever came up for me (or anyone in my cohort), I didn’t even know it was a thing until I started seeing it on job ads to be honest. My ideal is a European job so I would really appreciate any advice how to address this.

This is a great query. When I was on the market, I was very interested in European jobs. However, I had no idea how to address this kind of issue, as external funding isn't something that grad students early-career philosophers in the United States are generally expected or encouraged to obtain. Is this something that can be overcome, or is a lack of a track record of obtaining external funding basically a disqualifier for obtaining a job in European countries where this sort of thing is expected? If not, what is the best thing for a candidate like Mary to do in her application materials?  

Bringing some social life to Zoom conferences (guest post by C. Thi Nguyen)

This is a guest post by C. Thi Nguyen, philosophy professor at the University of Utah

OK, I just survived being Program Chair of the American Society for Aesthetics Annual Conference - a huge, 4-track, 3-day conference that had to go virtual. I didn’t know it was going virtual when I volunteered to head it up, and the entire experience was one long grueling flirtation with disaster. But: it went off with barely a hitch. What I really want to talk about, though, is the surprising success of the experimental social Zoom rooms.

So the ASA Annual has always been my favorite conference. The aesthetics gang is this big, goofy, lovable, amiable family of weirdos. (Who does analytic philosophy... about art? My people, that's who.) And when we realized we had to take it virtual, we thought: we had to do something to recreate that wonderful atmosphere. So Aaron Meskin volunteered to spearhead the effort, and we formed a social idea gang (with Jonathan Weinberg and Andrew Kania) and brainstormed all kinds of experimental ideas.

My guiding observation: big social Zoom rooms full of many strange people are fucking awkward. They're weird; it’s much harder to naturally break into small groups; social chat flows awkwardly. So we tried a bunch of things. First, we ran parallel social sessions, to keep the numbers manageable. (For a 300 person conference, we did 3 parallel social Zoom rooms each night, and ended up with 15-20 people in most rooms.) Second, structure.  We had structured activities for most of the Zoom rooms, including:

• Show and Tell Room
• 3 Minute Silly Talk Room
• Talent Show Room
• Joke Room
• Trivia Room

And they worked... insanely well. Tons of people have messaged me saying they were shocked how well those rooms worked, how much community it built, how fun they were. And I suspect that, even though only some of the attendees went to the social rooms, that the spirit from the social rooms carried through the rest of the conference. A lot of the regulars, and a lot of more talkative newcomers, met and commingled and got to know each other, and I think a lot of the spirit carried into the rest of the conference — especially in the chat.

My very favorite was the "3 Minute Silly Talk" room, which I ran with Anne Eaton. Rules were: people just had to make up a talk on some topic - silly, or small, or maybe just float the inchoate beginnings of a new paper. No topic too wild or too small. 3 minutes to talk, enforced with total strictness, followed by 3 minutes of lightning Q&A. And it was... amazing?

Looking at job-candidate websites?

In our November "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

I have two questions about the role of personal websites in the job application process.

1. What are some reasons search committee members might visit an applicant's webpage?
I have a hidden, password-protected page on my website that contains all my application materials and a few additional ones. I put the address and password in my cover letters. Now that most of my applications are in, I see that people from regions I applied in are visiting my webpage, but they are not using this page. Instead, they are just browsing the website in general. Most frequently, they spend a minute or less on my homepage and research page. Sometimes it's less than 30 seconds and just my homepage. But I'm not sure what information they are looking for in these pages, since all of it is predictably contained in my dossier. The only thing I can think of is that the website gives a vibe of who the candidate is, or maybe they just want to see a photo?

2. In what stage of the process do search committees look at the candidates' websites?
For example, is it when they go through the batch to make the initial cut? It is when they decide on the long list? I'm sure there's a lot of variation, but I wonder if there are some commonalities. I'm curious because of a pattern I see on my website. Sometimes there is a burst of visitors from a certain place for a few days and then they stop vising my website. Could this be interpreted as some vague indication that there was a discussion of my dossier? If I don't hear from that department in the following weeks and they have stopped visiting my website, should I take it as some sort of signal that my dossier is no longer considered? On the one hand, intuitively, it does seem to me like a sign that they lost interest. On the other hand, this happened to me with several departments and I haven't seen reports that any of them invited people for interviews or any updates about their searches.

Another reader submitting the following reply:

I think you are overthinking this way too much. This is the sort of worrying that leads to serious anxiety around the job market. Your job is to submit an application. Then leave it to the committee to do their work. Some people will look at your webpage and some won't. The one case I remember most vividly is a very unaccomplished colleague trolling around looking for dirt on an application ... and finding it! So just keep the content professional.

