Last week, I shared mentor feedback from this past year's iteration of the Cocoon's job-market mentoring program. In today's post, I am going to share feedback from this year's mentees. Helen and I hope that sharing this feedback will encourage more people to sign up for this year's program, which will open for signups on June 1st. Our hope, again, is that this program will help make the market a tiny bit more equitable, by helping more candidates--particularly those with special challenges--go on the market with the kind of mentoring they need to be competitive.
Here, then, is the feedback we have received thus far from this past year's mentees:
Question 1: Types of mentoring received?
"specific and detailed feedback on job application materials. In general, plenty of useful advice on aspects of the job market process that one wouldn’t have gotten from any other source." - Anonymous mentee
"Provided sample dossier materials; Help constructing CVs, Cover Letters, Teaching Statement, Research Statement, and a Teaching Portfolio; and interview training, including sample questions, mock interviews, and detailed feedback." - Anonymous mentee
"Dossier Materials" - Anonymous mentee
"[Redacted] read some materials, and also gave advice on what to apply for." - Anonymous mentee
"General discussion, reviewing application materials." - Anonymous mentee
"Dossier Materials." - Anonymous mentee
"dossier material." - Anonymous mentee
"general advice." - Anonymous mentee
"dossier materials." - Anonymous mentee
"reviewed many of my application materials, discussed tailoring strategies with me, and provided a much-needed external perspective on my market process." - Cat St. Croix
"Dossier materials (including CV, cover letter, research statement, etc.) Interviewing tips." - Anonymous mentee
"Dossier Materials." - Anonymous mentee
"Reviewing materials, strategizing which jobs to seek, discussion of interview prep. My own preference was not seek much in the way of moral/ emotional support, but to keep the relationship focused on the task of finding a job." - Anonymous mentee
"Reviewing dossier materials, mock interview, general job market advice." - Anonymous mentee
Question 2: Did you find the program helpful on balance?
"Extremely helpful when it comes to getting a better idea about what changes to include in my dossier in order to make it more marketable." - Anonymous mentee
"Yes." - Anonymous mentee
"Yes, immensely so. While my department had provided the assistance of placement advisors to review my portfolio, it was incredibly helpful to get further feedback from an objective third party—particularly one to whom I was essentially unknown. In this way, my mentor’s perspective mirrored that of the hiring committee members who would be reading my portfolio for each application. He was able to bring my attention to what would stand out about me—and what would be lost in the noise—on paper, and I was able to modify my materials accordingly." - Anonymous mentee
"[Redacted]'s advice was helpful and convincing, although it didn’t have a huge effect on my materials or plans. I don’t think any part of it was outstandingly helpful or unhelpful. I got a job only about a month after joining the program, so I made much less use of it than I expected to – I’m sure [Redacted] could have given much more help to someone in different circumstances." - Anonymous mentee
"Yes." - Anonymous mentee
"Yes." - Anonymous mentee
"Yes." - Anonymous mentee
"Yes." - Anonymous mentee
"Yes." - Anonymous mentee
"Yes!" - Cat St. Croix
"Yes, it was VERY helpful!" - Anonymous mentee
"Yes." - Anonymous mentee
"Yes." - Anonymous mentee
"Yes." - Anonymous mentee
Question 3: What did you find most helpful?
"Finding out more details about the different steps in the hiring process for junior academic positions." - Anonymous mentee
"Improving my job documents. They are unbelievably better." - Anonymous mentee
"As mentioned above: the objective, distanced perspective my mentor was able to provide was invaluable. It gave me a very important insight as to how I would be perceived on paper." - Anonymous mentee
"The realistic responses concerning the academic job market and the general view towards 'multidisciplinary' candidates." - Anonymous mentee
"Review of dossier materials." - Anonymous mentee
"The dynamics with my mentor was low-pressure and less was at stake. So the help I got from my mentor was good for things that I couldn’t get from higher-pressure interactions with my letter writers. This was especially good for the earlier stages (before sending any of the documents to my letter writers)." - Anonymous mentee
"Having someone to contact in case I needed help with job applications and having someone who could help explain the US job market to me (even if I am not applying to US jobs, at least not at the moment." - Anonymous mentee
"It was very useful for me to have feedback from someone who didn’t know me and was not familiar my research." - Anonymous mentee
"Having someone with a more recent job market experience to talk with and get advice from." - Cat St. Croix
"His advice based on his own experience on the job market." - Anonymous mentee
"I was able to get a big picture assessment of my dossier that could speak to fit for programs as well as the dossier’s overall cohesiveness. Especially as someone who is a few years out of school and has worked on various projects since, this broader, impartial perspective seemed valuable to me." - Anonymous mentee
"As a candidate who has been on the market for a while and reviewed my materials many times, it was helpful to me to have an outside voice. In fact, most of the comments I received confirmed my approach and were generally in the same direction I already believed to be correct. Most helpful: reassurance." - Anonymous mentee
"Being guided by a capable and responsive mentor." - Anonymous mentee
Question 4: What did you find least helpful?
