The Philosophers' Cocoon

Job market numbers update

At the beginning of this month, I published a post noting that this year's academic job market in philosophy appeared to be off to a hot start. However, in mid-September, several readers in our job-market discussion thread noted that it seemed like there were fewer jobs this cycle than last year. I promised to follow up on this, so I took a look today at different types of job ads on PhilJobs this year (from August 1 - September 30th) in comparison to the past 10 years to see how things are going.

Here is what I found:

Total Job Ads on PhilJobs

• 2022: 174 ads
• 2021: 133
• 2020: 65
• 2019: 146
• 2018: 156
• 2017: 135
• 2016: 155
• 2015: 136
• 2014: 149
• 2013: 163
• 2012: 252

Long story short: at least so far, taking all job ads on PhilJobs into account, this does appear to be the best academic job market in philosophy since 2012 (though not by a tremendous margin; 10-year mean = 151; median = 149).

Still, because general numbers can be a bit misleading, I took a little bit of a deeper dive, looking into numbers for different types of jobs. It would be nice if PhilJobs had a search function narrowly tailored to specific types of jobs (such as VAPs, non-tenure-track Lecturers and Teaching Professors, etc.), but it has the next best thing--namely: 

So, I tried searching by some of these terms (not all of which were useful or informative), and here's what I found:

Junior faculty (tenure track or similar)

2022: 96 ads

2021: 73

2020: 21

2019: 75

2018: 101

2017: 81

2016: 89

2015: 84

2014: 95

2013: 111

2012: 108

 

Quick takeaway: the number of junior TT job ads this year seems to be a little above average (the mean number of junior TT job ads over the past 10 years is 85; if we subtract out the COVID year 2020, the mean is 91. The median number over the past 10 years is 89).

 

Junior (Postdocs or similar, 'fixed term')

2022: 39

2021: 34

2020: 30

2019: 46

2018: 28

2017: 37

2016: 42

2015: 20

2014: 33

2013: 31

2012: 87

 

Quick takeaway: this year is 'a little above average' (mean over the past 10 years = 39, but this is skewed by 2012's extreme outlier. The median is more representative and = 34).

 

Junior (Visiting Fellowship / Professorship, 'fixed term')

2022: 12

2021: 14

2020: 9

2019: 18

2018: 8

2017: 11

2016: 21

2015: 11

2014: 15

2013: 21

2012: 60

 

Quick takeaway: broadly in line with last 9 years, 2012 is an extreme outlier.

 

Senior faculty (tenure track or similar)

2022: 31

2021: 32

2020: 11

2019: 24

2018: 35

2017: 25

2016: 34

2015: 29

2014: 43

2013: 45

2012: 45

 

Quick takeaway: the number of senior tenure-track jobs is broadly in line with the past 8 years, but there were a lot more senior TT jobs in 2012-2014. So again, about 'average' this year, though the number of these jobs advertised each year is about 33% less than in 2012-2014.

 

Senior faculty (Tenured, continuing or permanent)

2022: 13

2021: 14

2020: 8

2019: 13

2018: 13

2017: 8

2016: 21

2015: 19

2014: 21

2013: 19

2012: 33

 

Quick takeaway: 'about average' compared to the last five years, but there were significantly more senior/tenured jobs from 2012-2016. This and the last category may suggest that colleges and universities are not filling senior retirements with senior positions as much as in the past, but instead more junior positions.

 

So, is this year's philosophy job market good or bad so far? My hot take: it's complicated. It's a little better in some ways than recent markets (junior TT jobs & postdocs), but on the whole, still pretty bad (much as it has been for decades now)...

Putting together a good academic website?

In our September "how can we help you?" thread, a Grad student writes:

Do people have any thoughts/tips about putting together an academic website? I take it that it's a consensus good thing, but are there platforms/kinds of content/organization tips that people would recommend?

Good question! I discussed websites briefly in this post in our Job Market Boot Camp a few years back, but I'm not sure how good or helpful that advice was. I did my best with my own website just by looking around at other people's as examples--but I've seen websites that are far better than my own.

Anyway, what do you all think? What should a good website look like? Links to ones that you think are particularly good would be helpful, I think--and do feel free to self-nominate by linking to your site, if you think it would be helpful!

Working in 'elite' vs. 'non-elite' programs?

In our September "how can we help you?" thread, eli writes:

I hope this question is in the scope, because I am genuinely curious for practical reasons. Is anyone here a faculty at an elite program who has also worked in non-elite programs? How do those experiences compare? In particular, are you bothered by/developing/acting out some elitism? How do you like this aspect? Does anyone like their non-elite program experience better, assuming all duties are roughly equal? I have never been in a super elite program for study or work, and find it awkward to ask this in real life.

I've never worked in what one might call an 'elite' program, and to be honest, I'm happy for it. I do work that I enjoy, both in research and the classroom, and I'm a heck of a lot less self-conscious than I was in graduate school, when I always felt pressure (much of it self-imposed) to impress those around me. But this is, of course, just my experience and a fairly narrow experience at that. Anyone else have any experience or insights to share?

Getting Closer to a Permanent Position?

In one of my posts from 2021, I considered the question of how long a job candidate should continue pursuing a tenure-track position before moving on and what factors could affect someone’s answer. Recently, someone left a comment on that post that I think warrants a little further discussion:

To what extent does having a VAP each year provide evidence of landing a permanent gig? Maybe that’s not an easily answered question. But I’ve been working on the assumption (I guess “hope” is more accurate) that it counts for something, e.g., it’s another line added to the CV.

This question gets at an important challenge associated with repeated job market runs: how do you assess whether your chances of getting a long-term position are improving or not? Here are a few thoughts on getting a short-term visiting position.

U. Chicago philosophy job

Matthew Boyle (Emerson and Grace Wineland Pugh Professor of Humanities, University of Chicago) wrote in asking us to draw readers' attention to this job listing:

Assistant Professor - Philosophy

Description

AOS: Open, but with particular interest in applicants working in any of the following areas: (1) Twentieth-Century Continental Philosophy, (2) Kant and Post-Kantian German Philosophy, (3) Philosophy of Race/Racial Justice, or (4) Non-Western Philosophy

AOC: Open

The Department of Philosophy at the University of Chicago invites applications for a position as Assistant Professor to begin July 1, 2023, or as soon as possible thereafter. Minimum teaching load of four courses per year over three quarters, at graduate and undergraduate levels, and usual dissertation, committee, and advising responsibilities.

Job market do's and don'ts: campus visits

I'd like to continue our new job-market do's and don'ts series today by asking search committee members to weigh in on what job candidates should or shouldn't do during campus visits / 'flyouts'.

I wrote one post on campus visits for our Job Market Boot Camp series, but I think it would be great to hear from other search committee members. Are there things that you’ve seen candidates do during campus visits that reflected well on them? Alternatively, are there things you've seen candidates do that came across poorly?

Finally, job candidates: feel free to ask search committee members in thread below any questions that you have (and search committees, feel free to answer)!

Using an introduction as writing sample?

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

I have a question about writing samples...would it be frowned upon to send an introduction to a dissertation or book project in progress as a writing sample? I work in a pretty technical area, so I think my introduction is clearest and most engaging for a general audience. But, of course, it's only the beginning of an argument, and perhaps search committees want to see a full argument in article form? Apologies if this has been asked before.

This seems to me like a mistake. Your research statement should serve as an accessible and engaging introduction to your work. I think you want your writing sample to show your "chops", as it were. It should be a piece that does hard philosophical work, showing your best as a philosopher! 

But these are just my thoughts. What are yours? 

Choosing and developing AOCs?

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

I have a question about developing AOCs. Specifically, I am curious how people go about deciding what AOCs to develop, what the best practices there might be. Obviously it would be nice to have competence in areas of interest to me personally, but also, I want to think strategically in terms of the job market.

