What role do dissertations play in hiring?

In our most recent "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

How important is the dissertation for jobs? Do people on hiring committees even read them or should I focus my writing sample and getting published?

I highly doubt that many people on hiring committees have the time to read entire dissertations. I expect they'll take your writing sample as indicative of the kind of work you likely did in it, as well as recommendation letters. But, of course, to get good recommendation letters, you may need to write a good dissertation! Also, my sense is that for most jobs (though not all), publications are super important, as most of your competitors will have some.

What do other readers think? It would be great to hear from some search committee members!

Comments

[Fritz McDonald]

I've been on a few search committees. Neither I nor anyone on the committees I've been on has read a whole dissertation by a candidate. Have an excellent writing sample and do try to publish--I'm sorry to say that it is almost required to have a number of publications at this point to get a job.

I think it's still the case that you are expected to give a dissertation "spiel" at an interview. Be ready to talk about it for a few minutes, and take questions about the dissertation.

In the ideal world, you'll get a TT job and mine the dissertation for publications that will help you get tenure.

[placement person]

my experience in hiring and doing placement is that at a lot of places/to a lot of people dissertations matter quite a bit (though this really varies; some don't care about it at all and only care about writing sample and publishing)--but still, no one is going to read them. What matters is that (a) your project is interesting/seems important/you can talk about it and why it matters in accessible, exciting ways in your materials and/or that (b) it helps you seem like (in conjunction with your research statement) you have the grounding for an actual long-term research program. Places/individuals that prefer systematic research are going to care about this more; places that emphasize one-off prestige publishing are going to care about it less. My experience is that quite a few smaller/more mixed teaching/research focused places sometimes care about dissertations a lot--they want to know what their new colleagues are about, philosophically, but might care less about where and when they publish stuff. They want to know if you are one of four members of a department if they can talk to you/if your work is interesting/if you have interesting thoughts. And dissertations are places where you can show those interesting thoughts, precisely because there is less pressure to publish them directly, and being able to talk about your dissertation in a super coherent/clear/compelling way is a lot of evidence about depth of teaching abilities as well as depth of your research. So, I think they can often matter quite a bit, but there are also definitely places that don't care; and in neither case is anyone going to read them, it's more about what's in them, your ability to talk about it, and your ability to summarize it in a compelling/clear way.

[cecil burrow]

Search committees won't read your dissertation, but your letters writers will, and letters of recommendation play a huge role in hiring. Strong letters of recommendation typically involve outlining and singing high praise for the dissertation.

[Michel]

I'm at a wholly teaching focused school and we may be unusual in this respect, but we don't even ask for a writing sample. We might ask for your spiel in the interview (then again, maybe not).

The dissertation does matter insofar as it has to be done, though. You might get interviewed without it in hand, but it will leave you at a significant disadvantage.

[Mike Titelbaum]

Jus to clarify something that graduate students reading this thread may not know: While the dissertation project is important for all the reasons folks have mentioned above, the dissertation itself is not one of the materials typically submitted to search committees or posted on one's website. I've been on many search committees, and even if I wanted to read someone's dissertation (I usually don't!), I wouldn't even have access to it for that purpose.

[market veteran]

For grad students who haven't yet dipped their toe into the job market: It's hard to overemphasize the point that *there are multiple job markets*. When it comes to research-focused positions (TT, 2-2 load, grad advising, high expectations in terms of research output, etc.) the dissertation will be important, but only insofar as it is indicative of a promising long-term research program. However, even for a research job, no one will actually *read* your dissertation; this promise will be gleaned from other parts of the file (sample, letters, research statement, etc.)

For many teaching-oriented positions, research just doesn't matter that much; it won't play a major role in the hiring decision. Your colleagues still might be interested/encouraging, but it's not a deal-breaker for the hiring process. The dissertation will be seen as hurdle that you need to clear in order to get the job, but not much else. If you have a project together, a Ph.D. in hand or nearly in hand, and the ability to publish somewhere (doesn't matter where), then you're in the running. What will then make the difference are your teaching abilities and background.

It can be hard to break out of the research-obsessed culture that many PhD-granting departments encourage. In my own experience, I received *horrendous* job market advice from my dissertation advisor and placement directors, while at the same time getting great feedback/advice when it came to the details of my philosophical research. For me, it was *really* important to learn how to compartmentalize: the research faculty who I respected as philosophers were also some the least reliable guides to the job market. Many of them were, quite frankly, clueless. If you're gunning for an R1 position, godspeed. If you're not, I would talk to recent graduates who have been on the market for the last several years and have landed different types of positions. These should be your go-to people for job market advice. Go to the research faculty for the philosophy, and *only* for the philosophy.

[anon]

Dissertations matter almost solely for getting quality recommendation letters. They are important, but only indirectly so.

[don’t diss the diss]

I emphatically second placement person above. Your dissertation will be what you talk about in your cover letter, research statement, and first- and second-round interviews in the early job market years. It will be the soil in which your thinking grows. An exciting dissertation project about which you have interesting and insightful things to say will look exciting to search committee members in all cases.