In one sense (as I explain below), I think the OP probably is overthinking things. But as the follow-up comment notes, one reason search committee members may visit a candidate's website is to simply see how professional and 'put together' a candidate is. So, I think it is important to reflect a bit on why search committee member might visit candidate websites.

Publishing advice for early-career people: a different perspective

Eric Schwitzgebel (UC Riverside) published a post yesterday entitled, 'How to Publish a Journal Article in Philosophy: Advice for Graduate Students and New Assistant Professors.' While I think the post is very helpful in a variety of ways--particularly in terms of walking grad students through the whole publishing process--I'd like to explore an alternative perspective.

Schwitzgebel begins his post (quite rightly, I think) noting that his advice is directed at graduate students interested in jobs at research institutions (i.e. R1's). He writes:

Should You Try to Publish as a Graduate Student?

Yes, if you are seeking a job where hiring will be determined primarily on research promise, and if you can do so without excessively hindering progress toward your degree.

Speaking to this audience, Schwitzgebel's first major piece of advice is this:

Generally speaking, you'll want your first publication to be on something so narrow that you are among the five top experts in the world on that topic.

He then advocates extending this same strategy to several follow-up papers, which he calls the 'tripod theory of building expertise':

Publish three papers on narrow but related topics. These serve as a tripod establishing your expertise in the broader subarea to which they belong.

I suspect this probably is very good advice for graduate students interested in pursuing R1 jobs (and who are on a legitimate track to this end--see below), and I've seen some people at these kinds of institutions chime in to this effect. But this raises a few further questions:

1. Is it a good publishing strategy for graduate students in general?
2. Is it a good publishing strategy for graduate students not on a path to an R1 position?
3. Is it a good publishing strategy for Assistant Professors?

Has being a philosopher met your expectations?

In celebration of World Philosophy Day, Daily Nous shared a thread today from way back in 2014 asking readers to share why they went into philosophy. The comments are a lot of fun to read, but they led me to wonder: has being a professional philosopher met their hopes or expectations, or not? I figured it could be informative to have a thread on this here at the Cocoon, as it might provide students who are now considering a career in philosophy some picture over whether such a career will be at all what they hope for or expect. I suppose I'll kick things off.

I went into philosophy for a couple of related reasons. When I was a teenager just starting college, I had no real passions. Yeah, there were things I was sort of into: baseball, music, poetry, English literature, and politics. But none of them were what I would call a real passion. I wasn't super motivated to put in the hard work to pursue any of the above. All that changed when I took my first philosophy class. Quite simply, I took to philosophy like a fish to water. I loved everything about it: reading it, writing it, thinking about it, the questions philosophers were concerned with, and so on. Second, I had an undergraduate mentor, Dan Dennett, who was extremely encouraging. In addition to being a fascinating and engaging person, he was really the first person in my life other than my parents who ever really gave me encouragement.

Anyway, I don't know quite what I hoped for or expected when entering philosophy. I guess I expected to love reading, thinking about and writing philosophy for a living, and that being a college professor would be gratifying (I always wanted to be the kind of mentor that Dan was for me). But, beyond that, I don't know what I expected. 

Has being a philosopher met my expectations? In two important ways, yes. I still love philosophy as much today as I did way back then at 17. I feel (and am) incredibly privileged to be able to think about and write on philosophical questions, I work on issues that I find important and meaningful, and from time to time teaching and mentoring is just as gratifying as I had hoped. Every now and then, I'll get an email from a student thanking me for how I affected their life, and in those moments it feels like I've done some real good for the world beyond myself. I also find conferences just wonderful: I love attending talks, learning about what other people are working on, presenting my own work, catching up with friends, and of course, debating philosophical arguments.

But, of course, a career in philosophy hasn't been all roses--not by a long shot. I never expected the academic job-market (which I spent seven years on) to be anything like the monumentally awful experience that it was (and I cannot overstate just how horrible of an experience it was). I also think it's a scandal that so many academic jobs are part-time, low-paying positions without benefits (though we've worked hard to change this at my university). I also never expected how brutal academic publishing would be: the long waits, near constant rejections (90+% rejection rates), and (from time to time) meanspirited comments of referees. While I still love philosophy tremendously, I really think one has to be a 'glutton for punishment', as it were, to have a career in the field. And that, I think, is sad. Oh, and grading is the worst. I also wasn't prepared, I think, for what I might call 'philosophical isolation.' I work in a small department whose faculty work in divergent areas, and our teaching and service loads are quite high. This might surprise some readers, but in over 11 years at my university, I think I can probably count the number of philosophical conversations I've had with colleagues on two hands. Nearly all of the philosophical conversation I have occurs with students or at conferences. We tried to put together a reading group of philosophers in the area a few years ago, and it worked well for a bit but sort of fell apart after a while. We’re just all so busy. And so generally  speaking, I do philosophy in isolation, and I really miss the kinds of philosophical conversations that I had all of the time in graduate school. 

