The Philosophers' Cocoon

Tips for choosing a job-talk?

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

I would appreciate advice on how to choose what to present for job talks. How do people go about it? Do they give different talks for different jobs? Do people ever present their writing sample, or other published work? Overall, should one prioritise showing that one has new work and/or work that fits the AOS very well, or rather just giving one's strongest talk?

All good questions. It would be good to hear from job candidates and search committee members!

Trans/Non-Binary Philosophers on the Academic Job Market: A Resource Guide (2022)

By Perry Zurn, Blake Hereth, Christina Friedlander,
Tamsin Kimoto, Amy Marvin, and Andrea Pitts

The following is a collection of advice from members of the American Philosophical Association’s Committee on LGBTQ People in the Profession, the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy’s LGBTQ Advocacy Committee, and the Trans Philosophy Project. Questions were culled from email and social media outreach to trans and non-binary philosophers on the job market. Responses—which are not answers in any classical sense, but rather a collection of recommendations, reflections, reports on past experience, musings, and moments of thinking-with—were generated by members of said committees based on their experience either being a trans/non-binary jobseeker in professional philosophy or advising those who are.

While committee members’ advice is rich and multi-faceted, the bottom line in every response is this: it depends. It depends on the job, the department, and the school to which you are applying. It depends on your field(s), specializations, and competencies, and how you want to develop as a scholar-teacher. It depends on your values, your comforts, and your needs. It depends on other social positions you occupy, especially with respect to class, disability, and race or ethnicity. And it depends on your stage in the job market (are you fresh from your PhD, do you have another year or two on a postdoc or VAP, or are you already on the tenure track somewhere?). The goal of this document is to help you think things through as you develop your own style of jobseeking as trans/non-binary.

Job Market Boot Camp (quick links)

Given that job ads for the main academic job season tend to begin posting to PhilJobs in August (and a few jobs have already started to go up), I thought I'd spend this week posting some quick links to some of the Cocoon's various series on job-market tips.

Here's a list of links to the Cocoon's Job Market Boot Camp:

1. Building a Strong, Competitive CV

2. Tailoring your job-market strategy to your situation

3. Writing a good CV

4. Common mistakes with CVs

5. Letters of Recommendation

6. The European job market

7. Job-market consultants

8. Developing coherent research program(s)

9. The Cover Letter

10. The Teaching Statement

11. Common mistakes with teaching statements

12. The Research Statement

13. Common mistakes with research statements

14. How to cultivate a professional online presence

15. When and where to apply for tenure-track jobs

16. Where and When to Apply (Addendum)

17. The Teaching Portfolio

18. Common mistakes with teaching portfolios

19. Writing Samples

20. The Diversity Statement

21. First-round Interviews

22. Zoom & Telephone Interviews

23. The British interview

24. The Campus Visit

25. Teaching demos

26. Negotiating

27. Emotional Maintenance

28. Finding support from a mentor

29. When Spring Term Rolls Around

30. Opting for a non-academic career - when, what and how?

31. Teaching demos

Job-Market Boot Camp, part 30: teaching demos

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

One thing I didn't really see on the wonderful [job-market tips] compendium compiled above is something about giving teaching demos. Has there been a discussion of this on this site?

I'm really glad this reader asked, as I hadn't realized we skipped the teaching demo! What do you all think makes for an effective teaching demo? Things to do? Things to avoid? Allow me to share a few thoughts before opening things up for comments.

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.

Job-Market Boot Camp, part 29: common mistakes with CVs

Now that we have discussed some common mistakes candidates can make with teaching statements, teaching portfolios, and research statements, let's talk about CVs. It might seem pretty hard to mess up a CV, and to a certain extent I think this is right. Insofar as CVs basically just list a person's accomplishments, there may not that much to mess up. Still, allow me to share what I take to be a few common mistakes, and then open things up for discussion:

Listing papers under review as 'publications': I haven't seen many candidates do this, but seemingly every year I hear of candidates who do it (either because they say so on a blog somewhere, or from other search committee members). So I think it is important to discuss. Here is my general sense. There are a few 'kisses of death' that job-candidates can make--things that can potentially sink their candidacy immediately. This is one of them. Articles under review, or even in revise-and-submit, are not publications, and should under no circumstances be listed under that heading in a CV. Even if you note in parentheses that the article is "under review" or in "revise-and-resubmit", lising them under Publications can still come across either as misleading or obtuse, or both. Neither one of these things is a good look for a job-candidate. The only things that should be listed as publications are actual or forthcoming (i.e. accepted) publications. Finally, athough maybe some might disagree, I imagine that 'conditional acceptances' are okay to list as publications--but in that case it sure as heck better be a real conditional acceptance, not a revise-and-resubmit with minor revisions (there is a huge difference!), and you had better note explicitly that it is a conditional-accept. Job-candidates should stay away from putting anything in a CV that has even a whiff of dishonesty. Which brings me to...

Job-Market Boot Camp, part 28: common mistakes with teaching portfolios

In my previous two posts in this series, I presented what I take to be some common mistakes in teaching and research statements. I hope some more search-committee members weigh in, so that job-marketeers can hear other perspectives. But in any case, in today's post I'd like to discuss some common mistakes in teaching portfolios. For those less well-acquainted with teaching portfolios (e.g. new or future job-candidates), teaching portfolios are perhaps the most open of all job-market materials. Although they standardly include things like student evaluations and sample syllabi, some portfolios including much more, ranging from examples of assignments to sample lectures.

I myself don't have any settled views about exactly what teaching portolios should include--so I'm very curious to hear in the comment section below from other search committee members about what they think should or shouldn't be included, or how long teaching portfolios should be (particularly given that I've heard some people have teaching portfolios upwards of 50 pages, which seems to me too long). But, for now, let me offer a short list of what I take some 'common mistakes' to be:

Portfolios that look hastily thrown together: which can result from several converging sources of evidence...

1. 1. No table of contents.
   2. Inconsistent formatting.
   3. Overly-short, uninformative syllabi: although I've heard it can be a good idea to provide several course outlines (consisting merely of a course title, course description, and reading schedule), I think it is probably very important to include one full syllabus in a teaching portfolio, and for the syllabus to be detailed regarding course policies, assignments, and so on.
   4. Merely including raw student-evaluation reports: As people have noted on this blog before, search-committee members can be really strapped for time. They typically have hundreds of applications to wade through--so anything that makes their job easier is, prima facie, good to do. Further, as I am sure many people who have served on search-committees can attest, raw student-evaluation reports can be confusing to wade through. They can be full of all kinds of numbers and unfamiliar questions (my own university's student evaluations have 36 separate items!). Consequently, although I think it is good to provide some raw reports (so as to, again, not look like you are 'hiding anything'), I think it is again a really good idea to include some kind of overview summary to make things easier on your reader.

Job-Market Boot Camp, Part 27: common mistakes with teaching statements

Last week, we had a new thread in this series examining common mistakes in research-statements. In today's post, I'd like to discuss common mistakes in teaching statements. Then, in my next post, we will examine teaching portfolios more broadly. I will begin by sharing my sense of what some common mistakes are, based on my experiences on search-committees and as a job-market mentor. I will then open up the thread for further discussion, and hopefully some other search-committee members will weigh in.

Without further ado, here's my sense of some common teaching-statement mistakes:

Verbose teaching statements: Search-committee members are very strapped for time. They typically have hundreds of applications to review. Consequently, overly long materials can frustrate them, whereas nice and concise materials can come across as 'sparkling' and thoughtful. I have read some very good 2-3 page teaching statements--so it is certainly possible to have an effective teaching statement that long. However, my sense is that many teaching statements are far longer than they need to be, in ways that don't reflect well on a candidate. They not only make things more difficult on the reader. Given that most of us think it is important to teach our students to write concisely, a verbose teaching-statement may make it look like one has a bad sense of what writing effectively involves--a bad first-look for a teacher! Anyway, I was advised by a job-market consultant to keep my teaching statement to one-page, and it served me well. So, I think this is one common mistake. Try to err on the shorter side of things. 

Generalities without concrete examples: As I've mentioned before, I learned from my consultant that the single biggest error that candidates make in teaching statements is writing in generalities (e.g. 'I diagram arguments and have students do group work in class'). Given that the vast majority of other candidates write more or less the same thing, statements like these do these do little to help a candidate stand out or enable a search-committee to form any kind of clear picture of what the person is actually like in the classroom. Give concrete examples: of actual in-class assignments you have given, how the assignment led to a productive discussion, and so on.

Overly-emotive language: Saying you are a 'passionate' teacher 'strongly committed' to such-and-such may seem rhetorically effective, given that as a candidate you want to impress upon readers that you have these qualities. In practice, however, these kinds of rhetorical moves can come across as banal cliches. Just about everyone regards themselves as a passionate teacher committed to X, Y, and Z--or, if not, just about everyone can say they are in a teaching statement. The problem, again, is that so many people say these kinds of things, without giving a clear picture of how they actually are these things. I was taught by my consultant to "show, not tell". Just explain in concrete detail the things you do as a teacher and the pedagogical rationales for why you do those things. My sense is this will show (and illustrate) one's passion for teaching and commitment to students and student-learning in ways that saying one is passionate or committed don't do. 

