Career level/status and the market

In our most recent “how can we help you?” thread, Buscando writes:

Suppose there are two job candidates with roughly equal qualifications in terms of publications, teaching experience, Ph.D. granting institution prestige or rank and letters. 

But, they differ in terms of their career-level or status. Candidate X is a graduate student and candidate Y is junior faculty, recently hired, at a teaching-focused public university.

Will search committees favor candidate Y, the junior faculty member, over candidate X, the graduate student? Does the the answer to this question depend on whether a search committee is at an R1 institution, a SLAC or public university?

Good questions! My sense is that, all things being equal, R1’s may prefer the grad student but search committees at teaching schools may prefer the junior faculty. Here’s why.

As I explained on this blog before, my sense is that when it comes to R1 jobs, a person’s perceived career trajectory seems to matter a lot. For example, while in grad school I got interviews from research schools. However, once I accepted a VAP at a teaching school, those interviews immediately dried up. I’ve heard people say that there’s a reason for this: it can make you look less like an up and coming researcher and more like someone on track for a job a teaching school. Perception, as they say, is everything (or if not that, it is certainly something!). I’ve also heard people say that people coming out of grad school have “an element of mystery”—particularly if they have really good recommendation letters from influential people and the look of a promising research program. Which, or so I’ve heard, can make the candidate look like they are worth snatching up immediately, before anyone else gets them. Myself, I’m skeptical about whether this is a good way to hire people—but I’ve heard a number of people at R1’s who seem “in the know” say this is how committees can think.

Conversely, my sense is that search committees at teaching schools may have a preference (all things being equal) for people with a post-graduate track record in full-time teaching jobs. Very roughly, the rationale for this is that a full time job at a liberal arts university can be extremely demanding, and committees may want to know that a person can handle a full teaching and service load while also publishing successfully. While it is possible for grad students to teach multiple courses (as adjuncts at nearby universities)—which I think is by all means looked upon favorably by committees at teaching schools for the above reasons—my sense is that there may be a slight preference for people who have actually had a full-time teaching position before.

But these are just my thoughts, and they could be wrong. What do you all think, particularly those of you who have served on search committees? 

Comments

[Amanda]

I think trajectory matters, but the way it matters for research schools is changing. While I think it used to be somewhat uncommon to move from a teaching to research school, this is becoming more and more common. I did it, and I know at least six other people (yes 6) off the top of my head who have done it in the last few years. Everyone knows the job market is tough (to put it mildly) and even promising researcher often are happy to have teaching jobs. So as long as you have other research qualifications and are moving up that way, I don't think either a permanent or temporary position at a teaching school hurts that much for going to R1s. I would tend to say permanent is better than a VAP teaching post, though. All of that is to say I don't think an R1 would have any preference one way or the other.

I think teaching schools would prefer the Junior faculty, because they already have experience working in the relevant type of environment.

[R]

It's perhaps worth mentioning that if a PhD student and a junior faculty member have "roughly equal qualifications" one might think the PhD student is more impressive for having achieved more in a smaller amount of time. (Given that we usually measure age relative to the date the PhD is awarded, the student would have to be at least a year "younger".) I'm not sure whether and to what extent this figures into search committees' thinking, but it's perhaps one more factor at play here.

[Al]

The last three hires in my department have been people who had another job previously. Almost all of our finalists had previous jobs. There were a ton of very impressive new PhDs and in some ways they can be especially impressive in light of how much they’ve done so early on. But a very big factor for my reasearch oreinted school is getting someone who will hit the ground running. Ready to handle college/university level admin duties, ready to not just teach but be innovative as a teacher, and to really be a peer with current faculty. Certainly many new PhDs could do all of this but it’s harder to tell. Having been on committees and having lead changes in department are hard to mimic when not on faculty. I was told as a student that the best way to get a job is have a job. I now think that’s true and maybe even a justified practice.

[Amanda]

R - I think the situation is often more complex than the grad student having had less time to be successful. Grad school experience varies widely. I know some people who, in 5-7 years of graduate school, taught maybe one course, TA-d 2-4 others, and always had summer funding. Then there are people who never had summer funding and had to either teach or work some other job to make money. They also are the type that have taught 5-8 courses on their own, and also TA'd 10, by the time they graduate. While you might be right that some people assume that the grad student has accomplished more, without further information I think this is a rash assumption.

[Mike Titelbaum]

All my anecdotal evidence suggests that committees at different institutions make their decisions in very different ways. So I'll speak only for the hiring committees I've been on here at UW. We tend to look very skeptically at this "air of mystery" thing. We want to hire someone who will be an excellent researcher, teacher, and colleague, and we want to make our decisions based on strong evidence from a variety of sources. Given these desiderata, a candidate who has been in a professional position and has already demonstrated the ability to do the kind of teaching and research in that environment that will get them tenure has a serious advantage. Not that that's the only kind of person we ever hire, but when a candidate has less of a track record we're going to look very hard at the work they've done and the other kinds of evidence we can glean, and not simply rely on recommendations from fancy people saying they're a star.