The Philosophers' Cocoon

Do publication venues matter for many jobs?

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

I have heard that the venue of one's publications doesn't matter for many jobs. Is this true? I guess I have in mind TT (or otherwise permanent) positions that aren't R1 but which still have a research expectation. I am curious about this for both hiring and promotion reasons. Does publishing in, say, generalist journals outside of the top 20 or so look bad to a hiring committee? Could the venue of one's publications every be an issue for tenure or some other form of promotion? Is it better for junior members of the profession to publish anywhere rather than nowhere? Thoughts on any or all of these questions, especially from current faculty involved in these decisions, would be helpful.

Good questions - it would be great to hear from search committee members!

If you've hired before (or are hiring now), what kind of department/institution are you at, and how much (if at all) do publication venues matter to you (or committees you've served on) in hiring?

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!

The Secret Lives of Search Committees, part 23: Top 5 job-market tips

The Cocoon has now had several series offering job-market advice: a Job-Market Bootcamp, Notes from Both Sides of the Job-Market, and most recently the present series. I hope you have found these series helpful, and hope to continue to dedicate new series to the topic in the future. That being said, these series have offered a lot of advice, and I suppose it can be a bit overwhelming. Consequently, to simplify a bit, I thought it might be good to have a post discussing top-5 list(s) of job-market advice. I'll begin by offering (and explaining) my own top-5 list. Then I'll invite discussion of the list and also invite those of you who have experience on the market--either as job-candidates or search-committee members--to share your own lists. Here goes!

Although my list may or may not be correct, I found it surprisingly easy to put together. In my experience--as a many-year job-candidate, three-time search committee member, and given some empirical evidence I'll share below--the following tips are without a doubt my top 5:

Tip 1: if you want an R1 job, you had better come from a highly-ranked Leiter program. If you are not from a highly-ranked school, it can be incredibly difficult to publish your way into these jobs.

This tip isn't just my opinion. First, there is empirical evidence for it. In an article forthcoming in Ergo, our own Helen De Cruz found that, "There is a structural lack of upward social mobility in hiring practices: someone from a prestigious school may end up in a lower-ranked institution, but the reverse is unusual." (p. 4) Here is De Cruz's 'money chart':

The Secret Lives of Search Committees, Part 22: apply again!

I had a bit of a strange experience as a search committee member I'd like to share. As I will explain, I'm not entirely sure what to make of it--but the most plausible explanation seems to me to be a potentially dangerous assumption by job-candidates.

In brief, the experience was this. I served on a search committee for a TT job on back-to-back years, both of which were in the same AOS. We hired someone the first year, who then left to return to their previous job (for good personal/professional reasons). We then hired a different person the next year who is still with us and doing great. Here, though, was the strange thing. There weren't many jobs in the AOS in either year (I went back and counted a paltry 4 jobs in the AOS the first year, and 6 in the second year). As such, it seems highly probable that most of the people who applied for our position the first year went on the market again the second year. That's many dozens of people. The surprising thing, though, was that almost none of the people who applied the first time around seemed to apply again the second year. It was really striking. I had expected to see some familiar names pop up again (and was hoping some of them would), and yet...there were so very few repeat applicants.

The Secret Lives of Search Committees - Part 21: not acting like a grad student

One thing I remember hearing repeatedly when first going on the academic job market is to "not act like a grad student." Having served on three search committees now, this strikes me as important advice. I've not only heard people on search committees say things like, "X comes across as really green. Y comes across much more as mature professional", the implication being that this is a strike against candidate X and a mark in favor of Y. I've also had my own doubts about candidates on such grounds. As I have mentioned before, the transition from grad student to full-time faculty member is not an easy one. I struggled to make the transition myself, and not everyone makes it effectively (culminating in tenure-denials). Because committees (at least those I've known) want to hire people who are likely to succeed and get tenure, it can be very important to come across as a professional rather than as someone fresh out of grad school. But what is it to "act like a grad student", and how can it be avoided? Allow me to share some thoughts and then open things up for discussion.

The Secret Lives of Search Committees - Part 20: what happens after interviews

One thing I've often heard job-candidates wonder about--both in comments sections here and elsewhere--is what they should think if they have interviewed (either by Skype or on-campus) but haven't heard anything. The typical question is something like this: "Am I out of the running if I haven't heard anything after a few weeks?" In today's post, I'll try to shed some light on this issue. As readers will see, it's actually a pretty difficult question to answer, given contextual factors. On the flip side, my remarks may give some solace to job-marketeers, as unexpected things can and do happen.