Little to no discussion of assessment: Many teaching statements talk about what candidates do in the classroom (e.g. Socratic dialogue, group assignments, and so on), how they structure courses, and the readings they assessment, but say very little about forms of assessment or their rationale. Like it or not, many people at teaching-focused institutions--ranging from people on hiring committees, to administrators, to tenure-and-promotion committees--care a lot about assessment, taking it to be pedagogically important. You don't need to discuss every form of assessment you use: quizzes, exams, term-papers, and so on. That would probably come across as pedantic in teaching statement. What I do think is a good idea is briefly explaining at least one assessment central to your courses, and the rationale for it. In my statement, I explain briefly but in detail the several components of daily reading responses, along with the pedagogical rationale for each component. I also mention--in a single sentence--another form of assessment I use to develop student meta-cognition. My sense is that these kinds of brief but clear illustrations of assessment pedagogy can be important, as there are some people on the hiring side of things who care about these things.

Underdeveloped pedagogy: My final sense is that too many teaching statements come across as though relatively little thought has been given to pedagogy. In today's intensely competitive job-market, my sense is that candidates for jobs at teaching-focused jobs cannot expect to be very competitive with teaching statements that say (more or less): "I stand in front of the class, diagram arguments, and engage students in Socratic dialogue." If you mostly use Socratic techniques, that's fine--but my sense is that candidates need to find some way to distinguish themselves, illustrating (again, through concrete examples) that they are particularly thoughtful about how they do it, in ways that have given serious thought to pedagogy and assessment.

Anyway, these are just a few things that I suspect are common mistakes in teaching statements. What do other people who have served on search-committees think? Is my list mostly accurate in your experience? If not, what do you think I have gotten wrong? And are there any other common mistakes you think candidates should be aware to avoid?

Job-Market Boot Camp, Part 26: common mistakes with research statements

Our recent discussions of cover letters and teaching statements got me thinking it might be a good idea to add a few threads to the Cocoon's Job-Market Boot Camp from several years ago. Although that series examined cover letters, teaching statements, teaching portfolios, research statements, CV's, writing samples, and letters of recommendation, I thought it might be a good idea to focus some new posts on common problems (or 'mistakes') with each. That, at any rate, is what my next several posts adding to the series will aim to discuss. As with the rest of the series, I don't imagine that everything that I say is correct. I will just report my own sense of things, and then open things up to other people who have served on search-committees to say whether they agree, disagree, or have other ideas. My hope is that simply having these kinds of discussions will give current and future job-candidates a better idea of what search-committee members think constitute 'mistakes' in various materials. 

Let us begin, then, with research statements. What are some common 'mistakes' candidates make with them, at least from a search-committee member's point-of-view? Here, in my experience, are some potential mistakes:

Job-Market Boot Camp, Part 25: When Spring Term Rolls Around

It has been a while since the last installment of our "Job-Market Boot Camp", but given that it is Spring Term and hires are starting to be made, I thought it might be good for a new installment: one focusing on what to do at this point. Obviously, if you have interviews or on-campus visits, you should be practicing your interview skills and/or prepare as best you can for your visit. But, what about if you don't have interviews or campus visits? What should you do then? As someone who was on the academic job-market for seven years, I encountered this situation a bunch of times. So, allow me to offer a few suggestions, and then open things up for discussion.

Suggestion 1: Don't give up yet on this year's job cycle

One of the more interesting things I was told my first year on the market (when I was ABD) is that things can happen really late in the game. That year, I think I had three first-round interviews--but none of them turned into on-campus visits. But a bunch of people told me not to panic, saying they knew people who got hired for postdocs and VAP positions pretty late in the game, everywhere from March to as late as July (and in one or two cases, even August!). And indeed, this is what I found my first two years on the market. My first year, I received a VAP offer completely out of the blue sometime in March, and then, my second year (after not hearing back from my interview for over two months) I was once again offered a VAP in late March. So, if you do not have any TT interviews or flyouts, it's not necessarily time to give up on this year's job cycle. Things can still happen. Indeed, on that note, it is worth bearing in mind that not all academic job-markets follow the North American cycle (i.e. apply for jobs in fall, interview in winter, hire in Spring). UK, European, and other job-markets are more "year round", with jobs coming out constantly. So, keep an eye out for new job postings, and keep applying. Something could still happen!

Suggestion 2: Reflect, and discuss, whether to try again next year

At the same time, although good things can still happen, I've found that it can be good to not simply wait, but instead be proactive about what to do should things not turn out the way one hopes (i.e. you do not receive any offers, or you do receive a non-TT offer, but it is not an offer you want to take--say, due to low pay, relocation, etc.). The first thing to do, obviously, is decide whether to give the academic job-market another go next year. Here, I've found a few things are important:

1. Honest evaluation of "indicators" (i.e. whether you are "getting closer" to a TT job): What do I mean by this? Well, it can be hard to evaluate one's competitiveness on the market after just one year. If one gets no interviews, that may be a bad sign for the future--or it could just be that one got unlucky. However, if one is on the market a few years, trends may emerge. On the one hand, you may find yourself with few interviews year after year, or even see your number of interviews decrease. Alternatively, you may find that your number and quality of interviews increase substantially from year to year. Although the number and quality of one's interviews are merely that--reflections of how attractive committees find you as a candidate to interview--they are that: indicators of competitiveness for interviews.
2. Honest evaluation of one's priorities: Are you miserable? Can you "stand it" one more year on the market. I don't pretend to know when you should "give up" (or rather, pursue a nonacademic career)--but, for reasons I will turn to below (in Suggestion 3), now (Spring Term) is the time to decide: for you either need to start now looking for nonacademic work, or get on with the task of improving your dossier for next year's market.
3. Honest discussion with, and fairness to, one's loved ones: This one was particularly important to me. Once you are married, in a committed relationship, or have children, you now have obligations to others. Not only that: at least in my experience, the academic job market can be really trying on them. Those who love you tend to share your successes, as well as your misery? Would sticking it out on the job-market harm those you love? Is that worth it to you? Is it fair to them? Obviously, I have my own views about fairness--very roughly, that it requires negotiating compromises with others--but, even if you don't share my views (though of course you should!:), I would suggest that out of decency, kindness, and love, you should at least consider these issues very seriously.

If you decide to pursue nonacademic work, the obvious thing you need to do is find good resources for making that kind of career transition. If, on the other hand, you decide you want to hazard another year on the academic job-market, I would advise...

Suggestion 3: Start improving your candidacy now

If you are going to go through the academic job-market gauntlet yet again, I think you owe it to yourself to do everything you reasonably can to give yourself a better shot next year. How? By getting started on improving your candidacy now--yes, while you're still waiting on this year's job market. One obvious thing you should do is keep trying to publish the best work you can in the best venues you can. But, given how many people there appear to be with good publication records who report not getting many interviews, you should not stop there. There are many other things you can do. You can seek out more (and better) letters of recommendation, cultivate a positive online presence, work hard to improve your cover letter, research statement, and teaching dossier, etc.--and yes, "network". The important thing, again, is to start these things now, as you only have so much time before next year's market.

I hope this post has been helpful. Have I forgotten anything? For those of you have been on the market a few years (or succeeded in finding a job), do you have any advice that readers might find helpful here? Thanks, in advance, to everyone who chimes in!

Job-Market Boot Camp, Part 24: The Diversity Statement

A reader writes in:

Coming from the UK system, I found the Job Market Boot Camp series you ran on the Philosophers’ Cocoon very helpful. For a recent job application I was asked to submit a document I hadn’t encountered before: a diversity statement. I was wondering if it might be worth a supplementary entry in the series.

Because I am presently on a search committee and not in a position to give advice on this issue, I thought it might be most helpful to open up the topic for community discussion. It would be most helpful, I expect, if past or present search committee members were to weigh in on what they look for in these statements. Thanks, in advance, to everyone who chimes in!

Job market boot camp, part 23 - Finding support from a mentor

By Helen De Cruz

In this installment of the Boot Camp, I'll discuss how to get support from a mentor, what a mentoring relationship involves, and how one can turn to peers for support. Many readers will already be familiar with formal mentoring programs, such as the Job Candidate Mentoring Program for Women in Philosophy and our own Cocoon job market mentoring program. However, there are many other ways to have mentorship. Indeed, most mentoring takes place outside formal mentorship programs, and is informal. For this post, I'm drawing on personal experience as mentor, mentee, and on the excellent chapter on mentoring in Sheryl Sandberg's Lean in (which you can find here). 

What does mentoring involve?

Mentorship is often a spontaneous informal relationship that is mostly not designated by any official term. A mentor can be a colleague, someone in one's field, Some people have the mistaken impression that one needs to meet up with a mentor on a regular basis for it to count as a mentoring relationship. Sandberg recounts how she gave lots of advice to a junior woman at Google, who, to Sandberg's surprise, claimed that she didn't have a single mentor. When Sandberg learned that the woman thought a mentor was someone you meet every week, Sandberg thought "That's not a mentor, that's a therapist." As Sandberg points out, most prospective mentors are strapped for time and would not be able to do this.

Job Market Boot Camp, Part 22: Negotiating

By Helen De Cruz & Marcus Arvan

We have now examined building a strong CV and research program, dossier materials (cover letters, recommendation letters, research and teaching statements, writing samples, and organizing one's CV), job-market consultants, cultivating an online presence, when and where to apply to jobs (including European and non-academic jobs), APA, Skype, British, and on-campus interviews, and managing the emotional ups-and-downs of the market.

In other words, we are almost (I think) drawing this series to a close--and I hope readers have found it helpful! Still, there are a few more topics to cover, including the subject of the present post: contract negotiations. Because Helen De Cruz and I have experience working at and negotiating with different types of institutions (she research schools and I liberal-arts schools), we thought it might be a good idea to co-author the post. So let us begin!

Job market boot camp, part 21 - Opting for a non-academic career - when, what and how?

On the philosophy smoker, Mr Zero asks why he keeps on going on the job market, year after year. He loves the job, and he likes the position he has, which are solid reasons to stay in his NTT position, but he also says "I don't really know how to do anything else", which may be a not-so-good reason to stay. It is a pretty common reason, though - when you specialize for years in graduate school and afterwards to become a good teacher and researcher, the jump to a non-academic position seems difficult and one does not even know how to begin. 