One piece of advice was that the AOS and AOC should paint a coherent picture -- so my AOS and my AOC(s) are clearly related in content. E.g., specializing in ancient, project is on an ancient figure's view of mind, AOC in contemporary mind. Something like that. But if this is good advice, I'm wondering if one risks seeming overly specialized.

Another piece of advice was to think about what areas hiring committees might like to offer undergrad courses in. I'm less clear how this one works (maybe choosing an often underrepresented area like race/gender, nonwestern areas, etc.? or a 'core' subfield, or a history one, assuming these are needs every department might have?). But if this is good advice, I'm wondering how to actually figure out what areas those might be.

Finally, I was curious whether AOC-related advice differs in terms of research-focused and teaching-focused job searches. (For what it's worth, I personally will be focusing my job search at SLACs, but I'm curious about advice more generally.)

These are great questions. I do suspect that things may be different here for research-focused versus teaching-focused institutions. My sense is that at SLACs, at least, there are often particular undergrad courses that the department either needs or wants to offer. Given that these courses may differ substantially across universities (as a result of different major or gen-ed requirements, etc.), it can I think be hard to predict. But I would offer two rules of thumb: (1) more diversity in terms of being able to teach standard philosophy undergrad courses is better than less (e.g. being able to teach some history of philosophy courses may indeed be helpful, particularly for getting a job in smaller departments without specialists in history of philosophy), and (2) many departments at SLACs are concerned with attracting students to the major, so being able to teach 'popular' types of courses (e.g. courses in ethics, justice, etc.) may be advantageous.

But these are just some off-the-cuff thoughts, and I'd love to hear what search committee members or department members in different kinds of institutions think. What approach to choosing or developing AOCs do you think would best serve job candidates for getting a job in your department?

7 Years Later Excerpt #5: The Costs of Relocation

For those waiting for me to continue this series, I thank you for your patience. Now that I have completed my 2000-mile move from Ohio to Arizona and gotten somewhat settled into my new job, I will be continuing this series of snippets from my in-progress guide to graduate school in philosophy. Since the job hunting season is right around the corner, I'm going to focus my next few posts on the job market and related topics. This post focuses on the costs of relocation – something that graduate students and other early career philosophers should take into account with respect to the jobs they pursue and how long they stay on the market. I include this in the guide because this is one of the costs of the job market that I could not properly evaluate when I was going on the market for the first time.

---

One of the costs of pursuing academic employment is that you will often have to relocate in pursuit of long-term employment. Looking back, I believe this is one of the hardest costs to explain and quantify to graduate students. In this post, I’m going to explain some of the challenges associated with relocation and reflect a little on them.

1. Relocation costs money. It’s expensive to move across the country (or potentially to a different country) whether you are physically moving your possessions from your current residence or selling/donating your possessions and buying new things. If you’re moving to a new apartment, there will also be security deposits and the first month’s rent to pay. Not only is this expensive, but you are also likely to have a gap in your pay. I officially graduated from the University of Tennessee in May 2017. I started my first post-graduate position in early August that summer, but because of the way pay cycles worked and the lag in getting all my information into the HR system, I did not receive my first paycheck for that position until the second week of September. That translates to over 3 months without any income. Depending on the distance you are moving, whether your new position comes with a moving allowance, and how long you have to sustain yourself with no income, you may well need more than $10,000 on hand to complete your move. During my 3 relocations (Tennessee to Florida, Florida to Ohio, Ohio to Arizona), the lowest amount of money I needed to cover costs without taking on debt was between $5000 and $6000.
2. Relocation requires a lot of paperwork. In the United States, moving states means changing vehicle registration and insurance agents. You’ve also got to update your address on all your financial and postal accounts and get a new driver’s license. You’ll have to start a new utilities account, get your home cable and/or internet installed, and make sure all the relevant utility accounts at your previous address were properly closed. There will also be a ton of things to complete as part of being a new hire. None of these items is all that daunting by itself, but the sheer quantity of it all can feel overwhelming.
3. Relocation is physically demanding. One component of moving is the actual process of putting new items inside your home, transporting books to your new office space, assembling the new furniture you purchased, organizing clothes and other household items in your personal space, and so on. This is not all that exhausting in most instances, but doing these sorts of things for several hours a day for a whole week will leave most people rather drained.
4. Relocation breaks routine. Everything you did in your previous place of residence has to be re-learned. Your drive to work is different, your grocery shopping is different, the campus layout is different, and your daily plans are different. Depending on where you moved, the weather and culture may also be very different. One of the things that allows us to focus our cognitive energy on our research and teaching is the fact that so much of what we do is practically automated – we have done it the same way so often that we do not have to think about it. Moving forces you to re-establish all those habits, and that makes the first several weeks after a move rather mentally taxing.
5. Relocation disrupts social networks. In some ways, it is easier now to maintain long-distance relationships than it has ever been. Nevertheless, moving somewhere else often puts a strain on relationships that were established with people in your former place of residence. Additionally, in your new location, it is highly unlikely that you will have enough established connections to replace the friends or family that you are leaving behind. (This is not true if you are moving to somewhere you previously lived, but philosophers rarely have much choice in where they get their first job – you’re very unlikely to be in this situation.) The result is that you have to rebuild your social support network, which can take a long time.
6. Relocation undercuts motivation. Because so many appointments in academic philosophy are short, temporary contracts (namely, 1–3 years), those who relocate often face the prospect of relocating again in short order. This makes it difficult to fully invest in your current community or university. What’s the point of becoming good friends with a bunch of people just to leave them behind in a year or two? What’s the point of doing a bunch of volunteer work for your department when you have no prospects for another contract? Some may be able to push these questions aside and stay motivated, but they are hard to dismiss.
7. Relocation alters one’s temporal perspective. One effect of repeatedly going on the job market and relocating is that your timeline becomes incredibly short-term. During my first appointment as a postdoc, my mentality at the outset was something like this: “What can I do in the next year to make myself a stronger candidate on the job market?” Since you’ve got to be job market ready by September (October 1st at the latest), you’ve only got about 1 year to improve your credentials if your job starts in August, and it's a 2-year position. But this kind of outlook narrows your focus to short-term goals – things that can be accomplished in a year or less. That makes it difficult to entertain bigger, grander projects, and it also places considerable pressure on you to produce during the shortened timetable you have. This problem is even more acute if your position is for only a single year: by the time you complete the moving process, you will already be contemplating your next move!
8. Relocation is demoralizing. Most people start settling down and carving out a stable life for themselves in their early 30s – some even earlier. If you’re an academic philosopher, the odds are that you will not be one of these people. You will watch your friends establish themselves where they live and solidify their jobs while you continue to travel across the country in hopes of permanent employment.
9. Relocation strains families. I am not married and have no children, but for those who have a spouse and/or children, frequent relocation multiplies some of the costs on this list. In some respects, it does make the move more bearable since you have people with you who are sharing that experience. But it also means that there will be much more to do to complete the moving process. Academic couples may also encounter the all-too-common scenario where they hold jobs at different institutions.

When I made my move from Kansas to Tennessee to start graduate school, I was excited to move and start something new. In some ways, I felt the same way after starting my first postdoc – I was ready to be done with graduate school and wanted to start new projects, teach new classes, and so on. But after a while, this enthusiasm fades. My recent relocation to Arizona marks my 4th state of residence in the last 6th years. That sounds extreme, but many in the profession have much more nomadic career trajectories than mine. If you’re considering a career in philosophy, it’s worth asking yourself how many times you’re willing to move while you’re on the market. How often are you willing to bear the costs of relocation?

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.

Mentioning R&Rs in research statements?

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

To those on the job market, it's often recommended to include R&R status for papers on your CV (say in an 'under review' section). Suppose I discuss this paper on my research statement. Is it appropriate to indicate there, too, that it has received an R&R at a particular journal?

