Job-Market Boot Camp, Part 25: When Spring Term Rolls Around

It has been a while since the last installment of our "Job-Market Boot Camp", but given that it is Spring Term and hires are starting to be made, I thought it might be good for a new installment: one focusing on what to do at this point. Obviously, if you have interviews or on-campus visits, you should be practicing your interview skills and/or prepare as best you can for your visit. But, what about if you don't have interviews or campus visits? What should you do then? As someone who was on the academic job-market for seven years, I encountered this situation a bunch of times. So, allow me to offer a few suggestions, and then open things up for discussion.

Suggestion 1: Don't give up yet on this year's job cycle

One of the more interesting things I was told my first year on the market (when I was ABD) is that things can happen really late in the game. That year, I think I had three first-round interviews--but none of them turned into on-campus visits. But a bunch of people told me not to panic, saying they knew people who got hired for postdocs and VAP positions pretty late in the game, everywhere from March to as late as July (and in one or two cases, even August!). And indeed, this is what I found my first two years on the market. My first year, I received a VAP offer completely out of the blue sometime in March, and then, my second year (after not hearing back from my interview for over two months) I was once again offered a VAP in late March. So, if you do not have any TT interviews or flyouts, it's not necessarily time to give up on this year's job cycle. Things can still happen. Indeed, on that note, it is worth bearing in mind that not all academic job-markets follow the North American cycle (i.e. apply for jobs in fall, interview in winter, hire in Spring). UK, European, and other job-markets are more "year round", with jobs coming out constantly. So, keep an eye out for new job postings, and keep applying. Something could still happen!

Suggestion 2: Reflect, and discuss, whether to try again next year

At the same time, although good things can still happen, I've found that it can be good to not simply wait, but instead be proactive about what to do should things not turn out the way one hopes (i.e. you do not receive any offers, or you do receive a non-TT offer, but it is not an offer you want to take--say, due to low pay, relocation, etc.). The first thing to do, obviously, is decide whether to give the academic job-market another go next year. Here, I've found a few things are important:

1. Honest evaluation of "indicators" (i.e. whether you are "getting closer" to a TT job): What do I mean by this? Well, it can be hard to evaluate one's competitiveness on the market after just one year. If one gets no interviews, that may be a bad sign for the future--or it could just be that one got unlucky. However, if one is on the market a few years, trends may emerge. On the one hand, you may find yourself with few interviews year after year, or even see your number of interviews decrease. Alternatively, you may find that your number and quality of interviews increase substantially from year to year. Although the number and quality of one's interviews are merely that--reflections of how attractive committees find you as a candidate to interview--they are that: indicators of competitiveness for interviews.
2. Honest evaluation of one's priorities: Are you miserable? Can you "stand it" one more year on the market. I don't pretend to know when you should "give up" (or rather, pursue a nonacademic career)--but, for reasons I will turn to below (in Suggestion 3), now (Spring Term) is the time to decide: for you either need to start now looking for nonacademic work, or get on with the task of improving your dossier for next year's market.
3. Honest discussion with, and fairness to, one's loved ones: This one was particularly important to me. Once you are married, in a committed relationship, or have children, you now have obligations to others. Not only that: at least in my experience, the academic job market can be really trying on them. Those who love you tend to share your successes, as well as your misery? Would sticking it out on the job-market harm those you love? Is that worth it to you? Is it fair to them? Obviously, I have my own views about fairness--very roughly, that it requires negotiating compromises with others--but, even if you don't share my views (though of course you should!:), I would suggest that out of decency, kindness, and love, you should at least consider these issues very seriously.

If you decide to pursue nonacademic work, the obvious thing you need to do is find good resources for making that kind of career transition. If, on the other hand, you decide you want to hazard another year on the academic job-market, I would advise...

Suggestion 3: Start improving your candidacy now

If you are going to go through the academic job-market gauntlet yet again, I think you owe it to yourself to do everything you reasonably can to give yourself a better shot next year. How? By getting started on improving your candidacy now--yes, while you're still waiting on this year's job market. One obvious thing you should do is keep trying to publish the best work you can in the best venues you can. But, given how many people there appear to be with good publication records who report not getting many interviews, you should not stop there. There are many other things you can do. You can seek out more (and better) letters of recommendation, cultivate a positive online presence, work hard to improve your cover letter, research statement, and teaching dossier, etc.--and yes, "network". The important thing, again, is to start these things now, as you only have so much time before next year's market.

I hope this post has been helpful. Have I forgotten anything? For those of you have been on the market a few years (or succeeded in finding a job), do you have any advice that readers might find helpful here? Thanks, in advance, to everyone who chimes in!