I wrote this post for readers of the boot camp who want to try a different career path as landing a tenure track position is becoming increasingly difficult, especially for people from non-elite institutions.  Tellingly, my first draft of this post was titled "When to call it quits". I changed the title once I realized it represents a warped view that is unfortunately prevalent in academia, namely that choosing an non-academic career is synonymous to giving up. 

A while ago, I interviewed seven post-academic philosophers who have now built out successful careers outside of academia (here, here and here). More recently, I interviewed R Scott Bakker who was in grad school for philosophy, but decided to stop when he was about to defend his dissertation and instead turn to writing. I would encourage readers to read those interviews, as they provide detailed career trajectories of philosophy PhDs who left academia. Still, I do not have first-hand experience on this front, so I would encourage readers who left academia and are now in a non-academic position to share their experiences in the comments section. 

Job market boot camp, part 20: The British interview

With the American job season warming up and several jobs posted already for the fall, notice the several British philosophy jobs one can apply to. The UK academic job market does not operate on a timetable; there are jobs all year round. I've been on both sides of the interview table in the UK, and here is my take-down of the British interview process. For another, more comprehensive survey of the British philosophy job market, see here, and for a more general review of the European job market, see here. I refer to the Daily Nous post linked to earlier for terminology about the terminology for positions (e.g., lecturer = assistant professor in permanent position).

Before the ad is posted, the search committee decide on a set of essential and desirable criteria which will be specified on the job ad. The ad almost always appears on jobs.ac.uk, and also often (but not always, so be on the lookout on jobs.ac.uk) on PhilJobs and the mailinglist Philos-L, maintained by the University of Liverpool. Usually, a job needs to be advertised for a month or longer before the deadline.

Job Market Boot-Camp, Part 19: Skype & Telephone Interviews

My initial plan in the Job-Market Boot Camp was to move "chronologically" from job-market prep (cover letters, teaching and research statements, etc.), to interviews, on-campus visits, and so on. Alas, or so the saying goes, even the best laid plans go awry. Although we have already discussed APA interviews and campus visits, I just realized we never discussed the most common types of first-round interviews: namely, Skype and telephone interviews. Since these types of interviews pose unique challenges, it would probably be a good idea to discuss them!

1. Skype interviews

Because the kinds of questions one receives in Skype interviews tend not to be very different from those of APA interviews, I'm not going to focus much on content, but rather focus on presentation.

Job-Market Boot Camp, Part 18: The Campus Visit

Although it's a bit early to discuss fly-outs/campus visits, I suppose now is as good of a time as any to turn to them in our Job-Market Boot Camp. Alas, when it comes to this issue, I find myself in a bit of a bind--for, to be perfectly frank, I have only had one of them turn into a TT job offer. Consequently, what I would like to do here is (A) direct readers to what I found to be a very helpful series of posts at The Professor is In [link fixed!], and (B) provide some suggestions based on my experiences on fly-outs.

Suggestion 1: know the school and department you are visiting.

This might sound too obvious to waste time on. However, since I think I made a mistake or two on this score--a mistake that I imagine that other people coming from grad school might make--it might be worth saying a few things about it.

Job Market Boot Camp, Part 17: Emotional Maintenance

Now that the first job advertisement of this year's North American academic job market is already posted (!), I figured it might be a good time to turn our Job Market Boot Camp to an issue that, in my experience--and if online messageboards are any indication--is among the most difficult aspects of the job market: handling its emotional ups and downs effectively.

I suspect that if you have been on the job market before, you probably know what I am talking about: soaring hopes, dashed hopes, good interviews, disastrous interviews...and a whole lot of worry and self-doubt. It can be really tough, particularly the longer you've been on the market or if you're in a really tenuous employment situation. Handling these emotional vicissitudes effectively is, in my experience, important not only for one's own peace of mind, and for the sake of one's loved ones: it is also important for one's performance as a candidate. For, make no bones about it, the job market is a gauntlet. You need to be your best--in interviews, on-campus visits, etc.--and chances are you will tend to perform better the less you are wracked with emotional upheaval.

Job-Market Boot Camp, Part 16: The APA Interview

Note: two updates!

Although it's obviously not APA interview time yet, Helen De Cruz and I have chosen to forge ahead with our Job Market Boot Camp with a co-post on APA interviews. This post will be split into two parts: Part 1 by Helen, and Part 2 by me. Hope you all find it helpful!

Part 1, by Helen De Cruz

The first-round APA interview

The authors of this joint post have had a fair number of Skype and onsite APA first-round interviews between them. This post will be about first-round interviews, especially in the American market. We'll look at key features of the successful first-round interview, and then look in more detail at the nuts and bolts of interviewing in person (as compared to Skype, which will be covered in a later Boot Camp post). While the number of first-round APA interviews is diminishing, there are still schools who prefer to do it this way, and we also hope some of the advice offered here can be transferred to other contexts.

Job-Market Boot Camp, Part 15: Where and When to Apply (Addendum)

Today's edition of our Boot Camp will be relatively brief. Now that we have finished discussing job-market materials (cover letters, CVs, etc), we come to the application process itself: specifically, how to find jobs to apply to, and importantly, when to apply. Although Helen De Cruz discussed some of these issues previously (specifically, whether one should apply ABD, how broadly one should cast one's net, timing the European job market, etc.), there are some additional issues I would like to briefly discuss here. 

Let us begin with how to find jobs. Everyone, I take it, knows about philjobs. It is probably the single best resource for finding jobs. Jobs appear on a rolling basis, one can search jobs by AOS, location, etc. But although it is a great resource, not all jobs appear there. In particular, not a lot of community college jobs do. If you want to find those jobs, the best place to look that I know of is HigherEd Jobs. Third, there is Vitae, which I found very difficult to use, but which advertised a few jobs that appeared nowhere else. Finally, there is the philos-l listserv, which you can sign up for.

Job-Market Boot Camp, Part 14: Writing Samples

Apologies for the lengthy pause between the last entry in the Boot Camp and this one. It has been an incredibly busy summer, and truth be told, I've been a bit uncertain about what to say about the final component of the dossier: writing samples. How much can be said about them, after all, that most of us don't already know? (Your writing sample should be an awesome piece of philosophical research, didn't you know?;)

Or perhaps I missing something. Perhaps there are tips for writing sample of which I am unaware. If so, I encourage people who know them--placement directors and search-committee members in particular--to chime in! In any case, I will simply offer up a few suggestions and then open things up for discussion.

Job-Market Boot Camp, Part 13: The Teaching Portfolio

Sorry for the slow week (on my part) around here: it's been a very hectic summer. In any case, I would like to continue our Job-Market Boot Camp by considering teaching portfolios. We've already talked about teaching statements, and obviously, the teaching statement should be the first page of your portfolio. However, we have not discussed the rest of the portfolio. So let us turn to it!

Let me start out by saying that I will be really curious to hear other people's views--search committee members and candidates--about what exactly should be in one's teaching portfolio. This is in part because, unlike other parts of one's dossier, there are so many possible things one could put in it! For instance, do people include copies of particular assignments distributed to students? Do people include multiple, full syllabi for different courses? I'm curious to see!

Job Market Boot Camp, Part 12: When and where to apply for tenure-track jobs

Soon the philosophy job market will be in full swing again. Where and when should you apply for jobs? Only to dream jobs or to anything that moves? Should you wait until your viva (doctoral defense) or can you already apply as an ABD (all but dissertation)?

I'll focus on the when and where to apply for jobs, focusing on tenure-track positions, and I'll start with the question of whether ABDs should apply for tenure track jobs.

Job Market Boot Camp, Part 11: How to cultivate a professional online presence

Update: broken link fixed!

An increasingly important part of being on the market is to create a professional-looking online presence. This post relates my experiences and what others, both job seekers and search committee members have told me. There's a ton of advice on this topic on the Internet, but I would like to focus here on the philosophy job market.

To some job seekers, the prospect of creating an online presence is daunting. While it may seem risky, there is an opportunity to stand out from the crowd, as well as opportunities for peer support, networking, maintaining friendships, which I’ll describe below.  I'll focus on the importance of a personal website, other platforms such as academia.edu, blogging, and social media. 

Job Market Boot Camp, Part 10: The Research Statement

Now that we have discussed cover letters and teaching statements, I would like to continue our Job Market Boot Camp by discussing research statements. As with my other dossier documents, my experience with the job-market consultant I used was that I had been doing my research statement all wrong.

First, as with other dossier materials, I learned that my biggest error was in trying to "talk up" my research. Rather than saying how original and groundbreaking your research is, I learned that you should just describe your research in neutral terms that show (rather than say) how original your research is. Just explain--in purely descriptive terms--what your research is and what it adds to whatever philosophical debate(s) it engages with. For an example, see my research statement here.

Second, I learned that it is important to focus clearly on the upshot of your research (why it is interesting), not distracting your reader argumentative details. As you can see in my research statement, I basically summarized in one paragraph the entire book I am working on--not giving any of the book's actual arguments, but rather the main conclusions the book defends, as well as how they contribute to moral philosophy. Remember, many (indeed most) readers of your research statement are people working in other areas of philosophy no background in your AOS. Going into details about your arguments is more likely to befuddle these readers more than anything else, making them think that you are someone who cannot cut to the point and explain the importance to people outside of your narrow area of specialization. The aim of your research statement should be to interest the reader in your file, making them want to actually read your writing sample (which is where the argumentative details belong!).