Good question. I don't think it's inappropriate to mention an R&R in both places (the CV and research statement), but I wonder whether it might come across a bit heavy-handed. In my experience, the CV is usually the first thing that any search committee member looks at. It's the easiest way to tell whether a candidate's AOS/AOC fits the position, how well-published they are (including whether they have R&Rs at good journals), etc. So, if you do list R&Rs on your CV, chances are search committee members will notice it and take it into account there. My sense is that, when reading research statements, search committee members are primarily interested in the ideas themselves: how interesting your research program is, the extent to which you have well-defined (and promising) long-term research plans, etc. 

For these reasons, I'm inclined to think that probably just mentioning R&Rs on your CV will suffice. In fact, listing R&Rs in your research statement might draw unnecessary attention to what you haven't published yet. So, maybe leave it out of research statements? But these are just some off-the-cuff thoughts of my own. What are yours? It would be great to hear from other search committee members!

What makes a sample syllabus stand out?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, an ABD grad student asks:

What are job search committees looking for in a sample syllabus, or what makes a sample syllabus stand out?

Good question. At least offhand, I'm inclined to think that four things stand out:

1. How well it fits the advertised job: is the syllabus for a type of course the hiring committee needs taught?
2. The selection of readings: does the candidate just use a textbook, or a carefully curated list of readings?
3. Strategies for student engagement: how do they get students to read and participate in the classroom?
4. Innovation
   1. Does the syllabus indicate the candidate does cool/unique things in the classroom?
   2. Do they have more or less standard assignments (exams, term papers), or do they do non-standard things that might enhance student experience and learning?

In brief, I think the teaching portfolio is a lot like other job-market materials. It is difficult to stand out from the crowd, so any way that you can show that you are an especially good fit for the job and unique or imaginative can help (provided, of course, that the unique things you do seem well-motivated!).

But these are just my thoughts. What are yours? It would be great to hear from other search committee members!

Job market do's and don'ts: teaching demos

I'd like to continue our new job-market do's and don'ts series today by asking search committee members to weigh in on what job candidates should and shouldn't do in teaching demos.

I wrote one post giving some tips for job talks at teaching-focused institutions in our Job Market Boot Camp series, but I think it would be great to hear from other search committee members.

Are there things that you’ve seen candidates do in teaching demos that worked particularly well? Are there particular things you want to see in a good demo? What about things you don’t want to see? What are the most common features of a good or bad demo? Are there any common teaching demo mistakes you’ve seen candidates make? Is there anything in particular that can 'sink' a candidate?

Finally, job candidates: feel free to ask search committee members in thread below any questions that you have (and search committees, feel free to answer)!

Job-market reporting thread (2022-23 season)

As I noted in opening this season's job-market discussion thread, each year the Cocoon has two open job-market threads: one for job market discussion/commiseration, and another for reporting job-market news (interviews, on-campus invites, offers, rejections, etc.). As noted previously, the reason the Cocoon has two threads is simple: some people only want to discuss/commiserate but not hear about interviews, offers, etc., whereas other people just want news, and other people still want both!

Anyway, although I recognize it is quite early in the job season, last year I planned to open the reporting thread in October, only to have multiple readers request for it to open earlier (apparently, job-market news can start fairly early). So, here it is: this season's job-market reporting thread!

Please do feel free to bookmark or otherwise follow this thread throughout the job season (this fall and next spring), and post any news you have! Also, please do feel free to report on jobs in other departments that philosophers can be expected to apply to (political theory jobs in political science departments, AI-ethics jobs in interdisciplinary departments, etc.). Just make sure you specify the institution and department so that other readers and commentators don't confuse them with jobs in philosophy departments.

One quick reminder: this thread is only for reporting news on the market (i.e. reporting interviews, flyouts, offers, hires, and so on), so please, report away! If you would like to discuss the job-market, please comment on the discussion thread. Permalinks to both job threads will remain on the right side-bar of the blog through the end of the job season. Because of Typepad's functionality limitations (which only permits 100 comments before starting a new comment page), readers may elect to bookmark each new page of comments as each new page emerges. I recognize that it can be frustrating to scroll through page after page to get to new comments, and I think this is probably the best solution given Typepad's functionality limitations.

Finally, commenters are asked to please remember and abide by the Cocoon's supportive mission while reporting. Thanks, and best of luck to all on the market!

Philjobs in August: the best market in years?

I know this season's academic job market has just begun, but I was curious what the job market looks like so far. So, I looked up the number of ads posted to PhilJobs this August, compared it to the previous 10 years, and here is what I found:

Number of job ads posted in August

• 2022: 56
• 2021: 35
• 2020: 17
• 2019: 53
• 2018: 42
• 2017: 35
• 2016: 46
• 2015: 49
• 2014: 37
• 2013: 55
• 2012: 63

Obviously, the academic job market in philosophy is perennially tight, and many of these are relatively small differences, but still: at least so far, 2022 seems to be the best job market so far in the past 10 years. Hopefully things keep up, and I'll post updates each of the next few months.

Good luck, everyone. I know the job market is brutal, but we're here to help here at the Cocoon in any way that we reasonably can!  

Job market do's and don'ts: research 'job talks'

I'd like to continue our new job-market do's and don'ts series today by asking search committee members to weigh in on what job candidates should and shouldn't do in research 'job talks.'

I wrote one post giving some tips for job talks at teaching-focused institutions in our Secret Lives of Search Committees series, but I think it would be great to hear from other search committee members, including people from research-focused R1 departments. 

Are there things that you’ve seen candidates do in job talks that worked particularly well? Are there particular things you want to see in a good job talk? What about things you don’t want to see? What are the most common features of a good talk or bad talk? Are there any common job talk mistakes you’ve seen candidates make?

Finally, job candidates: feel free to ask search committee members in thread below any questions that you have (and search committees, feel free to answer)!

Disclosing surviving sexual assault in job materials to contextualize recent performance?

In our August "how can we help you?" thread, an anonymous postdoc writes:

In the last stretch of my PhD, I survived a sexual assault. I was able to finish and defend my thesis and to start my planned research postdoc despite that. However, I haven't been productive in the first 6-8 months of my postdoc because I was recovering and going through the criminal system. A year after the event, I have now almost fully recovered; I don't have PTSD, but I am still in therapy. As I am approaching the job market season, I was wondering whether this is something that can/should appear in my job materials or disclosed by a letter writer to explain the slow pace of my research. All my letter writers know what happened, but I haven't been public about that. Having gone through that experience might also influence my future work in social philosophy and shape my interest for service work (e.g., university committees on gender-based violence).

This is an important (and delicate) query, and I am so sorry this happened to the OP. Although as a search committee member I haven't seen any candidates disclose being survivors of sexual assault, I have seen job materials that disclose personal hardships in cover letters, and my sense is that it can helpfully contextualize a candidate's file--particularly if they are otherwise good candidates for the job. However, given that this is a special case, I think it would be really helpful to hear from search committee members here. What do you think the OP should do? Would it be helpful for them to mention it in a cover letter? Would it be advisable for their letter writers to discuss it? Or, do you think the OP would be best served as a candidate not mentioning it at all?

A couple of quick notes to guide discussion:

1. I ask that only search committee members weigh in, along with perhaps past or present job candidates who have been though similar circumstances.
2. I ask that all commenters approach this topic with due sensitivity to the OP's traumatic experience. Readers should feel free to offer honest advice and explanations for it, as the OP is asking for sound job-market advice. However, please be kind and otherwise mindful that they are a survivor of gender-based violence.

Job market do's and don'ts: Zoom interviews

I'd like to continue our new job-market do's and don'ts series today by asking search committee members to weigh in on what job candidates should and shouldn't do in Zoom interviews. I wrote one post on phone and video interviews back in 2015 in our Job Market Boot Camp, but I think it would be good to hear from search committee members on what they think are do's and don'ts for Zoom interviews. 

Are there things that you’ve seen candidates do in interviews that worked particularly well? Are there particular things you want to see in a good interview? What about things you don’t want to see? What are the most common features of a 'good interview' or 'bad interview'? Are there any common mistakes you’ve seen candidates make that you think candidates should know to avoid?

