Notes from both sides of the market, part 9: The elusiveness of "fit"

One of the most common things one hears about the academic job market is that it is a "crapshoot." It can often be very puzzling which jobs one gets interviewed for, and which jobs one doesn't--and of course, it can be frustrating to see people get hired who seem to be a "worse fit" for a job (viz. fewer publications, less teaching experience, etc.) that you do. What gives? Well, one of the other most common things one hears about the job-market is just how important "fit" is--but how very difficult it is to quantify or predict. What is "fit" exactly, and how do search committees go about determining whether a candidate is a "good fit" for a job?

Here, I think, is the basic problem with the issue of fit: there is no good way to adequately define, enumerate, or predict its various forms. "Fit", quite frankly, is whatever search committee members treat it as. Whether you "fit" a position, in a given search committee member's mind, can involve everything ranging from whether they like your personality, to whether they like the brand of philosophy you do, to whether you have experience teaching some random course the department could really use a teacher in, to whether they think you'll stay (rather than jump ship for another school) if they hire you. This is, in essence--in my experience on both sides of the market--one of the biggest reasons the market is such a "crapshoot." You never really know what a given search committee member's picadillos might be. Maybe they had a bad experience with Continental philosophy in their past--so they don't want to hire anyone who even so much as dabbles in Contintental. Maybe they had a bad experience with a difficult colleague in the past--so they want to hire someone who is friendly and cooperative. Or maybe they have strong political views and want to hire a potential "ally." You never know how you may or may not "fit" a given search-committee member's hiring preferences.

Is this a good thing, or a bad thing? In my view, "fit" does have a legitimate place in hiring--we just don't go about determining it the right way. As readers may know from previous posts I've written, the science of hiring (which my spouse specializes in within a top-5 PhD program in her field) has systematically demonstrated over the past several decades that basing hiring decisions on "clinical judgment" (i.e. whether you like someone) predicts job success worse than hiring people on the basis of quantifiable factors (i.e. achievements, such as publication-rates, etc.). At the same time, the science of hiring also indicates that person-job fit is crucial--both for employee success, but also employer satisfaction with who they hire. So, "fit" is important--but, in academia at least, we go about determining "fit" in a completely haphazard way that doesn't control for personal or collective bias.

In any case, I think anyone who has been at all involved in academic hiring knows that--in our current system--fit often plays a very large role in decisions. Hiring committees are comprised by human beings--people with their own unique hopes, desires, professional ideals, and so on. Consequently, whereas one search committee member may think you are a "perfect fit" for a given job, another might think the opposite. How, then, can you go about trying to make yourself a good fit for jobs as a candidate? I think there is only so much you can do, but think the following strategies are probably generally advantageous:

Teaching breadth: As I explained here, many teaching-oriented schools have very small departments, with only a few full-time, tenure-stream faculty members. Often enough, these departments have particular courses--say, modern philosophy, or ancient, or business ethics)--that they could really use their new hire to teach. Consequently, if you have a background teaching in that area, you might have a distinct advantage over other candidates. Unfortunately, you never quite know what that class (or classes) might be! But this, I think, just means that the more diverse your teaching experience is, the more likely you are to be that person who can teach the class(es) the departments needs someone to teach, making you a particularly good "fit" for their job.

Research: In my experience on both sides of the market, one of the biggest things a hiring committee wants to feel comfortable with heading into a hire is knowing that the person they hire will publish enough to probably get tenure. For R1 jobs, this means publishing as many articles in top-ranked journals you can--and, in my experience, for teaching schools it is a matter of having as many legitimate peer-reviewed publications as you can (subject to the caveat below). As I have written many times here before, I don't think publishing as many top-ranked articles as you can makes you a particularly good fit for teaching schools (who may regard you as a flight risk if your publication record is "too good"). I have heard many stories of committees at teaching schools worry about flight risks--and have even personally known a few departments who were burned by a person they hired who jumped ship as soon as they could (losing the department the tenure track position!). It's an unfortunate fact--but nevertheless, I think, a fact--that job-marketeers face a "fit" trilemma: whatever makes you a better "fit" for one type of job (research jobs) might make you a worse "fit" for other types (teaching jobs), and vice versa. Pick your poison. When I was on the market, I found that the more decent publications I had, the more interviews I got at teaching schools--so, I think, if you want to be competitive for research schools, publish high; but if you want to be competitive at teaching schools, publish a lot of decent stuff and burnish up the rest of your file (viz. teaching, service, etc.).

Personality: My experience is that people often favor people they "like", whatever that means (including all of the biases it may involve). It's also well-known that people favor extroverts. As an introvert, this has always bugged me--and I suspect it worked against me on the market (I had one person who interviewed me say I came off as "low energy"). Whatever may be the case, I suspect philosophy job-candidates may underestimate the importance of what my spouse calls "impression-managing." As scholars, we want to be evaluated on our work--on our capacities as researchers, teachers, and so on. Or at least I do. Nevertheless, the people who are considering whether they should hire you are human, and as a human beings I expect many of them want to know, "Is this a person I would want to work with for the next 30 years, should they get tenure?" Because I have heard many people on the hiring side of things say things to exactly this effect, I think it behooves candidates to work on how they come across in interviews, in person, and online. It's an unfortunate business, "impression managing"--but, in the real world, with real live human beings, I suspect it's necessary--as you never know whether someone's really "liking you", or your rubbing them the wrong way, might make the difference in their and/or the committee's deliberations.