Job-Market Boot Camp, Part 9: The Teaching Statement

Now that we have discussed cover letters  (and for earlier parts of this series, see here), I would like to move onto teaching statements. In my experience, this is one of the most difficult documents of all to get right. The advice I will offer--which I gained from a job-market consultant--may sound really simple. However, according to the consultant I used, almost no one follows it. As with other job-market materials, the big thing I learned from my work with the consultant is that we job-candidates systematically misunderstand what search committees are looking for. Allow me to explain.

According to the consultant I used, just about everyone writes teaching statements that (A) "talk themselves up" as teachers, and (B) in very broad terms. Basically, the average teaching statement goes on about how the candidate loves teaching, cares deeply about their students, utilizes creative in-class activities, and so on. Candidates aim, in other words, to display their passion for teaching. In one sense, this might seem like obviously the right way to write a teaching statement. If you're applying for a job at a teaching school, you want the committee members to know that you truly care about teaching--and so you figure that you need to make this really, really clear and explicit (otherwise, you worry, they'll fail to appreciate just how passionate you really are!).

As intuitive as this approach to writing a teaching statement may seem, I have come to believe--in part due to talking to my consultant and in part due to the results I had on the job-market afterwards--that this is absolutely the wrong way to write a good teaching statement. And for one very simple reason: a statement that goes on in broad terms about how passionate you are, or how you use creative in-class assignments, does nothing to distinguish you from the 400+ other candidates applying for the same position. Literally all of their teaching statements will say exactly what your said. Can you imagine what it would be like to read through 400+ teaching statements saying more or less the same thing? I can tell you, in no uncertain terms, that if I were a search committee member, this would positively irritate me. It would be frustrating seeing person after person say the same thing, with little to help me distinguish one person from another. What would stand out are teaching statements that don't do that--a teaching statement that gives the search-committee member a clear view of what distinguishes you from other candidates. And so the question is: how do you do that?

I can summarize everything important I learned from my consultant about teaching consultant in two sentences:

1. Cut out all emotionalizing/emphasizing.
2. Instead, display your passion for teaching through merely describing, in as precise detail as possible, exactly what you do as a teacher.
   

Allow me to expand on both points. There is a common saying in theater and movies, "Show, don't tell." Good movie scripts (e.g. Star Wars-Episode IV: A New Hope, the first Matrix movie) have their plot unfold on screen, with little or no background exposition. Bad movie scripts (e.g. The Star Wars Prequels, the second and third Matrix movies) have their characters talk about the plot. The former is interesting and engaging, the latter ponderous and disengaging.

By a similar token, telling a search committee member that you are super-passionate about teaching gives almost no unique information about you--it does not display to a search committee member who you are as a teacher. As such, engaging in emotional/emphasizing descriptions (e.g. "I am very committed to my students", "I use creative in-class group activities) accomplishes little more than conveying to your reader that you are approximately as passionate as 400+ other candidates. What you need to do is display your passion--and you do this by describing precisely what you actually do in the classroom: by giving a very precise example or two of things you do with students in class. Precision here is important. Do not engage in broad generalizations ("I have students answer questions in groups") or even mid-level/moderate generalizations ("Once, in class, I had groups of 3-5 apply moral theories to health-care rationing"). To give the search-committee members some real clue of how your classes actually go, you need to give them a clear, precise example. Here are a few examples from my teaching statement:

Doing philosophy well takes a lot of practice. Consequently, my students practice it daily in creative ways. I assign daily ½-page reading responses requiring summary of a single idea or argument from the daily reading, a brief explanation of why the idea is philosophically important, and finally, motivation of a question or concern about it. Selected students also discuss their assignment with the rest of the class, giving them practice thinking on their feet.

In order to convey that philosophy is a cutting-edge discipline, I also regularly bring research ideas to the classroom, and encourage students to think as original researchers themselves. For example, in a recent course on international justice, I argued that John Rawls’ widely criticized theory of international justice might be based on an unrecognized, tacit assumption that nation-states tend to be self-sufficient, and then presented student groups with the task of determining (1) whether Rawls indeed makes this assumption, and (2) whether it is a justified one. After actively debating different answers, one of my students eventually wrote his final term paper on the idea and published it in the undergraduate journal Res Cogitans.

Looking back at these passages now, I think I could have been even more precise--though, if I recall, I was dealing with space-constraint issues (more on this shortly). Notice, though, what I was doing. In the first passage, I merely (A) described in precise detail a standard course assignment of mine (noting all three parts of the 1/2 page assignment: student summary of a single idea, why it is important, and a motivated concern), and (B) stating/implying the pedagogicial rationale for the assignment (it gets students to practice three important skills: philosophical exposition, distinguishing important from unimportant points, and motivating philosophical questions). Similarly, in the second passage, I gave a precise example of an argument I brought to the classroom (a specific concern about Rawls' international theory), how I got students to debate that argument, and the pedagogical rationale for the practice (bringing my research to the classroom and getting students to do original research themselves).

Whatever you might think of my personal teaching style (and I don't expect I'm everyone's cup of tea), the critical thing this approach to a teaching statement does is this: it actually gives a clear, precise picture of who one is as a teacher. Given that few people teach the same way, a search committee who comes across a precise teaching statement will be able to distinguish you as a real teacher from both (A) the legions of candidates who engage in broad generalizations, (B) other candidates who teach in different ways from you. Although your teaching style may or may not win over the committee, they will at least have some detailed information for evaluating whether you are the kind of teacher they desire.

In terms of structuring the teaching statement, I'm not sure there's a precise template to use. However, the following things seem to me wise to cover:

1. Begin with a clear overall statement of your overall aims as a teacher (I gave two aims in one sentence).
2. Follow with three or four paragraphs, with each assignment describing a specific assignment along with the pedagogical aim(s) it accomplishes:

• One paragraph might include a general assignment common to your classes (e.g. the 1/2-page reading responses I have students do), giving precise details and rationale.
• A second paragraph example might be a specific in-class assignment  for purpose X (e.g. relating philosophy to their daily lives).
• A third example might be a specific in-class assignment for purpose Y (e.g. stimulating independent student research).

Finally, I would like to close by discussing length. The teaching letter I sent my consultant was two pages long--which I thought was a good length. She made me get it down to no more than a page. Although this seemed too short to me, the simple fact is that it worked. Although I can only speculate as to why this is, let me speculate away. Once again, I think it may be helpful to try to work our way into the heads--or psychological frame of mind--of search committee members. My wife works in Industrial-Organizational Psychology. One of the things their discipline has found (or so she tells me) is that hiring decisions are far less "rational" than anyone--including people on hiring committees--think. The fact is, as human beings, our emotions tend to drive our behavior far more than we recognize. Among other things, people are drawn to hire people they (subconsciously) "like." So, you need to get people to (subconsciously) like you. But, how do you do that? Imagine, there you are, a search committee member in the middle of a busy semester--having to read through 400+ job applications. You're sick and tired of reading page after page of applications. And there it is: a short, crisp 1-page teaching statement. I can almost feel how nice that would have to be right now as I'm sitting here in Starbucks--how it might be a kind of "hallelujah, thank god!" moment, in all of soul-crushing business of the semester, to come across a one-page statement that I could breeze through in, like, two-minutes. That, I imagine, would make me feel good--and, whether I consciously recognize it or not, it may well incline me to like the candidate a bit more than I otherwise would.

So, I say, give the one-page-only statement a shot. It just may work. All too often, we think it is content that drives hiring decisions (as in, if we don't say everything we want to say, it will be a disaster). But perhaps it is precisely by not saying so much that one gets a harried search-committee member to like you just a little bit better--and, if empirical results from my wife's field are to be believed, it's that subconscious liking, rather than anything content-related, that may make all the difference.

Job Market Boot Camp, Part 8: The Cover Letter

Updated 5/4: see section on ordering teaching and research.

Now that we have examined building and composing CVs, obtaining recommendation letters, the European job market, job-market consultants, and developing a coherent research program, I would like to move onto the rest of the standard job-market dossier materials, beginning with cover letters.

Some readers might wonder why I'm going over dossier materials so early, given that it's only May and the main US job market doesn't heat up for several months for now. The answer is two-fold. First, foreign job markets are currently in full-swing. It seems like I'm receiving foreign job ads in my email box from the philos-l listserv on a daily basis. Second, even though the main US job season doesn't open for several months, it takes a long time to get one's dossier materials to get into the kind of shape they need to be in.

All of which brings me to my first point: don't underestimate the importance of having really polished dossier materials. Search committees look at hundreds of applications--and you want to knock their socks off. You want your cover letter, research statement, teaching statement, and teaching portfolio to sparkle. The question then is how to do it.

The single most interesting thing I learned from working with a job-market consultant (someone who, for the record, served on many academic search committees) is that job-candidates systematically misunderstand what search committees are looking for in job-market materials. When I sent my consultant my materials--my cover letter template, research statement, and teaching statement--I was pretty sure they would be impressed. I could not have been more wrong. They told me, in no uncertain term, that I was doing everything wrong, and that I'm not alone: candidate after candidate, they told me, writes their materials with the wrong aims in mind. How so?

Let me begin with the most general point I learned. The most natural thing to think as a job candidate is that you need to "talk yourself up" to search committees--going on about how novel your research is, how passionate of a teacher you are, and so on. However, while this seems perfectly reasonable on its face (how are you supposed to convince a search committee to hire you if you don't make it crystal clear how awesome your research and teaching are?), the problem--or so I was told, and I totally buy it now--is that talking yourself up in your materials actually has the opposite effect: instead of making you look awesome, it makes you look like someone who is trying to convince them you're awesome--whereas a really awesome person will just let their work do the talking. Let me explain by way of an analogy.