Finally, job candidates: feel free to ask search committee members in thread below any questions that you have about interviews (and search committees, feel free to answer)!

Job market do's and don'ts: research statements

I'd like to continue our new job-market do's and don'ts series today by asking search committee members to weigh in on what job candidates should and shouldn't do in research statements. I wrote one post on teaching portfolios back in 2015 in our Job Market Boot Camp, but I think it would be good to hear from search committee members on what they think are do's and don'ts for research statements. 

Are there things that you’ve seen candidates do in research statements that worked particularly well? Are there particular things you want to see in a good research statement (such as a 5 year plan)? What about things you don’t want to see? Are there any common mistakes you’ve seen candidates make in research statements that you think candidates should know to avoid?

Finally, job candidates: feel free to ask search committee members in thread below any questions that you have about research statements (and search committees, feel free to answer)!

Job market do's and don'ts: teaching portfolios

I'd like to continue our new job-market do's and don'ts series today by asking search committee members to weigh in on what job candidates should and shouldn't do in teaching portfolios. I'm a bit surprised that no one has weighed in on our thread on teaching statements, as there were quite a few helpful comments in the threads on CVs and cover letters. So, I'm hoping people may have more to say on teaching portfolios. 

I wrote one post on teaching portfolios back in 2015 in our Job Market Boot Camp, and another post in our "Notes from both sides of the market" series in 2016. However, I think it would be good to hear from search committee members on do's and dont's for:

1. How long teaching portfolios should/shouldn't be (how many pages is too short/too long?)
2. What to include/not include in teaching portfolios
   • 'Selected' student comments vs. complete/unedited student comments?
   • 'Letters of recommendation' written by students?
   • Full syllabi vs. course descriptions + reading lists?
   • Syllabi only, or syllabi plus sample assignments?
3. How to format teaching portfolios
   • 'Raw' teaching evaluations (formatted by university) vs. candidate-formatted summaries
   • Etc.
4. Any other do's/don'ts?

On (4), are there things that you’ve seen candidates do in teaching portfolios that worked particularly well? Are there any common mistakes you’ve seen candidates make in teaching portfolios that you think candidates should know to avoid?

Finally, job candidates: feel free to ask search committee members in thread below any questions that you have about teaching portfolios (and search committees, feel free to answer)!

Listing works in progress? What counts?

In our job-market do's and don'ts thread on CVs, there was some discussion of whether job candidates should list works-in-progress (WIPs), and if so, whether listing too many of them can decrease a candidate's credibility. On early career person suggested it might be good to run a new thread on these questions, so here it is!

My own sense is search committees care far more about what you've actually published than WIPs. But still, these are fair questions:

1. Should candidates list WIPs?
2. If so, under what conditions? What counts as a WIP?
3. Is listing too many WIPs problematic? 

I don't have any clear picture on what the answer to (1) is. On the one hand, listing WIPs can show that you have potential publications in your research pipeline. On the other hand, listing WIPs shows that you haven't actually published them, and in terms of getting tenure and/or promotion, actually publishing is what matters. 

On (2), Bill Vanderburgh writes, "Be prepared to answer detailed questions about anything you list as in preparation." But, this actually seems to me to be too minimal of a standard. I've always been told that you should only list something as a WIP if you would be able to actually provide a paper draft, if asked. After all, it's entirely possible that someone on a search committee might be interested in one of your papers at some point and even ask to read it. Maybe the probability of this is small. But still, if my recollection serves me correctly, it happened to me as a job candidate on at least one occasion. So, I think it's probably a bad idea to list papers that are only partially drafted or which you merely plan to draft. 

On (3), I don't know. Bill Vanderburg writes, "listing more than two works in progress decreases credibility." Another Assistant Professor adds:

I don't know that I specifically endorse Bill's "list only 2" works in progress cap as a strict rule, but I appreciate the spirit of it.

Early Career notes that if you are ABD and have several accepted conference papers in the mix then you likely have 5-6 works in progress. Sure, but those things are also already represented on your CV, right? If you are presenting on the main program of the APA, we all know that you submitted a 3K word paper to get in, and so it is already on your CV, and you don't need to list it elsewhere. If you are ABD then we all know you are writing a dissertation with probably 4-6 chapters (some of which, presumably, will turn into journal articles if you aren't trying to make the whole thing into a monograph). But that is also already part of your CV. It seems a bit odd to then also list these things that would be on your CV in other places already *also* as "works in progress."

I would use a works in progress section sparingly, only if it helps signal *new* directions on existing scholarship (though you could/should also talk about these in your cover letter or research statement) and not just as CV filler (which it risks looking like for most folks).

I guess I think the last sentence of this comment is the most relevant one: search committees will probably consider your WIPs in context. So, if you have no publications, or maybe just one or two, then listing (say) 10 WIPs isn't going to look very good. It will look like filler, or worse: it will look like you have a lot of things you just haven't been able to publish! On the other hand, suppose you are a candidate who has 8 publications, and you list 10 WIPs. In this case, I wonder whether you might come across as extraordinarily productive--as someone who has not only published a lot, but who is likely to continue to do so moving forward. Then again, if you have 8 publications, do you even need to list WIPs at all? I'm not sure. The longer I was on the market, and the more publications I had, I didn't even bother listing them.

Anyway, these are just my thoughts on questions (1)-(3). What are yours? 

Job market do's and don'ts: CVs

I'd like to continue our new job-market do's and don'ts series today by asking search committee members to weigh in on what job candidates should and shouldn't do on CVs. I wrote two posts on CVs in our Job-Market Boot Camp series back in 2015 and 2019, but still, I think it might be good to hear from people who have recently served on search committees. 

Are there things that you’ve seen candidates do in CVs that worked particularly well? Are there particular things you want to see in a good CV? What about things you don’t want to see in a CV? Are there any common mistakes you’ve seen candidates make in CVs that you think candidates should know to absolutely avoid? Finally, job candidates: feel free to ask search committee members in thread below any questions that you have!

Also, our first thread in this series, on cover letters, took a bit to get going yesterday, but there have been some good comments. So, do feel free to continue weighing in over there too!

Updated ADPA job placement data & table

Carolyn Dicey Jennings (UC Merced) has a new post up at the ADPA blog describing the results of "ten years of data for around 140 [PhD] programs, nearly 50 of which have so far been able to verify our data."

There is also a new sortable table at the ADPA site where one can learn about job-market placements from different programs. As the following table illustrates, some of the data is very illuminating:

Job market do’s and dont’s: cover letters

It’s been a while since we’ve had a new series on job market tips, such as our Job Market Boot Camp, Secret Lives of Search Committees, and Alt-Ac Transition Tips series. Given that this year’s academic job market will be ramping up soon, I thought it might be good to run a series soliciting tips from search committee members on things that job candidates should do and not do to be as competitive as possible.

I’d like to begin today with cover letters. I wrote on cover letters in the boot camp series, but of course that’s just my advice based on things that I experienced as a job candidate and search committee member. So, in today’s post, I’d love to hear from other search committee members on things they think candidates should do and not do in cover letters.

Are there things that you’ve seen candidates say in cover letters that worked particularly well? Are there particular things you want to see in a good cover letter? What about things you don’t want to see in a cover letter? Are there any common mistakes you’ve seen candidates make in cover letters that you think candidates should know to avoid? Finally, job candidates: feel free to ask search committee members in thread below any questions that you have!

Publishing to get a teaching job w/o 'running dry'

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

I am an advanced graduate student in a good, but not elite, program. My goal would be to land a teaching oriented job, not a research focused job. I have over 5 papers in good, but not excellent, journals.