Anyway, long story short: a career in philosophy both has and hasn't met the hopes and expectations I had when I initially set out pursuing it. It's been a far, far more difficult road than I ever expected. But I still love philosophy and teaching/mentoring students, and find it a meaningful life.

But this is just me. What about you?

Online/hybrid teaching technologies?

Several months ago, I shared some of the new teaching practices I experimented with this fall (my first ever time teaching in a hybrid in-person/online format). As I noted in that post, one thing that seemed to me to work very well has been having students record short Flipgrid video responses to daily readings. Although this seemed to me to work pretty well pedagogically, it was also a lot of work to watch and categorize which videos I wanted to discuss before class, and it got to be a real drain (and stressor) the further we got though the semester. I'll also be curious to see what my students thought of it in my end of the semester evaluations. I also avoided using online test proctoring services (such as proctorio), largely on the basis of privacy concerns--though I'm curious what other people think here (and how, if you don't use proctoring services) how you approach exams instead.

Anyway, in light of the above, I'm beginning to think about how I might do things next semester: whether I'll use the same technology, or do some things very differently, and if so, what might work better. Which brings me to several questions today for you all:

1. Which teaching technologies have you used for online/hybrid teachings this fall?
2. How did you use them in terms of a teaching tool?
3. Did you think it worked well or not so well? Why?
4. In light of your answers to (1)-(3), how do you see yourself doing things differently in the spring?

Struggling with difficult readings?

In our November, “how can we help you?” thread, a reader writes:

How do professional philosophers deal with readings in their field that they find challenging, even too challenging to understand? As a student, I regularly come up against readings that I have trouble understanding. Does this happen to professionals who are well-established in their area of specialization? Assuming the paper they're reading is not incoherent, how do they deal with it?

Hmm, maybe try to ask a friend and/or work through it with someone else (e.g. a reading group)? Anyone else have any helpful thoughts or strategies?

Updating search committees?

In our November "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

Suppose that an R1 institution schedules a first-round Zoom interview with a job applicant. And suppose that between the moment the interview was scheduled and the interview itself, this applicant receives a request to contribute to a special issue of a specialty journal and an invitation to contribute to an edited volume on some topic relevant to their AOS.

Should this applicant inform the search committee of these developments? Or do these developments not rise to the level of newsworthy?

And in a case like this, what developments are newsworthy such that an applicant should inform search committee members?

Good questions! I'm inclined to think that it's just fine to inform a committee of new accomplishments, such as a new forthcoming (i.e. accepted) publication. However, I'm not sue that mere invitations to contribute to a special issue or edited volume rise to that level. What do all you think, particularly those of you who have served on search committees? Which kinds of developments are newsworthy enough to inform search committees about?

Philosophers in Industry updates!

This is just a quick note that I made significant updates to the Philosophers in Industry directory, adding over 20 entries yesterday thanks to a helpful reader. Given how historically awful this year's academic job market is, my hope that the directory will help philosophers in need of work network outside of academia, as well as better appreciate the kinds of possibilities open to philosophers in industry. Looking at the updates, a few things really pop out at me.

First, 'ontologist' jobs seem to be a big growth area. I don't know much about the line of work, but it appears to involve logic and formal semantics--the general aim being to improve how software applications (including AI and web search engines) reason and categorize things. There is a pretty large number of ontologists listed on the directory, both at big corporations (Amazon, Dell) and smaller start-ups. Second, although I recall seeing a few job ads from them on PhilJobs over the years, I did not realize until now how big of an employer of philosophers Cycorp appears to be.

In brief, people with philosophy degrees can get very good jobs in industry, especially (but not only) if they are willing to learn how to code and network well. Over the years, many readers at the Cocoon and elsewhere have despaired over a philosophy PhD only preparing them for poorly paying, 'entry-level' jobs. I hope the Directory helps despairing readers see that philosophical training can be leveraged into good careers outside of the academy, and that it serves as a helpful resource for networking, finding good jobs, and learning what it takes to transition into them!

Listing articles under review?

In our November "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

Does anyone have strong feelings about listing "under review" manuscripts in a separate section of the CV? (That is, below the actual publications, of course.)