What's the best way to get a date? Should you come right out and profess your undying love to the object of your affections? Should you talk about all of your accomplishments? Of course not. These tactics will make you come across self-absorbed and/or desperate. You're far better off projecting a quiet air of confidence and nonchalance--of being comfortable in your own skin. Similarly, when it comes to job-marketeering, you want to come across to search committee members not as Someone Desperate to Belong, but rather as Someone Who Belongs.

Before I was introduced to the job-market consultant who taught me this--and who got me to take out just about every self-aggrandizing word or phrase out of my materials in favor of flatly descriptive accounts of my research, teaching, etc.--a couple of my friends who utilized the consultant (to incredibly positive effect) showed me their letters. I was unimpressed. They seemed so flat to me. Where was the "selling" one's research and teaching? It was nowhere to be found. And yet...once I worked with the consultant, I totally got it. I revamped my materials in line with their advice and got a ton more interviews than I had ever gotten before. And so I now firmly believe: your primary aim in composing your cover letter, research statement, and teaching statement should not be to "sell yourself." It should merely be to describe in detail to your reader--the search committee member--exactly what your research is about, exactly how you teach, and so on. No editorializing, mere description. Mere description will (1) show the reader who you are (as a researcher, teacher, etc.), and (2) give them the impression that you are Someone Who Belongs.

Now that we have this general point on the table, allow me to move onto specific parts of the cover letter (for reference, here is a link to my cover-letter template  from last year):

• Heading: unless you are in grad school (i.e. if you are in a temporary job or post-doc), do not use your school letterhead. I came across a blog last year where more than one academic search committee member said they considered this a form of theft (!). I have to admit that I was shocked that anyone would think this way--but I say: you don't want to run that risk. Instead, tell your reader where you're from in the return address section. Also, be sure to write in the complete address and correct addressee(s) for the position you are applying to, including street and zip code. Leaving stuff out can only make you look like someone who's too lazy to even fill in an address!
• Introductory paragraph: If there is a particular contact person in the job ad, introduce your letter, "Dear Prof. X"; otherwise, utilize "Dear Search Committee." Next, state the job you are applying for (noting the job ad code/# in parenthesis). Next, state in a sentence when and where you received your PhD from (or, if ABD, when degree conferral is expected). Next, if you have had full-time academic positions post-grad school (post-doc, VAP), state clearly where they were and what type(s) of job they are (note: I am not sure whether it is wise to say one is in an adjunct position. Thoughts from readers? Although I personally believe it is unfair and wrong to lower one's estimation of a candidate on such grounds, several readers have commented in the past that this may be a sad reality). Finally, end your intro paragraph stating your AOS, and only state AOC(s) if they line up directly with AOC(s) advertised in the job ad. Otherwise, just state your AOS.
• UPDATE on ordering teaching and research: when I went back and looked at some of the SLACs I received interviews from this year, I did put teaching before research in some of the cover letters--so I would suggest doing so for schools that are clearly teaching oriented.
• Research Paragraph(s): Your second paragraph should simply describe your main research program, no editorializing. Tell your reader, as clearly and concisely as you can, what you are working on (for me, it was a book manuscript). If your description is precise, it should be clear how your research advances philosophical discussion without you having to say so. Also, although I've heard people say you should put a teaching paragraph before research for teaching jobs (Update: ...and did so successfully with some of my applications to SLACs), (A) I had no trouble getting interviews with teaching schools putting my research first, and (B) my early research on this year's hires strongly suggests that even teaching schools care about research . Finally, if you have a bona fide second research program, you may describe it--again in flatly descriptive manner--in a third paragraph. Definitely don't do more than two paragraphs on research, though!
• Publication history and future research plans: After describing your research, your next paragraph should include a brief publishing history (i.e. a list of journals you have published in) and brief description of your research plans over the next several years. Be brief but specific!
• Teaching paragraph: Next, you should have a paragraph on teaching. Begin with a sentence or two listing courses you have taught--particularly courses they have advertised needs for--and then spend the rest of your paragraph showing your reader how you teach, giving a concrete example of some creative teaching exercise (Don't say "I utilize in-class group exercises"--give an actual example of an in-class exercise). We will come back to this with the teaching and research statements. Don't talk about your teaching in broad generalizations or wax poetic about how much you love teaching. Show your reader you are a committed, thoughtful teacher by giving a real, concrete example of something you do in class.
• Department/fit paragraph: Your final paragraph should show how you would fit into the department and/or college. Do this by stating that you would look forward to collaborating or co-teaching with particular members of the department, referring to them by last-name only (not 'Prof. X', just 'X'), and stating concisely how your work aligns in some way with theirs. This will show them that you know who they are, and took the time to look into their department. It will also project a quiet air of confidence, indicating that you see yourself as a peer who belongs in their department (rather than a desperate job seeker they have power over).
• Signoff/signature: I learned (rather late in the game) that it looks good to include a picture of your signature in your signoff. I created a quick one with my computer's Paint program.

Most letters should end there, with a quick "I look forward to hearing from you", or some such, as well as an invitation to visit your webpage (with a link) if they desire more information. Although you may be tempted to close your letter with a list of accomplishments--e.g. your work with students on-campus, etc.--avoid this temptation. They will see this stuff in your CV. 

Other stuff for non-standard letters:

• Religious institutions: If you're applying to a religious institution, my understanding is that you should once again simply describe how your research and teaching are consistent with or would advance the institution's (religious) mission. Be honest. Don't lie and say you're a Believer if you're not! But do try to address the institution's religious mission if you can.
• Special programs: Some jobs are associated with a special academic program, such as an Ethics Institute or some such. If so, you should have a separate paragraph in your letter showing how your research, teaching, and/or campus activities would add to the program (this, in my understanding, is the one place where it might make sense to refer to some campus involvement--but again, avoid the temptation of giving a list. Avoid lists at all costs!).

I guess that's all. Did I miss anything? Get anything wrong? Any thoughts or questions? Fire away! :)

Job Market Boot Camp, Part 7: Developing coherent research program(s)

Before we move on to discussing dossier materials (cover letters, research and teaching statements, teaching portfolios, etc.), I was thinking it might be good for our Job-Market Boot Camp to spend some time discussing an issue that a few commenters suggested when I first proposed this series: namely, how to develop a coherent research program post-PhD. 

In a few moments, I will say a few things from my own experience on this topic. However, I would also like to pose two question to readers, and then invite two groups of people to share their thoughts.

Here are my two questions for readers:

1. Do readers who did traditional, book-length dissertations feel like they have had an easy or difficult time developing coherent research-programs post PhD?
2. Do readers who did the newer, "series of papers" alternative to a traditional dissertation feel like they have had an easy or difficult time developing coherent research programs post-PhD?

I'll be curious to hear how people answer. As I've mentioned a couple times before, I've wondered whether the new "series of papers" alternative hampers people's ability to develop coherent long-term research programs. Personally, I feel like doing a traditional dissertation was absolutely invaluable for me in terms of learning how to really put together a big, coherent program--and I wonder whether a series of related papers can approximate that. Frankly, it's always been hard for me to see how a series of papers could develop that ability, as a series of three (or four) related papers are, by their very nature, very different--both in structure and scope--different than a book/dissertation. But maybe I'm off. I'm curious to hear what people have to say!

Next, because I only have limited experience--namely, my own experience--developing coherent research programs, I would like to invite two classes of people in particular to share their thoughts on the research program issue:

• Job candidates who were successful on the market
• Search committee members

For successful job candidates, did you do anything in particular to develop/present your research program that seemed to really attract attention on the market? For search committee members, was there anything in particular that you were looking for, and alternatively, things that stood out to you as "red flags" about a candidate's research program?

Finally, here are my thoughts. In my experience, the most important thing when it comes to developing a coherent research program is figuring out what kind of philosopher you are and running with it. Broadly speaking, there seem to me to be two types of philosophers: "lumpers" and "splitters". Lumpers are people who develop a Big Idea, and then use that Big Idea to develop lots of Little Ideas. Rawls, I take it, was a paradigmatic lumper (fairness/original position-->lots of little arguments). Splitters, on the other hand, are people who begin with lots of Little Ideas, and then move from those Little Ideas to a Bigger Idea. David Lewis, I take it, was a paradigmatic splitter (Humeanism + possible worlds + counterfactuals, etc. --> Moral Realism). I guess, finally, there are Synthesizers, who sort of work from both ends--from Big Ideas to lots of Little Ideas, and vice versa. Kant, I guess, seems to me a paradigmatic Synthesizer.

Anyway, my general feeling is this: figure out who you are, and the "coherent research program" will come naturally. Don't figure out who you are, and you'll have trouble. I initially struggled with this, post-PhD. My dissertation was based on one Big Difficult Idea. Unfortunately, I had trouble publishing that Idea, as well--it was really Difficult for me to get it right. So, while I sent out dissertation stuff to journals, had it get rejected, revised it, etc., I found myself in a quandary. I needed to find other stuff to work on, just in case the dissertation stuff didn't pan out in terms of publications (not an uncommon result, or so I hear). So, what I initially tried to do is Not Be Myself. I read journal articles in Important Journals by Important People, and tried to write some reply pieces (i.e. Small Ideas) that I hoped would result in a new research program. Unfortunately, although I did publish a couple of these, it felt really stultifying and definitely wasn't leading to a new research program. It occurred to me, "Whatever I am, I am not a splitter. I am not going to get a research program out of a bunch of small ideas."

So, what I did next was trust my instincts--the same Lumper process that led to my dissertation Idea. I taught a human rights course, felt like there was a Big False Assumption dominating the literature, wrote up a paper on it...and found a new research program. Over the next few years, I came up with a couple more research programs in similar way.