Here's my question. I am plugging away at my dissertation, which is composed of 3-4 stand alone papers. I could submit two of them right now for publication. But, should I do that, I worry I will have nothing new to send out after I land a permanent job, should I be so lucky. Of course, I will have new ideas for papers in the future. But I am so focused on my dissertation right now that I would need a good bit of time to get back in a position to publish new work. So, should I sit on my dissertation chapters, and so have 'rounds in the chamber' when/should I land a permanent job, or, should I just publish as much as I can now, looking as good as possible for the market, but risk 'running dry' after/if I land a job? I understand that maximizing my number of publications isn't necessary or even beneficial for certain teaching jobs, but the idea of sitting on papers that are ready to go is a little annoying, to say the least.

This is an excellent question. Another early-career reader submitted the following reply:

I would submit everything right away and not worry not much about future lack of paper ideas. The review process can be long; a lot can happen after you submit that adds up to the wait. For instance, you might be rejected by several places before landing an R&R.

I entirely agree, but let me add some detail as to why...

Best stepping stone to a research job?

In our July "how can we help you?" thread, 'Stepping Stone' asks:

[I]f one is looking to land a research job, is it better to apply from 1) a teaching/lecturer job at a more prestigious university or a 2) research job from a much less prestigious school?

This is an interesting question, and I'm curious to hear what readers who are 'in the know' think!

Alt-Ac Job-Market Tips (quick links)

Here is a list of links to our Alt-Ac Transition Tips series:

1. Supporting non-academic careers (Kevin J.S. Zollman)

2. Moving from academia to a think tank (Jason Schukraft)

3. What I learned from leaving academic philosophy (Samuel Kampa)

4. My Path into Project Management (Katharine Schweitzer)

5. Tips for transitioning into tech industries?

6. Leaving academia for industry: 7 years later (Zachary Ernst)

7. Networking and 'Leaving Academia'

8.  Interview: ‘How to Shawshank your way out of academia’ (Aaron Kagan)

9.  How to leave philosophy (Greg Stoutenburg)

10. How to make yourself hireable outside of academia as a philosophy grad student or PhD (Aaron Kagan)

11. Alt-ac careers podcast: 'Off Campus'

12. Crowdsourcing job ads thread

And here is a list of links to our Alt-Ac Workshop series:

1. Marketable Skills, Potential Jobs, & Networking (Calvin Warner)

2. How to create an Alt-Ac Philosophical Company and do work that you love (Claartje van Sijl)

3. Phil Skills - an Alt-Ac Resource website (Eleni Manis)

4. Pursuing a Career in Government (Carl Baker)

5. Navigating grad program politics when leaving?

Secret Lives of Search Committees (quick links)

This is a list of links to our Secret Lives of Search Committees series:

1. Top 5 job-market tips

2. Tips from a Research University search committee member

3. Tips from a Liberal Arts College Committee Member

4. How 'fit' matters

5. How applications are read

6. How decisions are made

7. Originality

8. AOS and project choices

9. Staleness

10. Job candidate career stage

11. Teaching experience

12. 'Horse-trading'

13. Online presence

14. Interviews

15. Not acting like a grad student

16. What happens after interviews

17. Teaching dossiers

18. CVs

19. Recommendation letters

20. Job-talks at teaching schools

21. Jobs abroad

22. Campus visits

23. Apply again!

Notes from both sides of the market (quick links)

This is a list of quick-links to our Notes From Both Sides of the Market series:

1. Building a strong CV

2. Organizing one's CV

3. Teaching portfolio dilemmas

4. Making the teaching statement precise

5. Standing out in a crowded field

6. Interpreting interview results

7. Standing out for teaching jobs

8. More on standing out for teaching jobs

9. The elusiveness of "fit"

10. Tenure requirements

11. Tenure requirements & decisionmaking

Cover letters for European postdocs?

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

I was wondering if anyone could shine some light on cover letters for European postdocs, as it's hard to find consistent information about what they're looking for. My main confusion is over whether and to what extent I should pitch my own project to work on. Since most European, project-based postdocs have you joining a project already in the works, do you need to pitch a project or new research of your own to work on while you're there, or should you just include why you are a good fit for the institution's project?

Excellent question, though unfortunately I have no experience with this. Do any readers have any helpful insight?

Writing sample: published or unpublished?

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

Suppose you're choosing between two papers to use as a writing sample. One is the best paper you've written to date. It was published a few years ago. The other is a new manuscript. You have evidence that it's a good paper. Which should you choose? Does it matter?

Excellent questions! Offhand, I would think that one should simply use one's best paper, as the presumptive point of a writing sample is to display you doing philosophy at your best. Then again, I can't help but wonder whether some search committee members might prefer unpublished work for a couple of reasons. First, if the work is really excellent, then it may convey that your best work is ahead of you, rather than in the past. Second, it might excite the committee about where your research is heading and demonstrate that you have excellent work that is likely to be published once you are hired.

Long story short, I'm not sure. What do you all think? It would be great to hear from search committee members what they prefer and well, as well as from job candidates who used already published work (how well did that approach work?).

Mentioning going up for tenure in a job letter?

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

When going up for tenure and applying for other jobs, are there advantages to mentioning in a job application cover letter that you're going up for tenure at your current institution but nevertheless deeply serious about the other job to which you're applying?

My sense, having served on numerous search committees now, is that this is probably a very good idea. When reading a job application, it can be pretty obvious that an applicant is up for tenure (they've been in a TT job at their university for 5 years, which is right when one applies for tenure). Further, I would not be at all surprised if some (or even many) search committee members might think, "This person is just applying to jobs in case they are denied tenure", which could very well lead them to discount the application. I'm not sure how much discussing things in a cover letter might help, but if you could show that you are a better fit for the university in some way or that you have ties in the area (such as family), that might serve to assuage any worries a search committee might have.

But these are just my thoughts. What are yours? It would be great to hear from search committee members here (and if they do weigh in, to hear what type of university/department they are in, as I suspect that different types of departments--ones at R1s, SLACs, etc.--might think about these kinds of things differently)!

Reflecting on the Job Market Journey

Several weeks ago, I learned that my most recent job search yielded what should be a long-term position. In the upcoming fall, I’ll be joining the University of Arizona as a member of both its philosophy department and the W. A. Franke Honors College as an Assistant Professor of Practice. While the position is not tenure eligible, it carries the same promotional ranks as a “standard” Assistant Professor position and operates on long-term contracts. My hope and expectation is that the University of Arizona will be my home for the foreseeable future. (Prepping for this transition is part of why I've been preoccupied the last few weeks and have not posted anything in that time.)

The post-COVID job market was not favorable, even by the appallingly low standards of the typical job search in academic philosophy. While the number of tenure-track job openings returned to near pre-COVID levels, the market seemed even more saturated with candidates than usual because the job offerings the previous year had been so meager. While I had a few interviews heading into April, none of them had yielded any tangible results. If that sounds familiar, that’s because it was eerily similar to what transpired last time. But April yielded a new cluster of interviews – a combination of visiting jobs and long-term positions. I even got invited for a campus visit midway through the month. Ultimately, I missed out on that particular job but was offered a visiting position near the end of April. In early May, just before I had to make a decision about the offer in hand, I got the news from Arizona.

I’m thrilled with how it all ended, but having reached this juncture, I have been thinking about how much it required. Here is a short encapsulation of each time I was on the job market and what the results were:

• 2016–2017: 90 applications; 4 interviews; 1 job offer
• 2017–2018: 19 applications; 1 interview; 0 job offers
• 2018–2019: 118 applications; 13 interviews; 3 job offers
• 2021–2022: 54 applications; 7 interviews; 2 job offers

You may notice that there’s a great deal of variance in the application numbers each year. My second job search was a soft search: my postdoctoral position was guaranteed for a second year, so there was no pressing need to find another job. I applied selectively to tenure-track positions for which I thought I was a good fit. My first and third searches were more strenuous endeavors where I went to far greater lengths trying to secure academic employment. The 2018–2019 search almost destroyed me, however. It was simply too time-consuming and emotionally taxing to apply for that many jobs, so on this most recent job search, I opted to be more selective. My target number of applications was 60, and when I received my first offer, I had exactly 6 jobs left in my spreadsheet that I intended to apply for.