Comments

[Pendaran Roberts]

Here's a serious problem for many UK early career philosophers. To get a tenure-track position you need to have a decent amount of experience teaching, designing, and running courses. However, most PhD students in the UK don't get much if any chance to do this.

Those of us who work really hard though do have a chance to publish. So, the best of us graduate with a few publications. We thus stand a chance for a research position. Many of these in the UK also do not emphasise teaching, and many are rather short-term.

There are short-term teaching positions, but these tend to go to inside candidates. So, it's difficult unless you're the chosen inside candidate to get teaching experience.

It's doubly difficult because if you're applying to these teaching positions without much teaching experience, you don't stand a chance. It's a catch 22. You need teaching experience to get a teaching position, and you need a teaching position to get teaching experience.

This is my experience at least. I'm a great publisher but have really struggled to get teaching in the UK. Thus, I think my teaching experience is probably less than many of my US competitors. Of course, perhaps my publication list is longer? I don't know...

[Joshua Mugg]

Also, sometimes VAP positions can turn into permanent gigs. I was hired for a one year VAP on July 30 last year. They did a fly out too. They then offered me a permanent position as 'Lecturer' in October this last fall (at a regional campus in the Indiana University system).

This came really late in the game for me. I had one interview for a TT position in late March, then one for VAP positions in May (funding fell through on that one), and finally two skype interviews July, one of which panned out!

(B.N: I'm not claiming that VAP--> Permanent Position is the norm, and my position is 4-4 'Lecturer' instead of 3-3 'TT'.)

[Joshua Mugg]

Pen-

Is there adjunct work in the UK in addition to the short-term teaching positions? My grad school union only allowed grad students to teach one course EVER during their PhD. Knowing that I needed a TONE of teaching exp, I started adjuncting at a local community college and a liberal arts college in a nearby city (2 hour commute). I ended up teaching a few online courses for them later one, which helped me land my current position.

Even if you don't need the cash for teaching, it's often worth it for the CV/exp.

Cheers,

[Pendaran Roberts]

Hi Dr Mugg ;)

I'm afraid adjunct positions don't exist here. (They'd probably be illegal) We do have part-time teaching positions though, which are similar.

Problem: My wife works at Warwick. So, I can't move to another city really. And it doesn't make much sense to do so for a part-time position.

I may eventually get some teaching at my fellowship at Warwick, but they need to find the money. They can't legally give me teaching and not pay me.

It's just difficult I think. Especially when your spouse is also an academic.

[Pendaran Roberts]

In fact, that'd be another interesting discussion: How to survive as an academic couple! haha!

[Someone with a spouse]

Pendaran,
Your situation is a tough one. I am more familiar with the North American job market than the UK market. But, I frequently see young academics putting lots of constraints on where they will apply. I can understand this. One may be committing to live in a place for the next 30 or so years of one's life. And ... committing one's family to live there as well. But people must realize that as they put further constraints they drastically reduce their chances of getting a job. If I do not want to live in large parts of America - parts where 50 % of the jobs are - then I have effectively cut myself off of 50 % of the available jobs.
Now your predicament with teaching experience ... clearly this is an issue of balancing short term against long term benefits. It may be in your interest to be apart from your spouse for a year or so NOW, in order to get jobs where you can be together in the long run. Alternatively, you may find yourself choosing not to have an academic job at all, by default. And this may lead to resentment.

[Pendaran Roberts]

Lots of academic couples end up doing long distance. I did that for a year already. I'm not doing it again.

Maybe if I knew it would guarantee me a TT job, but it doesn't.

[Thoughts?]

I had two Skype interviews for a postdoc position. The second interview was supposed to be in place of a fly out. I was told they would be making the decision in 1-2 weeks. Three weeks later I received a form rejection email. Is this an accepted norm? I would have thought that since we had two extensive conversations, I would get some sort of brief but personal email. But perhaps this is just how the game is played these days?

[Marcus Arvan]

Hi thoughts?: I don't know what is an accepted norm, and indeed, I'm not sure there are any. In my years on the market, I received bad news in just about every way you could imagine: personal phone calls, impersonal emails, and even no notification at all. For what it's worth, I'm not sure it would be working at a place that can't bother to give a personal phone call after a flyout.

[Thoughts?]

Hey Marcus,

Yeah others have said what you have. That an institution who would not even bother with a personal call is not worth working for. (I would have settled for a personal email. The note they sent was one they sent to all applicants, "We had many qualified candidates this year...")

The thing is, for many on the market, we want to work for somebody, and if the only somebodys out there are jerks, we will put up with it.