The general lesson I think I learned? Once you finish your PhD, you'll come up with coherent research programs...as long as you don't try to be someone you're not. Of course, this was only my experience, but it was a striking one. When I first graduated, I felt like I needed to be the kind of philosopher I thought my advisors/grad school professors would have wanted me to be. As soon as I stopped trying to be the kind of philosopher I thought I was "supposed" to be and started trying to be the kind of philosopher I wanted to be, philosophy instantly became a great deal more enjoyable...and research programs emerged. So, if you're having trouble developing a research program, I say: give it a shot.

Here's another thing I found useful: follow all leads. Don't avoid a new research idea because it seems outlandish or outside your wheelhouse. You never know what might be your next research program. Your next big program might turn out to be something you totally don't expect (this happened to me a couple of times).

One final point I would make is that, in my experience, it's perfectly fine to have more than one research program (I actively marketed myself as having four research programs in my final year on the market, and it did not seem to work against me in any way). The important things, though, are these: (1) You should have one, or at most two, dominant research programs (the primary foci of your research statement/cover letters), (2) It is very helpful if you can relate the research programs together, (3) Don't BS search committees, saying you have a "research program" where you don't, and (4) You need to have a clear, detailed, plausible story of precisely how you intend to develop the program over the next 5 years or so. You don't have to have to a ton of publications on the research program to make a plausible case to a search committee that you have a legitimate, coherent research project in an area, but--aside from your dissertation topic--you do need to have some real proof that the program is well-developed (i.e. a few publications, book manuscript, etc.).

Anyway, these are just some of my thoughts. What are yours?

Job-Market Boot Camp, Part 6: should you utilize a job-market consultant?

Thus far our Boot Camp has considered some basic job-market related things:

1. Building a strong CV,
2. Writing and organizing a good CV,
3. Recommendation letters, and 
4. Differences between the American and European job markets.

Before we move onto other job market/dossier materials--cover letters, research and teaching statements, the teaching portfolio, etc.--I would like to briefly step to the side and consider a very different issue: namely, whether to utilize a job-market consultant. I want to discuss this issue first because--as I will now explain--I learned a great deal about dossier materials from a job-market consultant that I hired, and I know a few other people who had similar experiences.

Let me get some important things out of the way. First, I have no ties--personal, financial, or otherwise--to any job consultant. Second, I am not here to advertise any particular job consultant. If people would like to share their experiences with specific job-consultants in the comments-section, I will allow and encourage it (though not from advertisers spamming the site!). All that being said, let me begin with some background.

In my first couple of years on the market, while still in/just out of grad school (2007-8), I relied mostly on my grad department's placement director for advice on dossier materials. After that, for the next several years (2009-2013!), I relied pretty much on myself: on my own information gathering (i.e. looking at other people's dossier materials online), and soliciting help from friends and colleagues. Unfortunately, although I did get a decent share of interviews over that period, none of them translated into permanent job offers. And so, at the outset of this year, I planned to simply update my dossier as I did in past years--revise my cover letters, research and teaching statements, etc., all on my own.

Then, however, something serendipitous happened to me: not one but two of my online philosophy friends who had been on the market a few times both reported to me (independently!) that they had (A) hired a job-market consultant the previous season, (B) got a lot of interviews that season, and (C) got tenure-track jobs. No joke--both of them said the very same thing. I have to admit, I was skeptical. But I was also pretty desperate, so I gave it a try. I not only hired someone to help with my cover-letter, research statement, and teaching statement. Additionally, since a good number of my Skype interviews were not translating into fly-outs, I hired the same service for an "online interview intervention." These services were not cheap. But, I have to say, without exaggeration, that it was probably the best money I ever spent. The quality of the help I received was immediately evident to me as I received it, and the results were the same as my friends': I received a lot more interviews--and at better institutions--than in previous years, and ended up with a tenure-track job.

Allow me to share my experience a bit more. I have to admit, I was pretty skeptical at first. I thought I had a good cover letter template, a good research statement, and a good teaching statement. Indeed, I had even "tested" my dossier materials against the materials that some of my friends had developed with a consultant--and again, I thought my materials compared to theirs well. How wrong I was! When I sent my cover letter to the job-market consultant, they tore it apart. They said I had the tone all wrong, level of detail all wrong, and...well, just about everything else all wrong too. Three drafts later, after they approved my letter, I looked at the final result and...it was really good: far better, by my own lights, than any cover letter I had ever composed on my own.

Then came the teaching statement. Again, I thought mine was pretty good. It was about two pages, and I thought it nicely expressed my passion for teaching, teaching style, commitment to students, etc. And the job-market consultant shredded it. Again, they told me, I had it all wrong: wrong tone, wrong length, wrong content, wrong everything. Three drafts later, I had a one page teaching statement that was plainly superior--by my own lights--to any teaching statement I had ever composed before. It was really plain to me: I really did have the teaching statement all wrong before. My instincts about what a teaching statement should look like had been totally off: I was thinking of my teaching statement from the standpoint of an applicant, not realizing that the standpoint of a search-committee member is very different (and indeed, counter-intuitively so). And so it went with the research statement too. Finally, there was the Skype interview intervention. Here again, I was skeptical--and just as pleasantly surprised. Although the intervention was only 50 minutes long, it was incredibly helpful, and led me to entirely reconceptualize how I prepared for interviews.

I'll say more about all of this--more about precisely what I learned--in future posts on cover letters and other dossier materials. But, for now, let me just say this. The consultant I worked with did not "write" my materials in any way. Every word, in every draft, was mine. What the consultant did is provide clear, helpful feedback on precisely what I was doing right, and what I was getting wrong. They did, in other words, what we do for our students with their term-papers. 

So, then, should you hire a job-market consultant? I cannot answer that question for you, and I cannot provide any assurances that others will have the same positive experiences that I did. What I can say is that, from my perspective, it helped me immeasurably, and that I know at least two other people who reported similar experiences.

Job-Market Boot Camp, Part 5: the European job market

By Helen De Cruz

If the comment threads are any guideline, a sizable portion of readers of the Philosophers' Cocoon are Americans, who probably concentrate on the American job market. With a tightening job market in the US, many have looked at Europe (as well as other non-American locations) to widen their search.

I've got a tenure-line assistant professorship at the VU Amsterdam, which is in The Netherlands (my PhD is also from a Dutch faculty, the University of Groningen). I have also worked for a total of three years in the UK (University of Oxford), and for another four years in Belgium (University of Leuven). I've witnessed many job searches in these departments, applied for several jobs, and was on the search committee of one job search (in Oxford). This blogpost is meant to give Americans and other non-European philosophers a sense of how European job markets operate.

First thing to note: there is no such thing as the "European job market".

Job-Market Boot Camp, Part 4: Letters of Recommendation

I'd like to continue the Cocoon's Job Market Boot Camp by discussing recommendation letters. Although the role that recommendation letters should play in hiring is debatable--as letters may be more indicative of letter-writers biases, etc., than good reflections of candidates' abilities--I have many reasons to believe that having good letters is really important. First, after my PhD, it was one of the things that just about everybody impressed upon me. I was told, basically by everyone, "you have to get letters from well-respected people outside of your department." Second, although it is very difficult to tease out causal influences, there was a distinct trend in my own case. The more outside letters I had, the more interviews I seemed to get.

But I am already getting ahead of myself. There are two very different types of situations: (1) the ABD student who has not yet graduated, and (2) the person with the PhD who has been out on the market a while. Let's discuss each situation in turn.

1. Letters of recommendation and the ABD student

As I understand it, it is okay to only have letters from your PhD program if you have not yet graduated, as it is admittedly hard to network while in grad school. That being said, the students I knew in grad school who had letters from people outside the department seemed to fare fantastically well--far better than those who only had letters from within. So, I would definitely advise grad students to try to network early and often, and try to obtain at least one outside letter before hitting the market. I'll say more about how to do this in section 3 below.

One other good thing to do--or so I've heard (more on this shortly)--is to have your department placement-director read and evaluate your letters. I have to be honest. I never did this. However, I've heard of cases where a candidate had a lukewarm letter from someone, and this (apparently) is not good. In the US, at least, it is supposed expected that all of your letters will be stellar, and one lukewarm letter may sink your candidacy. 

Third, unless you have no teaching experience at all, you should always have at least one teaching letter written by someone who has actually observed you teach. How many teaching letters do you need? I never procured more than one, and it never seemed to hurt me with teaching oriented schools. As long as the teaching letter is good and by someone who has actually seen you teach, that seems (from my experience) to be good enough.

Anything I missed?

2. Letters of recommendation after the PhD

Once you've completed your PhD, there seem to be two important things to stay on top of: (1) ensuring that your letters are updated every year or two, and (2) obtaining more letters from respected people in the profession. Let me begin with the first of these.

I've been told that it is important to keep your letters up to date, and this pretty much stands to reason. If you've been out on the market for a few years and have accomplished stuff--published some good pieces of work--it would presumably be to your advantage for your letter writers to talk up these accomplishments and your overall development as a philosopher. How do you go about it? Simple: just send an email to your letter writers seeing how things are going with them, and asking if they would mind updating your letter. In my experience, they will usually do so happily, asking for an updated CV and a few pieces of recent work. I might also add that it probably helps if you stay in touch with them independently, checking in with them a few times a year to say hello, etc. 

It's also important to keep your teaching letter(s) up to date. If you've been out on the market for a few years, in a VAP position, post-doc, whatever, have someone in a senior position at your current institution watch you teach and write a letter. 