Explaining job titles in applications?

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

I hope I can pose a neurotic and basically trivial question. I'm a junior academic in the UK whose official job title is 'lecturer' but it is a permanent position. Is it wise or appropriate to explain on my CV or website that the position is equivalent to what is called 'assistant professor', which it is what it is called at some other UK institutions and the closest thing to the position in most of the rest of the anglophone world?

I think that virtually everyone on a hiring committee knows what a Lecturer is in the UK, so although I could be wrong, I don't think that warrants explanation in a job application. However, I am curious about job titles in other countries--for example, I know someone who was a Research Fellow in Australia, but I don't know exactly what that means, and I know that in some European countries, recent PhDs often have to complete Habilitations and hold Privatdozent positions, which sort of sound like postdocs and non-tenure track positions, but again, I'm not exactly sure! What do readers think? When (if ever) should job applicants explain their job titles in their application materials? For what kinds of positions, and why?

Moving on from your dissertation?

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

Is it usual/acceptable to switch to another research area for a grad student after finishing their thesis? Is it a good idea to mention it in one's research statement?

These are excellent questions, and I'm curious to hear what everyone thinks. My take here may be a bit controversial. I think that while one should of course try to publish material from one's dissertation, it can be really good to move onto another area after finishing the dissertation. Indeed, I think that focusing too much on similar stuff as dissertation after finishing it can be a bit of a trap, for several reasons.

Tips/steps for getting a job outside of the US?

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

I would like to know more about the first steps in a philosophy career outside the USA, especially in Europe but within analytic philosophy. Almost all online info that I’ve found was about the US. My biggest questions are:

1. Is the field so competitive, that after the PhD one will usually find temporary positions which are geographically distant?
2. Is it typical for someone to move a lot in the first years of their career (between different countries or even hemispheres)?
3. Is job security low, and is there a real risk of becoming unemployed and not being able to find another position?
4. What other difficulties are there, if any?
5. In order for one to advance, must there be a free position (for example, a free lecturer position)? Or can someone advance just by performing well and by publishing?
6. Again, concerning the job markets outside the US: is it easier to find an academic position if one specializes in applied ethics?
7. How difficult would it be to find a non-academic job in fields such as business ethics, ethics of technology or bioethics? Is the level of competition very high or is training in the relevant field required?

This is a lot of questions, but they are all good ones, and it would be great to hear some answers from people in the know, such as US PhDs who have gotten jobs outside of the US (particularly Europe) and people who serve on search committees abroad.

What do you all think? If people from abroad do chime in with tips, it would be great to hear which country you are in, as this might lend greater context to your tips/insights!

Online, competency based schools & the academic job market

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

I am an early-career philosopher who has obtained temporary full-time positions at a liberal arts college and an R1 state school. I have an interview at an online, competency-based learning school. The ability to work online, obtain a non-temporary position, and solve a two-body problem is attractive, but I admit it is not the kind of position I had in mind for my career. Does anyone have any insight as to whether departments devalue having work experience at such an institution, should I later decide to try to make the move "back" to "traditional" schools?

This is an interesting question, and I'm not at all sure what the answer is. I guess I'd be curious to hear more about what the school is like, how akin to university teaching the opportunity is, whether it would leave any time to publish, and whether it is secure full-time employment with good opportunities for advancement (if, for example, one stayed in the position long-term). While I do wonder how search committees might see this, it could be a really good opportunity all-things-considered, and many universities seem to me to value online teaching experience these days (particularly post-COVID). Do any readers have any tips or insights here, particularly (but not only) search committee members?

Crowdsourcing job ads thread

A reader writes in:

I wonder how you felt about having a post about job ads. I was thinking even one that might have a pinned link on the side. Many of the jobs are posted on PhilJobs, but there are plenty that are not. UK jobs and postdocs are sometimes only on jobs.ac.uk; European jobs are in other places sometimes as well; society of fellows things, who knows where those are; etc. This seems like a great occasion for crowd sourcing. I’ve been placement director at [redacted] for a while and each year I have to ask the students if they found things in unexpected places. Anyway, I thought it would be a handy resource for people on the market. What do you think? 

I think this is a fantastic idea. It could be cool not to only crowdsource academic job ads in unexpected places, but non-academic ('alt-ac') job ads too. So, that's what I propose we devote this thread to, which I will pin on the right side-bar of the blog in perpetuity (or at least until the comment thread gets so long that it makes sense to start a new one). So, please do feel free to use the comment thread below to draw attention to job ads (academic or non-academic) that philosophers might be competitive for that are not PhilJobs or HigherEd Jobs!

Job market 'branding'?

A reader writes in:

[I] have all kinds of questions about the job market. One of them is related to a conversation that was trending online about a week or so ago concerning “brands”; namely, whether job candidates need to have a defined one these days. Is there already a Cocoon thread on this topic?

I don't believe we've ever discussed this issue before, and I'm curious to hear from readers. Should job-marketeers try to "brand" themselves? If so, what does that involve? As someone who has served on a number of hiring committees at a mid-sized liberal arts university that values research, my sense is that at many jobs, hiring committees probably care most about whether you have a clear area of specialization, do interesting work, and can teach in areas the department needs. However, I do wonder whether "branding" might be more important for R1 jobs somehow, where they might be looking to hire a "trailblazer", so to speak. Do any readers have any tips or insights on this?

Courtesy appointments & affiliated faculty posts

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

I'm curious about "courtesy appointments" and "affiliated faculty" positions. How do they come about? And what do they typically involve? Are there advantageous to them? Are there steps to take if you're interested in one?

All good questions! Any readers have any tips or insights? Do you have a courtesy appointment or affiliated position? How did you get them? What do they involve? Any tips for getting one?

The crisis in aesthetics

In the comments section of my post on this year's tenure-track jobs, Cassandra writes:

As per your posts on previous years (which show that there has been practically zero jobs in Aes/Art), it seems important to evidence and report the crisis in Aes/Art (and it is a crisis). If this isn't evidenced and reported, then there'll be less pressure on the APA, BPA and other philosophy associations, as well as the learned societies for Aes/Art (such as the American Society of Aesthetics, British Society of Aesthetics, European Society of Aesthetics, etc.) to try to tackle the fact that one of the main (and oldest) subdisciplines of philosophy will likely die out if something isn't done about this.

There is already a tendency towards aesthetics-erasure -- such as seeing job ads that say "Value Theory, broadly construed (i.e. ethics, social and political philosophy)" and senior aes/phils of art needing to openly advise junior aes/phils of art to hide the fact that they are "card-carrying" aes/phils of art on the job market. So it'd be super helpful if the Cocoon could help cast light on the problem by including Aes/Art.

This wouldn't just help job candidates with an AoS in Aes/Art, but could also help institutions in deciding where to hire. Due to the dearth of jobs in Aes/Art, there are a glut of really excellent early-career Aes/Art. So, why look for an ethicist or epistemology, and end up with a good one (or at least an unproven entity), when you could have an outstanding (and proven) aesthetician or philosopher of art?

I think it's clear that there is a crisis here, as there appear to be virtually no aesthetics jobs year after year (at least in the Anglophone world). So, I do think it is worth bringing this to greater attention and discussing what might be done. But, what I don't know is how the discipline (including the APA and other associations) might do to tackle it. Do readers have any thoughts/ideas here?