The Secret Lives of Search Committees - Part 19: flyouts

In this series, I've tried to convey the "inside story" on various parts of the academic job-market, at least as I've experienced it having served on three search committees. In today's post I am going to focus on flyouts/campus visits. What are search committees looking for? What comes of well? What comes off poorly? And how do campus visits affect final hiring decisions? The answers I will share to some of these questions are admittedly anecdotal, once again stemming from my particular background hiring at a "teaching school" as well as my experiences as a job-candidate. Consequently, while I hope readers find them helpful, I will as always be curious to hear from others--particularly people who have hired at different types of institutions--how accurate or generalizable my impressions are.

With these caveats in mind, here are come impressions I've come to have about flyouts:

The candidate with the best flyout tends to get the job offer: In all three searches I've served on, we extended offers to the candidate that the department judged had the best flyout. The candidates' performances in their flyouts, by all appearances, seem to have been the deciding factor in who we hired. I think--or at least hope--that this will come as some consolation to candidates. While many things about the market may be unfair and/or arbitrary, my general sense (again, based on my experience) is that these features may play a more minimal role when the final hiring decision is made. Again, in every search I've been on, we hired the person who we judged performed best in the flyout--no more, no less. Of course, this is not to say this is how things always go. In one case, when I was a candidate, I was informed privately by a search committee member after the search was over that although I was judged to have performed the best in the flyout, political considerations (the nature of which I have no interest in disclosing) ended up leading the other finalist to be hired. Consequently, while I have some reason to believe flyout performance can be outweighed by other matters, my general sense is that performance tends to matter the most.

The Secret Lives of Search Committees - Part 18: how applications are read

My experience as a job-candidate was that so many parts of the academic job-market that seem like "black boxes" (or mysteries). What looks good or bad in a CV, research statement, teaching portfolio, first-round interview, etc.? This series has tried to clear up some of these mysteries - and I hope readers are finding it helpful. In any case, in today's post I would like to address another black box: how candidate applications are read on the whole. Which parts of a candidate's file are read, in what order, why, and so on?

Obviously, I can only give readers a very general picture of how I read files - and I won't go into any particulars (i.e. how I read particular files), as that wouldn't be appropriate. Still, my hope is that if I describe at a very high level of generality how I read files, and other readers who have served on search committees weigh in on how they read files, current and future candidates reading this may gain some helpful insight. It seems likely, of course, that different people--and people hiring at different types of institutions--will read files very differently. But even then, my hope is that candidates will find that helpful, if only to give them insight into just how diverse search-committee members' interests and styles for evaluating files can differ.

Anyway, here goes...

The Secret Lives of Search Committees - Part 17: how decisions are made

One thing I often wondered about as a job-candidate is how decisions are made: decisions about who to interview, who to invite to campus, and finally, who to hire. From an outsider's perspective, I suppose it's natural to think that at each stage, search committees come together, agree upon which candidate(s) are best (as researchers, teachers, interview performance, etc.), and then choose to move forward with whichever candidates are ranked 'the best.' Having served on three search committees now, this now strikes me as a vast oversimplification of what actually goes on. In reality, decisions about who to interview, invite to campus, and who to hire are complicated by a variety of other factors. Allow me to explain.

Because my experience on the hiring side of things is limited to my department and my university (a rapidly growing 'teaching' institution that cares increasingly about its research profile), I don't mean to imply that all of my experiences generalize. So, as usual, I think it would be good to hear in the comments section from other people who have been on the hiring side of things. Hopefully, if we hear from enough people, job-candidates reading this can get some idea of how generalizable my experiences are, as well as a picture of the kinds of things that can affect decisionmaking in general. For simplicity's sake, I'm going to deal in this post with decisions at a general level, mostly abstracting away from differences between decisions about who to interview, invite to campus, and hire. While there are some differences in decisionmaking between the three levels (a few of which I will draw attention to), my own experience has been that decisionmaking is pretty similar at the different stages.