I've only had one person respond negatively to a letter-update request, and because my experience here contradicts some of the received advice I gave above (on lukewarm letters), I figured it might be helpful to share my experience. After a couple of years out on the market, when I asked one of my recommenders if they would be willing to update their letter, the response I received was basically, "I don't know how much my letter would help you at this point"--the obvious implication being that the letter would be lukewarm at best (note: I didn't blame this person at all. My dissertation wasn't spectacular by any means, I hadn't published much at that point, and I don't think I ever much impressed them). Anyway, I thanked them for their honesty and proceeded that year without their letter...and got like no interviews. The next year, I asked the same person if I could use their own (lukewarm?) letter, they said yes, and I got a lot more interviews. So, who knows, maybe a lukewarm letter isn't a job-market death sentence, after all.

Finally, then, we come to the big question: how do you go about getting outside letters?

3. Networking and outside letters

I'll be honest about something. For most of my life, I looked at "networking" as sort of distasteful. It always seemed to me like sucking up or brown-nosing, or whatever. I now believe that this is the wrong attitude to have. Although I am still no fan of being a sycophant, crude "social-climber", or whatever (and I recognize that not everyone finds those things so distasteful), I think it is entirely possible to network effectively and get letters without such motives. Early on after my PhD, I didn't network very effectively. Then I just started talking to people at conferences, without any real motive except to get over my shyness and try to be more open! I also met people in other ways. For instance, I applied and was accepted t0 a NEH summer institute in political philosophy, and simply had a great time. The organizers were really great guys, and so at the end of the seminar I simply asked them if they'd be willing to write a letter. They did!

A couple of my other letters came about in similarly unsought, serendipitous ways. When I published my paper on free will, the journal gave me the option of giving ten "colleagues" free access to the publication. Since I hardly knew anyone in the discipline at that point (seriously!), I put in the email of someone who had been a previous professor of mine long ago, whose work I always admired, and whose work actually inspired my paper a bit. I thought, "Hmm...I wonder what they would think of this piece?" Lo and beyond, a couple months later, I received an email from them saying they liked the article. It just so happens then that I had written a response paper to one of their other articles, so I asked if they would read it. They gave me some great feedback, was really encouraging, we exchanged some other stuff, and I've considered them a friend ever since. At some point later on, I asked if they would write a letter for the job-market, and they said yes! Another one of my letters came about in a similar war.

So, I guess that's what I would say about getting outside letters. Some people are cool with being "networkers", and such. I used to keep to myself because I didn't feel cool with that (it always felt sort of icky to me!). Fortunately, though, as I've said above, I think there are non-icky ways to go about it. You don't have to go "looking for letters" at all. Just try to make friends, engage with other people's work and have conversations with them, etc., and letters of recommendation might just be an unexpected (and unsought!) positive result. After you know someone a bit, and have a good relationship with them, if it seems appropriate to ask for a letter, ask away. The worst they can do is say no, and in my experience, this is pretty uncommon. More common, in my experience, are qualified yes answers--with the person I asked saying, "Well, I don't really work in your AOS, but I could write you a letter in terms of what I think of your work." For what it's worth, anytime anyone offered me a qualified yes of this sort, I jumped at the opportunity. It seemed to work well, at least in term of job-market results.

Anyway, these are my thoughts. Have I missed anything? Gotten anything wrong? Fire away!

Job-Market Boot Camp, Part 3: The CV Itself

In Part 2 of the Cocoon's Job-Market Boot Camp, I wrote about how to put together a strong, competitive CV. What I'd like to do today is talk about the CV itself: how it should be formatted, organized, what should be included, what shouldn't be, etc.

When it comes to most of these issues, it is very hard to get clear evidence of "what works" and "what doesn't." Accordingly, I will base the suggestions I provide below the best evidence I have:

1. Seemingly "consensus" views I've come across when talking about CVs with other people (other job candidates, placement directors, etc.), and
2. My job-market experiences with my own CV.

If you think the suggestions I provide are incorrect, or that I've left important stuff out, please do feel free to say so! 

Here, then, is what I think I've learned about writing/organizing a CV:

Formatting: Everyone I've ever talked to has advised against unnecessarily "flashy" CV formatting. The aim, I've been told, is not to have your CV's formatting stand out, but to the CV's content do the talking.

AOS: My understanding on what you should list as an AOS has always been a bit fuzzy, but I think the safest way to understand it is in terms of your area(s) of demonstrated research expertise. So, if you're a new PhD with no publications, the only area in which you have demonstrated research expertise is the area of your dissertation. Aside from that, my understanding is that you should only list other area(s) as an AOS if you have both (A) an actual publication record in the area, and (B) a reasonable claim to make that you will continue publishing in that area. In other words, you shouldn't list as an AOS things you merely "consider yourself an expert in." Aside from your dissertation area, you should only list as an AOS areas that someone looking at your CV would be likely to think to themselves, "Yes, this person has demonstrated the ability to publish in this area, and do it more than just a few times." (Am I off here?) In any case, I have heard many people say to beware of listing too many AOS, or AOS that are a "reach" (it may make you look self-deceived).

AOC: My understanding on AOC is even fuzzier, but the rule of thumb I've always been told is to list something as an AOC only if you plausibly have enough background in the area to teach an upper-level undergraduate seminar. For example, suppose you're a new graduate and do not have a research program in philosophy of science, but you took quite a few advanced philosophy of science courses in grad school (e.g. general philosophy of science, philosophy of biology, philosophy of physics, etc.). Okay then, in that case one can make a plausible case for listing that as an AOC. You can probably also list something as an AOC if you've published a few articles in the area, but don't have a long-term research program (Note: it's not exactly clear to me how long one can lean on graduate coursework, though. If you graduated a half-dozen years ago and you've never done research in phil science since grad school, can/should you still list it as an AOC? I'm inclined to think not). Finally, I have also come across a great many people who have cautioned against listing too many AOC--the claim being that it can make a candidate look either self-deceived or desperate, or both.

Employment: Skip this is you're a new graduate (or ABD). However, if you have been academically employed, list all of your positions, and list whether they are tenure-track or non-tenure-track. Don't skip this, or try to obscure the real nature of your position by omitting potentially relevant details. I learned this the hard way. Although the position that I'd been in (until accepting a TT position this year) was non-tenure-track, I initially did not put this in my CV, as my official title was simply "Assistant Professor" (not Visiting Assistant Professor, or some such). I later learned that although I was just trying to be honest and list my official title, it confused some people. You don't want to confuse search-committee members or cause them to think you're trying to hide something!

Education: You should list your PhD year (or expected graduation date), as well as your dissertation title and dissertation committee members. I have also been advised that if you are a new graduate with few/no publications, it can be a very good idea to include a brief (several sentence at most) dissertation summary just below your dissertation title--the purpose being to "put your best foot forward", drawing the search committee members' to your awesome dissertation before they get to the fact that you don't have (any/many) publications yet. 

General organization of the CV: I've heard from some people that after listing your AOS/AOC, education, you may want to organize your CV according to the job-type you're applying for--for instance, research first then teaching for research jobs, but the other way around for teaching jobs. I don't know anyone who has tried this, but I will say this: I always put my research first, have been a productive researcher, and it did not seem to harm my chances at all with teaching schools (the vast majority of my interviews over the past few years were at teaching schools, including a few community colleges). 

Publications: My understanding is that it is best to clearly distinguish each type of publication in its own section. Peer-reviewed publications should be in their own section of your CV, non-peer-reviewed publications in their own section, book reviews in their own section (or at least clearly marked as book reviews), etc. You may of course list as "forthcoming" any articles that have been officially accepted, and you may list "conditional acceptances" as a publication (though this is kind of a grey area). Do not list articles in "revise-and-resubmit" under your publications (they're not published or forthcoming), and definitely do not list articles merely under review under your publications. Instead, see below...

Manuscripts under review: After your publications, it is generally a good idea to list articles presently under review at peer-reviewed journals. Do not bother listing where they are under review, unless they are in "revise-and-resubmit." Anyone can submit an article to the Journal of Philosophy or Philosophical Review. Since submitting an article to a great journal is not an accomplishment, listing that you've done so, as I understand it, looks awkward and a bit desperate. You may list list where you have a revise-and-resubmit, though, because that is an accomplishment (shoot, if I had an R-n-R at Phil Review, I'd list it in a heartbeat!). 

Manuscripts in preparation: It may be a good idea to list substantially completed manuscripts, as this can be an indication of how productive you are. The important thing is not to exaggerate. You should only list papers for which, at minimum, you have a complete, decent draft. A general rule of thumb is: if a search committee asked for a copy of the paper, would you (A) have it on hand to send them immediately, and (B) not be embarrassed by its condition. 

Conference and Invited Presentations: After your publications and manuscripts in preparation, it is standard practice to list your conference presentations. Because APA presentations are generally considered more prestigious (or so I hear) than other conferences, I suggest assigning them their own section of your CV (viz. "APA presentations"). Also, if you have had any invited presentations (e.g. job talks, etc.), those should be up front too. 

Awards, Professional Service, Etc.: Generally speaking, it seems to be common practice to leave teaching stuff after any and all other categories. So, what other categories might come after listing presentations? Well, things like awards, professional service, etc. are good to list. If you've been a journal referee, list the journal(s) you refereed for as well as the year you were asked to do so.

Teaching: List all of the classes you have taught, including the institution and year you taught them. (Is there anything else people put here?)

Graduate Coursework: As I understand it, if you are a new grad/ABD student--especially one without much teaching experience--it may be helpful to list all of your graduate courses, their instructor(s), and the grades (?) you received. This will give the search committee a better idea of what you might be well-prepared to teach, and indeed, how broad your grad school preparation was. 

