Tailoring your job-market strategy to your situation

Long-time readers of the Cocoon may recall that I've wondered on a few occasions whether many academic job-candidates end up adopting a sub-optimal job-market strategy. First, last year I floated a hypothesis that job-candidates coming out of lower-ranked PhD programs may have a tendency to adopt a job-market strategy that fails to make them competitive for R1 jobs (since top-ranked programs fare best with those) while simultaneously 'pricing them out' of teaching-focused jobs. Second, I've often floated the idea that one fairly common piece of conventional wisdom--that publishing in low-ranked or no-name journals 'looks bad on the market'--is just false when it comes to jobs at teaching schools. My clear sense, both as a job-candidate for many teaching jobs and (more recently) as a search-committee member at a liberal arts university, is that a lot of people at these kinds of institutions could really care less about journal rankings. And, as luck would have it, a recent study appears to bear out my skepticism: publications in 'weak journals' appear to help, at least if you publish in good places too.

Anyway, a recent exchange I had with a friend got me thinking this morning about a more general issue: namely, the potential importance of tailoring your job-market strategy to a realistic picture of your 'situation' . Allow me to explain.

A friend of mine recently asked whether they should publish in a particular journal. Another person chimed in with the conventional wisdom that because the journal in question is very low-ranked, publishing there 'wouldn't look good'. I think this kind of general advice is deeply mistaken, and that the kinds of journals one should seek to publish in depend very much on where one is at in one's career--at least if you want a job. Why? Having spent seven years on the market as a job-candidate before getting a tenure-track job, and then having served on four search committees, my sense is that the following three things  probably tend to be true:

1. Unless you constantly publish in top-5/top-10 journals (and maybe even then), your probability of getting a research job is likely to plummet the longer you've been on the market. This, at least, seems to me what hiring trends suggest year after year. R1 programs often snatch up the 'most promising star candidates' either right out of grad school (usually graduates from top programs), or after prestigious R1 postdocs. I've seen a number of people with really excellent publishing records (including top-5 and top-10 journals) not end up getting a tenure-track job anywhere despite being on the market a really long time.

2. All things being equal, the longer you are on the market, the more attractive you may be for jobs at many teaching institutions. In brief, this is because people care a great deal about teaching experience, well-developed pedagogy, and a consistent enough publishing record to get tenure at their institution. Indeed, my real sense here is that in contrast to R1 jobs--where recent PhDs are coveted the most--at teaching institutions recent PhDs tend to be coveted the least, because of their relative lack of teaching experience.

3. Publishing in highly-ranked journals can 'price yourself out' of a job at a teaching institution. As I've mentioned before, for better or worse, people at teaching institutions (particularly those in the middle of nowhere) can worry about flight risk, as well as whether a new hire will be happy at their university. If you have a string of top-20 or top-10 publications, you may look like 'someone who belongs at a research university'.

Anyway, here's my bet: unless you are really publishing in top places (e.g. top-5 or top-10 journals consistently), the longer you are on the job-market, the better off you are likely to be not publishing in the highest-ranked journals you can. After you've been on the market a while, there is a serious risk that you may be 'too stale' to be competitive at research universities, and publishing consistently in journals that are too highly-ranked might price you out of the jobs you would be more competitive for at that point: teaching jobs.

This is, admittedly, just a bet on my part. However, I followed something like it as a job-candidate and it had good results in the end. Early on in my time in the market, I tried publishing in the best journals I could--and for a couple of years I received interviews at some pretty prestigious places. But after a couple of years (and only a couple of brief 'reply' publications in a top-20 specialist journal), those interviews dried up. What I did then was change my job-market strategy: I started aiming lower, avoiding the most highly-ranked journals and mostly targeting lower-ranked journals so that my CV would show that I was publishing actively but in a way that might make me a good 'fit' for teaching places. It worked. The more publications I got, the more interviews and fly-outs I got--and I often had people at teaching schools talk quite positively about my research record (indicating, as noted above, that they were more concerned with output than with things like journal rank). At the time, I knew publishing in lower-ranked journals was a risk...but it was also a calculated risk, as I knew by that time that my chances for a prestigious R1 job were probably up. My thought at the time was that I just needed a job, and that I could always return to trying to publish in the best places if and when I finally got one.