"Cannot really find something that was not helpful, or less helpful." - Anonymous mentee
"Help with interviews was tricky, since there is often a quick turn-around between being alerted about an interview and needing to interview. This made it difficult to run mock interview before the actual interview." - Anonymous mentee
"I found all elements of the program helpful to some degree." - Anonymous mentee
"Every interaction was helpful." - Anonymous mentee
"My participation in the program was somewhat limited, because I was visiting another university this year, and luckily, I started receiving a lot of mentoring from a faculty member here. So I don’t think I’m in the position to comment on this." - Anonymous mentee
"The program seems to be mostly aimed at the US job market (as most mentoring programs in philosophy are) and less so at the European job market (maybe excluding UK). As I’m looking for TT jobs in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, etc. I realized that I was not the target public for the program." - Anonymous mentee
"I don’t think there was anything particularly unhelpful!" - Cat St. Croix
"The status of the job market." - Anonymous mentee
"I sometimes felt—felt—I could have used more active intervention. However, I think that’s just an emotion on my part. I have no reason to believe that doing anything differently would have made a difference." - Anonymous mentee
"Nothing stands out with the process I went through." - Anonymous mentee
Question 5: How, if at all, did participation in the program affect your performance on the job-market? (More interviews? Fewer interviews?)
"It helped me get more interviews." - Anonymous mentee
"I think it greatly improved my performance. I received the same number of interviews as last year, but the interviews were all for higher-level positions, such as for a TT or renewable employee position." - Anonymous mentee
"During my first year on the market, I received four job interviews. This season, I received none – though I in no way put this down to my mentor experience. After talking with my placement advisors, it seems that this season was simply a particularly competitive one for my specialization area." - Anonymous mentee
"Not much, as far as I can tell." - Anonymous mentee
"There are many variables that affect job market performance. But I think that having a more polished dossier will always help. My dossier was much more polished this year thanks to the program and I think that helped me to make it to the long list in several positions." - Anonymous mentee
"No effect, really." - Anonymous mentee
"If I had to guess, the feedback that I received from my mentor in this program was particularly helpful for my teaching portfolio. My mentor gave me some great comments about making the teaching statement more detailed. I imagine that had a good effect on the whole file (This was my first year on the market, and I was applying very selectively). So I don’t have a good sense of how different things could have affected m y performance. I am quite happy with how things worked out at the end, and I’m very grateful for all the help." - Anonymous mentee
"I have not received a single interview, though in the current job market I do not blame that on [Redacted]." - Anonymous mentee
"It did not affect my performance because I decided to take a break from the job market during the first year of my 3-years post-doc." - Anonymous mentee
"Hard to say! I think [Redacted]’s input made my materials better, but I don’t really have a clear basis on which to judge whether it improved my performance as this was my first year out." - Cat St. Croix
"I think it better prepared myself as a job candidate. Although I didn’t get an offer so far, I feel more confident that I now know how to prepare my next attempt." - Anonymous mentee
"No measurable impact so far." - Anonymous mentee
"I had the same result as always: 50+ applications with no success. Thus, I don’t believe that my specific mentor-mentee relationship had an influence on my performance on the job market. The only difference this year was one skype interview (I had never received an interview of any kind before). This interview was with a small department where I had already given a presentation and the faculty knew me." - Anonymous mentee
"I think it only strengthened my presence on the market. I did not get any interviews, and I’m unsure if it made a difference in getting me close to an interview." - Anonymous mentee
Question 6: Did you obtain a job this season? If so, what kind (tenure-track, non-TT, etc.)?
"Not yet, but I will." - Anonymous mentee
"Yes, I received a non-TT, renewable position." - Anonymous mentee
"Yes, a fixed-term teaching position in a very good department." - Anonymous mentee
"No." - Anonymous mentee
"Non-TT assistant professor position." - Anonymous mentee
"Yes: a one year postdoc in Germany (deferred for personal reasons to April 2019), and a non-TT teaching job for the Fall and Spring 2018-19." - Anonymous mentee
"No." - Anonymous mentee
"postdoc at the University of Oxford." - Anonymous mentee
"Yes! I’ll be taking up a two-year, non-teaching post-doc at the University of Minnesota." - Cat St. Croix
"No." - Anonymous mentee
"No. But there is a Skype-interview scheduled next week for a visiting assistant professor position." - Anonymous mentee
"Not yet..." - Anonymous mentee
"No." - Anonymous mentee
"No." - Anonymous mentee
Question 7: Would you recommend our program to other job-candidates? Why/why not?