Professional References: It is my understanding that if you are coming straight out of grad school, it is okay for your only letter-writers to be your grad school professors. However, the grad students I knew who did the best on the market almost always had outside letters (they were people very good at networking). This can be very helpful, I've heard, because search committees expect glowing letters from one's grad school professors (your professors, after all, generally have a vested interest in you getting a job). Thus, if you want to distinguish yourself, getting a reference-letter from a well-known person in the profession outside of your department can look really good. It's also good--or so I've heard--to have more than one teaching letter for teaching jobs (though I myself never had more than one). Finally, everyone I have ever spoken to with any experience in these matters has told me that the longer you've on the market, the more important it is to get outside letters by well-known people. My final year on the market (this year), I had eight letters total: three grad school professors, one by my current department chair, and four by well-known people in the profession. Although it is hard to tease out causal influences, I did see a clear trend: the more outside letters I got, the more interviews I got. I'll dedicate a future post to this very topic--how to get outside letter-writers--but for now let me say this. You want to make sure that all of your letters are good and up-to-date. Ask your letter writers if they could write a positive letter supporting your candidacy, and see what they have to say. I have never once had someone be dishonest with me--and yes, I have had someone tell me that they could only write a lukewarm letter.

Am I off on anything? Did I leave anything out? I'd love to hear from job candidates and search committee members what their experiences have been. Fire away!

Job-Market Boot Camp, Part 2: Building a Strong, Competitive CV

This is the first substantive post of the Cocoon's Job-Market Boot Camp. As I mentioned in my introduction, the series will discuss all things job-market related, with the aim of helping candidates to better prepare for the academic market. As I also explained, I would like for the series--both my posts and comments--to be as evidence-based as possible. Although, again, sound evidence for how to succeed on the market is hard to come by, my hope that is by tying information and advice to evidence, rather than pure speculation, the series will actually provide readers with good information and advice to go on. So, let's try to hold each other to that. When giving information and advice, don't just give your "impressions." Try to give tangible evidence!

The topic of today's post is simple: how to build a strong CV that will be competitive on the market. My personal experience strongly suggests that when it comes to being competitive, publications--publications in general, not just top-ranked publications--matter more than just about anything else. 

When I was in grad school, many people cautioned me (and others I knew) against publishing articles in low-ranked journals. I was told that this might lead search committees to judge you negatively, and thus, that one should only shoot for publications in top-ranked journals. My personal experience strongly suggests that this advice was mistaken.

Although I've never published in a top-20 journal, and so have no experience with whether they might "help" my candidacy, I have a lot of experience publishing in lower-ranked journals--and here my experience was unequivocal: the more I published (even in low-ranked journals), the more interviews I received. Indeed, the relationship was very striking. When I had few publications, I got few interviews. When I had more publications, I got more interviews. When I had a lot of publications, I got a lot of interviews. Publishing a lot, even if it's only in lower-ranked journals, appeared to help a lot. No, I did not receive R1 interviews. Most of my interviews were at SLACs, and a substantial minority were at R2's (which I define roughly as research universities without philosophy PhD programs). But still, when it came to SLACs and R2's, my experience was that top-ranked publications were not necessary to be competitive, and lower-ranked publications helped considerably.

 

CV-Building Advice #1: All types of publications appear to help. Publish, and publish...everywhere--in top-ranked journals if you can, but also in lower-ranked journals.

So much for publications. What about the rest of the CV? The sad fact is, I think it's very hard to say. Given how important teaching is at many SLACs, I think good teaching evals and a broad teaching resume--with experience teaching a lot of different classes--are both probably helpful. Further, during my interviews at SLACs, search committees and deans seemed to like student-involvement stuff quite a lot. That being said, I had a lot of teaching experience and student involvement for years, and it didn't seem to lead to interviews. What did? Publications. So, I would say:

CV-Building Advice #2: Try to expand your teaching resume and student involvement, and improve your student reviews--but do not sacrifice publishing. Find a way to improve the teaching and student-engagement parts of your portfolio while continuing to publish.

Finally, my experience has been that it is important to secure recommendation letters from respected people outside of your graduate department--particularly the longer you're out on the market. I was not only given this advice by many different people, but also experienced positive results. Every time I got more recommendation letters from respected figures in the discipline, my interview numbers improved. So, I would say:

CV-building Advice #3: It is a good idea to obtain new recommendation letters from respected members of the discipline not from your graduate program.

I will devote a future post to how to go about following this advice. But these, I guess, are my three biggest pieces of CV-building advice. Am I wrong? Have I missed anything important? Fire (and discuss) away!

Job-Market Boot Camp, Part 1: Introduction

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I am going to run a new series here at the Cocoon: a Job-Market Boot Camp of sorts. The basic aim of Boot Camp is to share and discuss information and advice on how to succeed on the academic job market. We will discuss everything from what a good dossier looks like (CVs, research statements), to developing a unified research program, to interviewing, stress management, and lots of other things. The idea for the series came, quite frankly, from my own struggles on the market. It took me a lot of time to "figure things out" and come across good advice that actually seemed to work. My hope is that the series will help others avoid a similar kind of flailing, and provide sound advice based--as far as possible--on evidence. Allow me to explain, then, how I would like to conduct the series.

Discussions of the job-market in philosophy departments and the philosophy blogosphere is rampant with speculation. Everyone, it seems, has an opinion of "what search committees are looking for." The problem, though, is that opinions here often differ dramatically, and often appear to be based on little more than personal impressions. This, in my experience, tends to lead to a lot of unhelpful, contradictory advice. What we should try to do, I think, is base job-market advice on evidence. Of course, such evidence is hard to come by. Given that there are (to my knowledge) no sound empirical studies on what it takes to do well on the philosophy job market, we have to do the best with what we have--and that is personal experiences as job-candidates, search-committee members, PhD program placement directors, etc. What I would like to try to do, then, is conduct the Job Market Boot Camp in the following way. I am going to ask that discussion, as far as possible, be based on evidence. So, for instance, I am going to share quite a lot of my experiences on the market, and trends between what I did and results that I experienced. Similarly, I would like to ask other job-marketeers, search-committee members, placement directors, etc., to share their experiences, in as evidence-based of a way as possible. I would like, in other words, for discussion in the comments-sections of posts to be of the following sort:

• "As a job-candidate, I did X, Y, and Z, and here were the results."
• "As a search-committee member at an R1 institution, this is what I looked for."
• "As a placement-director at a Leiter-unranked program, our students did X, Y, and Z and fared well."

Notice that in each case, the information/advice based it on some kind of evidence beyond mere intuition or speculation. This is what I would like to try to aspire to in the series, and I would like to ask everyone who participates--myself and commenters alike--to hold each other to it. It will, of course, be a highly fallible enterprise, and contradictory advice may obviously still emerge. But, for all that, I believe, an evidence-based discussion--linking advice to specific results, trends, etc.--will be more helpful than pure speculation. As such, I would like to invite all job-seekers, search committee members, placement directors, etc., to share evidence they have throughout the series: evidence of how they fared as job-seekers, evidence of how they made decisions (as search committee members), and evidence of how their students fared (as placement directors). Further, I would like to ask commenters to be as specific as possible in the evidence they provide. Did X, Y, and Z seem to result in a lot of interviews? If so, where? At R1's? SLACs? Community colleges? Were you a search committee member at an R1? An R2? SLAC? Etc. You get the picture. The more specific your evidence, the better!

Finally, given that I will be offering advice in my posts throughout the series, I suppose I should answer the obvious question: why should anyone take seriously the advice I have to offer? A reasonable question, to be sure. My first year on the market was 2007. I got my first TT job this year, in 2015. It was a long road, and I by no means have all of the answers. All I can do is share my experiences: things that didn't work, and things that seemed to. I will, at the end of the day, leave it up to readers, and commenters, to decide whether the information and advice I have to offer is accurate and useful--but what I can promise to try to do, throughout, is base my advice on the best evidence I can: on facts and trends that I experienced myself, and on evidence that I have come across from other sources. I hope readers find the posts helpful, and I look forward to discussions of the topics to come.

So, then, up, up, and away! The topic of the next few posts? How to develop and put together a good CV!

A reminder, and a "job-market boot camp"

I'd like to once again encourage our readers on the job-market this year to fill out the job-market survey I'm conducting, and to spread the word to others on the market who might be interested in filling it out, as well. The more data we get, the better statistical picture we'll have of precisely which things help and do not help job-candidates on the market, and to what extent. In the future, I will probably deploy the survey through other means--Google docs or Qualtrics perhaps--but in the meantime I would like to thank everyone that has taken part.

As soon as I run the data analysis, I will present the results here. What I hope to do then is begin a new Cocoon feature: a Job Market Boot-Camp of sorts offering information and advice, and soliciting advice and discussion from readers, on all things job-market related. My hope is to run a rather long series of posts on everything ranging from dossier materials, to networking, to obtaining new recommendation letters, to interviewing, and beyond. Although I don't pretend to have all the answers, I did spend something like 8 years on the market--struggling mightily for several years before making some changes that led to much better results the past few years--and I would like to share some of the experiences and lessons I think I've learned, and invite readers to do the same. Hopefully we can have some good discussions that present and future job-marketeers will find helpful.

Here is an initial working outline of the series:

• Part 1: Building a better CV
• Part 2: Recommendation letters
• Part 3: Networking and online presence
• Part 4: Should you hire a job-market consultant?
• Part 5: The cover-letter
• Part 6: The research statement
• Part 7: The teaching statement
• Part 8: The teaching dossier
• Part 9: The writing sample
• Part 10: The Skype interview
• Part 11:  The APA interview
• Part 12: The on-campus interview

Are there any topics not listed that you would like to see covered in the series? If so, please do leave a comment letting me know!