Where the TT jobs were(n't) in 2021-22

Updated 4/28

Longtime readers may recall that most of the past handful of years, I've done informal data-collection on PhilJobs to see what the year's academic job market has been like (here are the numbers for 2020-21, 2019-20, 2017-18, and 2016-17). Anyway, I was curious what this year's market was like, so I've gone and done another tally. I realize that PhilJobs isn't a complete sample, as a good number of jobs may only be advertised elsewhere, such as at HigherEdJobs. However, collecting and collating this kind of data is really hard work and PhilJobs is the easiest to work with (by far)--so that is the sample I use each year. One quick note before proceeding: although I've done my best to collect the data in this post accurately, this is just an informal report, not a formal study, so if there are any errors, I apologize in advance (though, if there are any, I'm fairly certain they would be very, very minor). Here is my spreadsheet, if anyone would like to triple-check things (you can also take a deeper dive than the numbers below to see how many jobs were advertised this year in particular AOS sub-categories, e.g., mind, metaphysics, philosophy of race, etc.). I'm more than happy to correct any errors and update this post if any are found.

Like last year, I've decided to break things up into two different posts: one on TT jobs (today), and another on non-TT jobs (a few weeks from now). Today's post is based upon a PhilJobs search for 'tenure-track (or similar)' job ad posted between August 1st, 2021 and Friday, April 8th, 2022. A few quick notes on methodology. The methodology I've always used in this series works as follows. When I encounter jobs with two AOS's (e.g. metaphysics, moral philosophy), I counted each job as '.5' jobs in that area (or in the case of 3 AOS, '.33' jobs, etc.). Although I recognize this is a bit odd, it seems to me to make sense, as a job like that could go to someone in any of the listed AOSs, not just one particular AOS. Because I did this with all jobs, the numbers seem to me to accurately weight whether a job is in a particular AOS simpliciter, or whether it was also available to candidates in other AOS. Second, as noted above I only counted "junior-level" jobs (i.e. postdocs, lecturer, and Assistant Professor positions), not Associate or Professor level jobs. Third, I only counted academic jobs (leaving the very few non-academic jobs advertised on PhilJobs to the side). 

Anyway, here are the numbers I compiled for this year, along with a few graphs for comparisons to past years:

Total (junior-level) TT jobs advertised in 2021-22: 201

• 2020-21: 118
• 2019-20: 224
• 2017-18: 228
• 2016-17: 231

TT jobs advertised by AOS:

Open AOS: 36.68 jobs (18.24% of jobs advertised)

2016-17	17%
2017-18	17.8%
2019-20	20.5%
2020-21	24.6%
2021-22	18.2%

'Core areas' (mind, language, metaphysics, epistemology, logic): 24.3 jobs (12.1% of TT jobs advertised)

2016-17	10%
2017-18	13.1%
2019-20	8.3%
2020-21	6.4%
2021-22	12.1%

Philosophy of Science (including cog sci, philosophy of technology, & AI): 14.34 jobs (7.1% of TT job ads)

2016-17	7.8%
2017-18	6.5%
2019-20	10.9%
2020-21	11.7%
2021-22	7.1%

Ethics: 47.18 jobs (23.5% of TT job ads)

2016-17	21.6%
2017-18	22.6%
2019-20	23%
2020-21	26.3%
2021-22	23.5%

Social and Political Philosophy: 24.79 jobs (12.3% of TT job ads)

2016-17	12%
2017-18	11.8%
2019-20	8%
2020-21	10.3%
2021-22	12.3%

History of Philosophy: 19.43 jobs (9.6% of TT job ads)

2016-17	13%
2017-18	11.2%
2019-20	12.3%
2020-21	6.1%
2021-22	9.7%

Philosophy of marginalized identities (race, gender, disability, etc.): 17.08 jobs (8.5% of TT job ads)

2016-17	6.7%
2017-18	4.7%
2019-20	5.2%
2020-21	6.8%
2021-22	8.5%

'Non-Western' Philosophies: 11.74 jobs (5.8% of TT job ads)

2016-17	5.2
2017-18	4.7
2019-20	5.2
2020-21	6.5
2021-22	5.8

Continental philosophy (& phenomenology): 2 jobs

Philosophy of Religion: 1.83 jobs

Here are some graphical comparisons over time:

As you can see, each job season Ethics has far and away advertised the highest number/percentage of TT jobs, followed by Open AOS. If (as in some of my previous report posts) one combines Ethics and Social-Political into a single category ('value theory'), the number of total Value Theory jobs is vastly higher than any other area of TT jobs advertised. Because AOS's lower down on this graph are messy and hard to parse out because of how the graph compresses things, here's the same graph subtracting out Ethics and Open AOS:

As you can see, things are pretty 'noisy' here. It is hard to make out any clear trends, though History of Philosophy TT jobs seem to have declined some over the past two years, whereas TT jobs in Philosophies of Marginalized identities appear to have increased modestly over the past five years. Notably, however, these changes generally pretty small--just a few percentage points here and there.

So, I guess my takeaways are these:

• This season's TT job was vastly better than last year's COVID-impacted season, but still not quite up to the level of TT job ads pre-COVID.
• Ethics and Open AOS continue to dominate other AOS's in terms of TT jobs advertised.
  • Update/note: a full 67.5% of TT jobs in Ethics were in applied ethics fields this year (47.18 jobs in Ethics, 31.86 of which were applied areas).
• It's hard to make out clear trends regarding other AOS's, all of which seem to fluctuate markedly over time--though History of Philosophy appears to have declined somewhat over time whereas Marginalized Identity jobs appear to have modestly increased the past few years.
• I also noticed (merely anecdotally) that philosophies of marginalized identities and non-Western philosophies appears to occur relatively often this year in AOS categories (though I was not able to do comparisons to past years, as I have not in general compiled AOC numbers):
  
  • # of TT jobs w/philosophies of marginalized identities AOC's: 22 jobs (10.9%)
  • # of TT jobs w/non-Western philosophy AOC's: 12 jobs (6%)

Update (4/28/2022): 2 Aesthetics jobs were advertised this year and accidentally omitted from the spreadsheet. I missed them both because one of them (Uppsala) was listed as "Associate Lecturer" (which I didn't identify as tenure track) and the other (Amsterdam) was listed as "tenured or permanent" (rather than tenure-track).

Informing other search committees of offers?

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

Let's say you have an offer on the table.

But you also just had a first round interview for another place.

If you're waiting to hear back after the first round from the second place, is it appropriate to reach out with this information to see if you can get a response sooner or would just imprudent or unwise?

This is a good question. My sense is that if you're still in the running for other positions you want, it's always a good idea to let them know that you have an offer. If the search committee really wants you, this could motivate them to move quickly with you. However, my sense is also that, a lot of times, this just isn't possible. For example, if (as in the OP's) case you only just finished a first-round interview, it seems unlikely that the department could move quickly enough before the offer you currently have expires. Most job offers these days have fairly quick deadlines (1 to 2 weeks), and the second department may be required to do fly-outs (with multiple candidates) before they can even extend an offer. But, I think, it's always worth a try to see what can happen.

Anyway, these are just my thoughts. What are yours? It would be good, obviously, to hear from candidates who have done this, as well as from search committees (to hear what is and what is not possible on their end)!

What do job titles mean abroad?

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

There was recently some very enlightening back-and-forth in another thread ("Tenure track faculty getting TT jobs?") about the meanings of academic job titles in Scandinavia. For example, it was revealed that it is not unusual for an 'associate professorship' to be taken up by a postdoc. I think I and many readers would benefit a lot from a general explanation of these titles, whether their meanings vary across Scandinavia, and what kinds of applicants will and won't be competitive for them!

This is a great query, and I think it would be great to not only hear about Scandinavia but other countries as well. What do job titles in your country mean? Who is eligible for them, and what does it take to be competitive for them? Does anyone have any helpful insights?

From a top-5 PhD program to teaching job?

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

How can those at top universities be competitive for teaching-focused jobs, especially at non-prestigious schools?

I'm at a top 5 PGR-ranked university and almost everyone ends up at a research-focused job (typically at R1s or prestigious SLACs). I'm told that I will seem like a flight risk for teaching-focused jobs and at non-prestigious schools. But I don't care about prestige and I think I enjoy teaching more than research. So, I like to be competitive for teaching-focused jobs, even at non-prestigious schools. Any advice would help.