"I would highly recommend the program because I think it contributes to the health and well-being of the discipline of philosophy, by enabling cross-departmental or cross-AOS feedback and exchange of ideas about teaching/research." - Anonymous mentee
"Definitely. After one year on the job market without a mentor, and one with a mentor, I can say that the different is night and day. I improved in ways that I never expected and would never have been able to improve on my own. Plus, having a friend to support you through the very stressful, highly-competitive process is invaluable." - Anonymous mentee
"Yes, for the reasons listed above. The more feedback you can gain on your portfolio, the stronger it will be." - Anonymous mentee
"Yes, if I or they felt they were inadequately supported by other advisors." - Anonymous mentee
"Yes, even if only to receive 'insider views' on the philosophical job market and its challenges." - Anonymous mentee
"Yes, any help at all is valuable." - Anonymous mentee
"Yes, particularly to fellow international students and students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. One thing I noticed was that there are so many cultural norms and signals that make navigating the American job market difficult for someone who is not familiar with the system and its values." - Anonymous mentee
"I would definitely recommend the program to other job-candidates, especially if they are looking for a job in the US." - Anonymous mentee
"Yes. The program can help you see your job market materials with different eyes." - Anonymous mentee
"Definitely. It was invaluable to me to have someone from outside the program with whom to discuss applications and work through the process. Much of our support during graduate school comes from either family, friends in our cohort, or faculty. But, the job market puts us in an odd position relative to each of those groups. Family (and non-academic friends) probably don’t have similar enough experience to quite understand what we’re going through. Friends within our cohort are also deeply stressed and because we’re often in the running for the same jobs, both commiserating about failures and celebrating successes can be quite delicate. Faculty are often many years out from their job market experience, so it’s often difficult to know how to interpret their advice. By contrast, the program’s near-peer mentors are ideally positioned in each of these respects. As a mentee, this (along with my mentor’s kindness and clear concern for my wellbeing) meant that I felt freer to share my experience with my mentor and ask for advice than I did with just about anyone else. (And I’m very glad to have met [redacted]!) - Cat St. Croix
"Of course. It was very helpful to get advice based on a direct experience. Although I had my own faculty members in my department, [Redacted] gave me a help from a different perspective." - Anonymous mentee
"Absolutely. I think mentors in the field are almost invaluable, especially for underrepresented groups. It is very difficult to establish or originate a mentor/mentee relationship just from an isolated trip to a conference." - Anonymous mentee
"Yes. If someone chooses to become a job candidate in philosophy, this kind of professional mentorship is invaluable." - Anonymous mentee
"Yes! Along with all the helpful practical advice about the mechanics of the job market, it is helpful to feel like you have someone in your corner that understands the process you are going through. I found this a psychological benefit of the program." - Anonymous mentee
Question 8: Do you have any suggestions for how our program might be improved?
"I do not have any improvement suggestions at the moment." - Anonymous mentee
"Keep this program going! It is an amazing asset for philosophers that are new to the job market. I knew a lot going into the program, so I knew what to ask my mentor and where to find job listings. However, for those who are unsure of these things, it may be nice to have a brief tutorial of how to get started with the job search, or a list of questions that it would be good to ask one’s mentor." - Anonymous mentee
"Perhaps connect mentees with more than one mentor?" - Anonymous mentee
"We need help finding positions that are open to junior faculty, which are now rare. The best looking dossier in the world doesn’t help if you cannot find a department that will consider hiring junior faculty. Please provide help connecting us with suitable positions." - Anonymous mentee
"I’m sure this is my fault for not following the philosophy blog world very carefully, but perhaps the program could also be advertised to departments (Placement officers) earlier in the year." - Anonymous mentee
"I would have liked to have more mentors who have experience in finding TT jobs (not post-docs) in Europe. I realize that this might be very difficult, since each European country has a different recruitment system." - Anonymous mentee
"Not really, I am very satisfied and grateful." - Anonymous mentee
"It might be helpful for those who run the program to periodically send out emails suggesting things for candidates and mentors to be thinking about as the job market rolls on: an email stating that TT jobs are appearing, that VAP season is on, etc. That might help keep candidates on track." - Anonymous mentee
"Given the job market ends up involving decisions made by committees, it might prove beneficial to pair a mentee with a small mock committee. This might give the mentee varying mentor perspectives on their materials within one job season and more closely resemble the process after being selected for an interview. It might be worth considering the pros and cons (if you haven’t already) of a such a small committee arrangement should you have enough willing mentors. Yet, the program is hugely valuable as it currently stands. Thank you again for the opportunity to participate in it." - Anonymous mentee
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