On the one hand, it seems smart to let everyone know that one has a pile of research that could be accepted for publication any day now. On the other hand, I'm not sure whether anyone will be impressed by the fact that one submits a lot for publication consideration, much of which might not ever be published anyway.

Another reader submitted the following response:

I would say it is not smart, and it does not seem smart. Too often people who do list things under review are deceptive - after all, you can list anything and any journals, and there is no effective way to confirm any of this information. Consequently, it does not belong on a c.v. - translation: course of life. All you end up doing is making more work for search committees because they have to work through what the person is really claiming, and this takes time if you are looking at 85 c.v.s

I entirely agree with this response. As a past search committee member, it rub me the wrong way when I see articles listed as under review on a CV. When I'm hiring, I'm looking for hard accomplishments--specifically, the kinds of accomplishments that are likely to get the candidate tenured or promoted at my institution. Listing articles under review, even many of them, just isn't good evidence of that: a publishing record is. Now, I know sometimes search committees--particularly search committees at research institutions (or so I've heard)--look to hire on the basis of a candidate's 'promise'. But here too, it doesn't seem to me like having a bunch of articles under review is good evidence of that. If I were interested in some nebulous notion of promise, I would instead want to focus on the candidate's research statement, writing sample, and recommendation letters. So again, I just don't see the purpose of listing articles under review.

But these are just my thoughts. As we all know from past discussions on this blog, search committee members can differ wildly on how they think about things and evaluate candidates. So I wonder what other search committee members think. Any other search committee members willing to weigh in on this?

The post-interview waiting game

In our November "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

Going on two weeks post first round interview; committee said they'd be in touch by early November.

I have heard nothing even after reaching out once to try and get an update.

Is this unusual or are the circumstances and idiosyncrasies of particular searches and committees just too different to say anything meaningful?

Good question. I think there are all kinds of possible explanations here. The most obvious is that given that we're just around 30% through the month, it's still technically early November--so the OP could hear any day. A second, related possibility is simply that the committee has had trouble finding time to meet to make a decision on who to move forward with. A third possibility is that the committee has met but is having trouble deciding between one or more candidates. A fourth possibility is that they have decided and sent their recommendations on who to invite to campus to the college dean, but the dean is being slow with things. You get the picture by now. It could be just about anything.

This is just one of many reasons why I think, as some other readers have noted, the best thing to do in general is to try your best to put things out of your mind and not get your hopes up. Either you'll get a campus invite or you won't. There's nothing you can do about it post-interview. I know, it's maddening--but in my experience the best thing to do is to simply move on in your own mind and if you get a campus invite, you get a very happy surprise.

But these are just my thoughts. What are yours?

Prepping articles for submission: what's your process?

In our November "how can we help you?" thread, a new author writes:

How many weeks does it take professional philosophers to write a paper ready for submission? Is it better to write an outline before drafting? I think as I read. So I write random paragraphs after reading to see if something will materialize. Is that inefficient?

This is a great query, and I'm curious to hear everyone's thoughts. How long does it take for you to draft up something that you think is ready to submit to a journal? And what's your overall process look like? I guess I'll start things off!

How long do search committees take?

(Comments open now!)

In our November "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

I have a question related to applying for jobs this year. It's my first time on the market. I've read a lot of articles and blog posts about the unspoken rules of academic searches and their timelines, one of them being: you often don't get informed about having been rejected until much, much later. I find myself wondering: How much time, on average, does it take the search committee to come up with a list of first-round interviewees after the job posting deadline? I'm asking about TT jobs especially. In other words, when can I reasonably assume that I'm no longer in the running? I've read here and there that it's about 2-6 weeks, but that guess wasn't specific to our field. (And could this timeline be altered during the pandemic?)

One search committee member submitted the following response:

This is in response to job-seeker. 2-6 weeks strikes me as quite fast. I'm on a search committee this year, and we're not intending to contact shortlisted applicants until 7-8 weeks after the deadline. It takes a long time to read applications! Perhaps it makes a difference that we'll go straight to (zoom) talks, rather than doing first-round (zoom) interviews.

I think these two comments are a bit telling. On the one hand, on the search committees that I've served on, we've tried to move fast, meeting just a week or two after the application deadline. However, as the above search committee member notes, they move quite a bit more slowly: 7-8 weeks is close to two months after the application deadline. When I was a job-candidate, I got a first-round interview for a job over two months after the deadline. So, sadly, I think the answer to the OP is: you never really know. Search committees can make decisions quickly, or they can take their time. The best thing to do in order to know whether interview decisions have been made, I think, is for candidates who have received them to report them on our job-market reporting thread (which has been oddly quiet so far this season).