So I encourage grad students to be passionate about their dissertation research. No one will read it all, not even the zealots; *but*, people will read the abstract and ask you to summarize argumentative aspects of it, and will associate you closely with your project in the early going.

And, of course, most of the rest of the above advice is good, particularly for those angling for non-R1 jobs (i.e., most of us).

[Kapto]

Although the quality of the dissertation will probably not matter, because I doubt anybody will read it (if my search committee experience is any guide), the topic and title do matter to some extent. They're part of telling the committee where your head is at. If it just confirms the themes of your writing sample, job talk and recs, then it won't make a difference. But if it's very different (e.g. it's on aesthetics and you're seeking ethics jobs, or it's on contemporary metaphysics and you're looking in history of philosophy), I think you'll have to explain that.

[Bill V.]

Candidates should keep in mind that many interviewing departments are making decisions largely based on whether they judge it probable that you will make tenure at their place. Since places are different, tenure standards are different, and so how you are being judged in interviews (or just via your materials) will be different.

But in general, an expectation for tenure is that you establish an independent research program *beyond the dissertation.* If all your pubs turn out to be dissertation chapters, that is less than ideal. (Though that's a great source for some pre-TT pubs, and even a couple after starting TT.) During the interview process you need to establish that you have or can develop a tenurable research program. Don't worry, you will never be held to the plan you present during application.

In some sense, the dissertation is just the entry ticket: It has to be done, and it has to be good enough, but it won't be what gets you hired *because it won't be what gets you tenure.* As others in this thread have mentioned, your dissertation will be taken as evidence of what your AOS is, and perhaps as an indirect indication of acumen. (Indirect because no one is going to read it, instead relying on your dissertation summary and what your letter writers say.) In cover letters and interviews, your dissertation gives you topics you can discuss in interesting and deep ways, but it is the interestingness and depth in those venues that matters, not the dissertation itself.

I'm of two minds about comments in the thread about letter writers. Yes, letter writers will talk about your dissertation, and the better it is (and the closer to complete it is), the stronger the things they will be able to say about it/you. But as other Cocoon job market threads have discussed, there are widely diverging opinions about the probative value of letters, and many committees (including most of the ones I have been on) give very little weight to letters when assessing the application file. One thing is true though: A lukewarm letter is like a neon sign saying "stay away," and one way to get a lukewarm letter is to produce a poor dissertation.

Some advice I heard a long time ago that I still think is gold: It is really difficult psychologically to make the shift from being a student to being a colleague (especially if you have still not graduated!). But convincing the hiring department that you would be an excellent colleague, in all the relevant ways, is the task. I.e., the task is not to convince them that you are or were an excellent student. In that vein: Students have dissertations; colleagues have research programs.

All that said, you should do a great job on your dissertation because that will make you a better philosopher, and being a better philosopher is (gosh, I hope) at least somewhat correlated with other kinds of success in the field.

[3rd year PhD student]

This might be worthy of its own thread, so sorry for relegating it to a comment here. Hypothetically, let's say your dissertation is not what you want your AOS to be, but you chose that topic because your PhD program has faculty strengths in that area. You'd rather your dissertation topic be your AOC, and other individual papers you've published to be your AOS. Would this become a problem on the job market? Would you still be able to prove you can do enough research to warrant tenure?

[Samepage]

@3rd year PhD student:

I was in a similar situation, and I can only speak from my own experience. I think it could be a problem for research-oriented schools (which was why I only applied for teaching-oriented jobs). For the four interviews I had a few years ago (all of which were from teaching schools), I was never asked about my dissertation. Similar to what Bill V. said above, I was only asked about my "research program", and I talked about how my individual paper projects, together with part of my dissertation, fit together as a unified "program". I guess people got the answer they wanted.

[Bill V.]

In response to "3rd year", that situation sounds like one that could be addressed by listing two AOSs (dissertation topic and the other one). Obviously you have to be able to show, through course work, publications, etc., that you know the other topic to the extent it can justifiably called an AOS.

Typically, you'll get hired in an area and regularly teach that subject, but also have the opportunity to teach other subjects (hopefully including areas you want to develop into specializations). Unless it is an elite place that really wants you to be famous in the exact field they hired you in, most departments won't care at all if your research goes in different directions than what you were initially hired for, provided you still teach those classes until someone else can. After you get tenure, AOS and AOC don't appear on your cv anyway.

[caution]

3rd year
One thing to keep in mind is that the dissertation is, for many people just entering the job market, the ONLY evidence they have that they have an AOS. "I did my dissertation on supervience, so my AOS is philosophy of mind. OR I did my dissertation on causal explanation in the biological sciences, so my AOS is philosophy of science (or biology)." Unless one has a few pubs on another specific topic, then one has little claim to having an AOS (in that area). That is how candidates are generally viewed on the market, at least from my experience (20+ years)