Cover letters and flight-risks: Finally, two things that I know matters for teaching schools are cover letters and whether you may be a flight risk. First, on cover letters: I have heard more than a few people at teaching schools say that cover letters really matter to them--that they want to see whether a candidate has any actual familiarity with their school. When it comes to teaching schools, the people doing the hiring want some idea that you actually want to be there, at their school, rather than somewhere else. Which brings me to the flight-risk issue. As I mentioned before, I have heard from many people at small schools that this is a big issue--that they may be afraid of hiring people from Top Schools with Top Publications because those candidates look like they are on trajectory to Harvard, not a small teaching school. While I suspect there is only so much a candidate can do to assuage these kinds of concerns, cover letters, interviews, and personal discussions are the places to try. They are the places to make a case that you are a good "fit" for the school.

Anyway, "fit" once again is a very elusive and hard to predict things. I suspect there is only so much one can do to make oneself a "good fit" for a given job--but the above are, I think, some decent ways to do one's best. What about you all--particularly search committee members out there? What plays into candidates "fitting" a position to you?

Comments

[Stephen Bloch-Schulman]

Marcus,
I largely agree with your assessment. I would add one other hypothesis/guess: that teaching departments prefer new hires to have some overlap in philosophic interests, but not too much. Which means one needs to have the right balance of new areas covered and also connecting with others. I suspect this for two reasons: first, that even as one might be hired to teach something new, there is often a need to share classes. For example, when the person who primarily teaches Ancient takes a sabbatical, it is useful to have another person to step in (of course, adjuncts can play this role some, but not at schools where it is hard to find adjuncts or where the class is less standard), and second, that it leads to the best chance for conversation during on-campus interviews.
Just a guess.

I do have one question for you: you imply that it is bad that there is a trilemma. I agree that it is hard to put oneself in the best stead to get jobs at both teaching schools (or, more accurately at teaching schools or in teaching positions at research schools) and research schools. But it is not clear to me that this is a problem. Can you clarify?

Best,
Stephen

[Marcus Arvan]

Hi Stephen: All good points. I think the trilemma is "bad" only in the sense that it requires candidates to put their eggs, as it were, in one basket rather than another. Many of us, I expect, love teaching *and* research and would be happy with a job at any type of school: an R1 institution, liberal arts college, or community college. At the very least, I know this is true of me. So, it's unfortunate that, depending on what they do, candidates plausibly make themselves better candidates for research jobs or teaching jobs, but not both simultaneously.

[Stephen Bloch-Schulman]

Marcus,
Thanks for explaining.

Now that I reflect on it, I ask because of my experience on search committees at teaching schools... particularly, I see very few applicants that, to my mind, have spent sufficient time and energy on their teaching. I understand the context in which graduate students work (around research-oriented faculty) and the need for graduate students to focus on their own research (dissertation and publications to graduate and be market-ready). In the end, I fear that many don't see that a teaching job is, at most schools, a very different type of job in which time and work would look quite different than at research schools. Many of my colleagues, and even many of the most research-productive of my colleagues, do not do any research during teaching semesters because of the amount of time and effort they put towards teaching, mentoring, and service. And that, it seems to me, would be a life that many would love, and others would never choose for themselves.

Best,
Stephen

[Marcus Arvan]

Hi Stephen: I totally agree on all counts. I too have the impression that many candidates give short shrift to teaching--at least relative to the amount of thought and innovation that is generally expected at teaching institutions. And yep, I'm just like your colleagues: I hardly do any research during the fall or spring semesters because of the amount of time and effort I devote to teaching and service. Basically, I do about 90% of my research during summer and winter breaks. Still, it's an unfortunate trilemma because, like most candidates, what I wanted above all is a *job* rather than unemployment--and yet, for reasons we've discussed, becoming more competitive for one type of job can make one less competitive for others. I distinctly remember as a job-candidate not knowing what in the world to do--so I just published as much as I could and became the best teacher I could. But, even after all that, I had some search committee members at teaching schools say they worried I would jump ship because I had published so much...yet I hardly got any interviews from research schools. So, the market really places candidates in a bind. You have to put your eggs somewhere, but regardless of what basket you put them in you run the risk of become less competitive for jobs you would otherwise might love!

[Recent hire]

I think this is all true, but maybe one further consideration is this: it seems to me that unless you are graduating from a top-something PGR program, you will not likely to get a research job at your first try on the market. No matter your publication record or other research output.

Thus, e.g., at my grad school, not that it has never happened at all, but it was not a good bet to focus on research jobs instead of teaching ones. Of course, as was said earlier, publication still does matter, etc., but I would have never applied for an R1 job even though my grad school is undoubtedly one of the best one in my specific AOS.

Overall, I don't think this is a very good thing (especially that the overall rankings seem to matter more than those in your specific field), but I think going through your grad school placement records in the last few years gives a pretty good estimate of what kind of schools (research, teaching) you are most likely going to get a job at. And when you figure that out, you will try to make yourself a "good fit" for such jobs.

[Hired]

Recently Hired is right on. Look at the various colleges and universities at which people in your PhD program have been placed in the last 5 years. That is the sort of place YOU should be applying to. Generally, that is the sort of place you will get a job at. NOTE: sometimes a school really only places people regionally. I think some of the mid-west schools out side the top few are like that.

[Amanda]

Yes, it seems that unless you are from a top school, teaching schools really are your only decent bet. There are a few exceptions every few years, but they are incredibly rare. Hence a number of people get themselves into a bad situation because they come from a mid or low ranked school and they have a prestigious publication record. Doing that basically places one out of both the teaching and research markets. I think many people complaining about the arbitrariness of the market are these types of people who have great publications and are from a non-top school. They don't understand why they cannot get a job and others who seem less accomplished can. But the reason is basically explained by the two different markets, and the unfortunate reality that they are largely mutually exclusive.