This is an excellent question, and I'm really curious to hear what everyone thinks. Here are three things that I think are likely to help based on my experience:

1. A significant amount of solo teaching experience (either in grad school, a community college, VAP, etc.).
2. A publishing record, but not a bunch of publications in top-ranked journals.
3. A teaching portfolio that shows that you have thought a lot about pedagogy and do more than 'chalk and talk' teaching/traditional Socratic discussion.

But these are just my thoughts. What are yours? It would be great to hear from people who work at and/or have hired at the kinds of institutions the OP asks about!

What matters most to search committees?

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

Hi, is it possible to start a thread asking the reader what is the most important thing when we apply a job? Is it "publication", where we come from, or recommendations letter?

It would be interesting to hear from search committee members, but here's my bet: there is no "most important thing." I've heard that search committees at R1's tend to care most about a person's grad program, writing sample, recommendation letters, and (to a lesser extent?) publication record. At SLACs, on the other hand, I've heard that grad program rank, recommendations, and writing samples matter far less, and what matters most is whether you publish fairly consistently, look like someone who cares about and innovates in teaching, and fits the department's needs. Which is why, as a one-time job-candidate, I just tried to make my dossier as a whole the best that I could.

But these are just my thoughts. What are yours? It would be good to hear from search committee members. What kind of university are you at, what matters most to you in a candidate, and what have you seen your search committee(s) care most about?

Tenure track faculty getting TT jobs?

In our ongoing job-market reporting board, a reader writes:

This year I was both a finalist for several jobs and served on a search committee. I'm also connected enough to know who else was a finalist in those job searches where I was also finalist. For every one these searches, most of the candidates already had TT jobs. I was a kind of shocked what I realized this. Has anyone else noticed something similar? Is this year an anomaly?

Another reader suggested it might be good to have a discussion thread on this, and I agree. One other reader added:

Small data point. I’m tenure track. I applied to eight jobs this year, most of which were junior, some open rank. Got exactly zero interviews. I only applied to attractive places and I’m no superstar, but at the same time I was coming up for tenure (and just got it, yay) and some of these jobs were really good fits. I surmise being up for tenure might have played against me (I didn’t hide it) at places trying to recruit fresh blood. And I suspect being TT only plays in your favor if you’re already at a relatively reputable place, coming from a top program or really well connected. Otherwise it’s not clear that it helps much if you’re trying to move up. But that’s just my impression.

It might be good to hear from other readers, both search committee members and tenure-track faculty:

1. If you were on a search committee, did you see an inordinate number of tenure-track faculty applying for tenure-track jobs this year, or is it pretty routine for tenure-track people to apply.
2. If you were a tenure-track faculty member on the market, why did you go on the market again? To move to a more desirable institution? Solve a 'two-body problem'? And how competitive on the market were you? More than before you had a TT job, or less?

Trapped 'in the middle' on the market?

In our ongoing job-market discussion thread, a reader writes:

Every year I go on the market I get a few interviews for TT jobs at very good places that don't pan out, and I get interviews nowhere else. I worry I am caught in a trap: my profile is not strong enough for top places to hire me, but too strong for other places to hire me because they don't think I would come or stay. Any advice on how to get out of this trap?

This is indeed a tough position to be in, and I'm very curious to hear what everyone thinks. One reader responded:

I do not think you are as trapped as you think. When I worked at a 4 year state college, we took every application seriously. The only ones that we passed over who had strong research profiles were people who had no sense of what kind of job they were applying for. This was evident, not from their pedigree, but because their application package (eg. teaching materials) was completely unsuited to our students and our institution. We did not need someone who was keen to teaching a course on grounding, or philosophy of physics. What we needed was people who were prepared to teach our general education courses - which all of us taught. These included: history of ancient, history of early modern, intro. epistemology, ethics ...

And another reader responded:

You write that your "profile is not strong enough for top places to hire" you, but that seems untrue if you're getting these interviews in the first place. I doubt many (or, honestly, any) committees are interviewing you with no interest in advancing your candidacy, so it seems totally within your power to land one of those jobs. Maybe it's just terrible luck, but maybe it's an issue of doing more research on the departments and interviewers, and practicing your interview skills in order to present yourself as being the right "fit" (that most elusive but important of hiring committee criteria). I know for a fact that my (well-regarded R1) department has passed over otherwise excellent candidates on those kinds of grounds.

I think both of these responses are insightful, so here are my two cents. It's never a bad idea as a job-candidate to tailor your approach to the job market to the evidence you are receiving. In this case, the OP notes that every year they get TT interviews "at very good places" and "nowhere else." This suggests to me what it seemed to suggest to the second commenter above: that the OP is competitive for jobs at "very good places" (whatever exactly that means). This suggests to me in turn that the OP is either (A) having a bit of bad luck, or (B) they could work on the interviewing skills. Readers (and the OP) may recall the curious case of Jared Warren (Stanford) here, who (if I recall correctly) was on the market for a fair while despite having a spectacular publication record. Obviously, it took Warren a while, but ultimately he ended up in a plum job--so, perhaps the OP just needs to keep at it (i.e. keep publishing, etc.), and in the meantime perhaps do some mock interviews with friends or colleagues to see if there is anything they can do on that front.

But these are just my thoughts. What are yours? It might be good to hear from candidates who are (or were) in a similar position as the OP. What did you do to find your way out of this proverbial "trap"? Was there anything in particular that you did that seemed to help--or did you just stick it out?

Staying on the market just after accepting a job?

In our March "how can we help you?" thread, anon writes:

If you formally accept a TT position that you're not crazy about, is there really anything wrong with keeping your options open and to continue applying to other jobs? Like if I gave myself a deadline of May 1 to see if any of the other positions work out, is that unreasonable?

One reader submitted the following reply:

It is a job MARKET. You are on the market until you retire. So it is perfectly fine keep looking.

However, Bill Vanderburgh submitted a very different response:

While nothing prevents what you describe, this is a bad practice. Many people would consider it to be unethical. When you accept a position, the department to which you have promised you will come starts making plans around your arrival. Most especially, if you renege on your acceptance, it is extremely unlikely the department will be able to or allowed to fill the position for next year, leaving them in the lurch and amounting to the department having wasted all their time on the search. They might even lose the line altogether, depending on budget and politics next year. Instead, when you get an offer and you have other interviews coming up soon, ask for a longer timeline to give a final answer to the department which made you the first offer. (You can also email the next place you are interviewing to tell them you have an offer in hand, to see if they can speed up their process.) You won't always be given more time for your answer, in which case you need to make a judgment to accept or not accept before you have more info.

I'm curious what side of things most readers fall on here. What do you all think?

Deferring tenure-track offers?

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

I'd be really grateful for some advice on deferring tenure-track job offers in order to be able to pursue research fellowships you've also been offered:

Suppose you've been offered a tenure-track position at an institution in Continental Europe, for which you'd be expected to apply to make it permanent after a few years. The teaching load for this is around 50%, not including admin. You'd like to take this because it's job security, and there are few positions in your sub-field.
But suppose you've also been lucky enough to secure a research fellowship for 2-years that is due to start at the same time. This fellowship would give you 100% research time, and you'd like to take it. You've been struggling on rubbish contracts that give you precious little time for your research for too long, waiting for your publications to come out.

You find yourself in a "buses" situation: few buses come along for years, and then all of a sudden, you've got your publications, and two shiny buses arrive at once, and you want to ride both.

What should you do to try to take up both opportunities?

Should you ask the institution offering the tenure-track job to defer your start date by two years? Or do you take the job, and ask them to give you a sabbatical for 2-years to take the research fellowship? Or something else? What are the reasonable limits of what can be asked for here (is asking for a 2 year defferal too much; would one year be more likely to be acceptable?)? And how does this differ in different parts of the world?

Excellent questions. I do know that deferring TT jobs for postdocs is quite common in the US, but I don't know how common it is in Europe, nor do I know how to about asking for a deferral properly. Anyone have any tips?