Anyway, I don't mean to advise everyone who has been on the market a while to try this strategy, as it is (admittedly) a risk. If you're a few years out from the PhD and you're in a good research postdoc and publishing effectively in top-ranked journals, then by all means, you still may be competitive for a research job. I am just inclined to think--on the basis of a variety of experiences--that if this isn't your situation, and you've been out a while, then trying to continue publishing in top-20 journals might not be the best strategy. Top-20 publications are not likely to make you all that competitive for R1 or prestigious SLAC jobs (where top-5/top-10 publications and recent graduation from a prestigious grad program are likely to matter most), and continuing to rack up top-20 publications may make you look less attractive for many teaching jobs. At the end of the day, the real message of this post isn't that there is a formula for tailoring your strategy to where you are on the market--but that it may be wise to be aware of these kinds of potential complexities in deciding which type of strategy to risk and when.

But these are just my thoughts. What do you all think?

Comments

[H]

Regarding point 2: Doesn't this put some lower-ranked PhD students at a disadvantage for eventually getting a job? For example, my lower-ranked program only requires PhD students to teach about 6-8 courses during their PhD, but there are some (minimal) opportunities to teach more. These are a mix of intro-level classes and maybe two specialized classes in order to get teaching experience in one's AOSs. If lower-ranked grads need more teaching experience in order to land a teaching job, this might force some of us to adjunct at other universities simply for more experience.

However, given the advice previously posted on the Cocoon that candidates need to prove their AOCs by teaching courses in those areas, this creates a tension. Most universities need adjuncts for intro-level classes, so grad students in the situation I described earlier might not be able to fill out their AOCs with teaching experience in all the areas they might actually be competent in.

How can this tension be resolved?
(a) Petitioning one's program for more teaching opportunities across the board.
(b) Publishing articles in one's AOCs in lower-ranked journals to prove competence.
(c) Claiming an AOC that you might not be able to prove competence in based on teaching or publications.
(d) Hoping for the best in getting a temporary position after the PhD that will fill in the gaps.
(e) Something else?

I worry about (a) not being feasible in many cases. (b) might make the candidate look like they have too diverse of interests and are not really specializing in anything. (c) seems like it could backfire, so (d) might be the best option for this case. Is there anything I might be overlooking which can resolve the tension?

[Amand]

I probably don't know as much about this as Marcus, but I get the sense that teaching schools care most about:

1. Solo teaching experience (i.e. lead instructor, not the TA)
2. Solo teaching experience at an institution like the hiring institution.

While a mix of teaching, and teaching in AOC is very helpful, it is not as helpful as the above two things. I think adjunct experience is critical for those who want teaching jobs, since rarely do PhD students get (1) and (2) at their own institution. PhD institution are typically R1s - so if you want to get hired by a state or liberal arts school, or CC, you need to teach outside of your PhD institution.

I would gain experience in your AOC another way, and adjunct, given your circumstance. No situation is perfect, and sometimes the best CV requires post PhD experience.

I would add to the above, that the whole "top 5-10" journal thing is heavily biased toward certain areas of philosophy. If you work in a niche area R1s won't require top 5-10 publications, at least not that general ranking you see all the time. They require you to publish in top journals in your area. Also, being a name in your field is even more important than the straight up journal publishing record.

[Chris]

Grad Student H:

My sense is that if you're teaching 6-8 courses as a solo instructor during your time as a PhD student that's a lot more than most "highly ranked" Phd students get to teach. At the extreme, some students at highly ranked programs get to teach maybe only 1 or 2 solo courses. So you're already at a big advantage (for teaching jobs) over those candidates.

But I'd be curious if anyone has done a systematic survey of how much solo teaching one does as a graduate student. I bet grad students at elite (philosophy) Phd public schools get more opportunity than students at elite private grad programs. And I bet less well ranked programs often have more opportunities because (1) the school is less wealthy and so there's less fellowship money and (2) the school is less wealthy and so they'd rather have more poorly paid graduate students teach than expensive faculty. But I haven't systematically studied this, and I'm relying just on info about a few programs of each type, where the pattern seems to hold.

[Amanda]

I have seen that highly ranked programs typically not only offer far more funding for teaching free years, but that they often actively discourage teaching. So I'd be surprised if there wasn't a clear trend toward less teaching at higher ranked programs, with a few exceptions here and there.