At any rate, here are some things I've learned about how decisions can be made:

The Secret Lives of Search Committees - Part 16: job-talks at teaching schools

A reader wrote in yesterday:

I’m trying to mentor a former student who has an upcoming campus visit at a SLAC. This student has been asked to give a job talk, the parameters of which seem a little unusual. The search committee has said that it wants to hear about the candidate’s research interests and projects in this talk -- but that they also want the talk to reveal how the candidate presents scholarly material to a lay audience, for the purpose of assessing teaching. In effect, it seems that the committee wants one talk to serve both as a research presentation and also as a teaching demonstration. The candidate has one hour in total (including q&a). At my university, we always have candidates do a research talk and a teaching demonstration, and while there are of course important connections between them, they are fundamentally different requirements that are judged by very different criteria.

Have you ever had a thread on this particular kind of requirement? If not, would you be interested in starting one? I’d be very interested to hear thoughts and advice from others on how to prepare for, and succeed in, such a talk.

This is a great query. As I explained to the reader via email, this sort of thing is not at all unusual at SLACs. Indeed, my department has done something very similar for our recent TT hires, telling candidates to pitch their job-talk to undergrads. Allow me to explain the reasons for this. I'll then share some quick tips and open things up for discussion.

The Secret Lives of Search Committees - Part 15: recommendation letters

As a candidate, so many things about the academic job-market seemed hopelessly opaque to me. What were search committees looking for? How did they read and evaluate dossiers? How did they decide who to interview, invite to campus, or hire? I've tried to shed some light on these things so far in this series, at least from my particular standpoint (having served on several search committees and having spoken to people at other institutions who have as well). I hope you are all finding the series helpful.

In any case, one of the things that seemed the most opaque to me as a job-candidate was the role that letters of recommendation play in the process. How are letters of recommendation read? What are search committee members looking for in them? What looks good? What doesn't? As I explain below, my own experience--which once again may be idiosyncratic--is that there is no simple answer to any of these questions. It's no wonder the role that letters play seems so opaque from the candidate's side of the process: it seems hardly less opaque to me on the hiring side (though I do think there may be a few areas of consistency that candidates may find helpful). Allow me to explain.

The Secret Lives of Search Committees - Part 14: CVs

UPDATED 5/11 - 5:40pm

In this series' post on cover letters, there was some discussion of whether to include a 'Works in Progress' section on one's CV in, which is apparently something people are routinely advised to do. In rough outline, my experience--which another search committee member echoed--is that Work in Progress sections are unlikely to make any difference. When it comes to research, people on the hiring side of things are more interested in demonstrated ability to actually publish. Since merely having work in preparation or even work under review doesn't demonstrate that, as Amanda notes my sense is WIP sections are probably a 'wash': include one, or don't - it probably won't make a difference.

In any case, that discussion got me thinking about CVs more generally. Given that this series is intended to give candidates an inside look of how search committees actually think and do things, what 'secrets of search committees' are there regarding CVs? My sense is that there are some unsurprising secrets, as well as some more surprising ones - though please bear in mind that the following remarks are based on my experiences at a teaching-focused institution (as well as discussion with people who have hired at other similar institutions):

Get your AOS & AOC right: Every search committee member I've talked to looks at CVs first, before anything else. Why? Because they are the easiest way to check the first thing that matters in any application: whether the candidate is qualified for the job being advertised. The easiest way to check this is to pull out the candidate's CV and check their AOS/AOC lines. If the candidate's AOS/AOC fit the job ad, then the rest of their CV will be looked at. If not? In that case, my experience is their application goes straight to the 'trash.' Maybe this isn't the case for all jobs (research jobs?) - but, at places like mine, when we advertise a given AOS/AOC, those are the areas we have to hire in. If you don't have the right ones, my sense is that applying is simply a waste of time. Which brings me to two other important issues:

    1. Don't 'bend'/exaggerate your AOS/AOC: if you don't really have any background in the area advertised, don't include it on your CV just to make you 'look' like you're qualified. It will become very clear from the rest of your CV whether you are or not - so don't bother trying to be deceptive. At best, it will accomplish nothing - at worst, it can look dishonest.

    2. Don't list four AOS and eight AOCs: this one is surprisingly common, and also looks bad. Almost no early-career philosopher legitimately has more than one or at most two AOS. If you did your dissertation in X, then that's a legit AOS. If you did your comprehensive exams in areas X and Y, and have written some papers in both areas, then maybe list both as AOS. But do not list more than that. You don't have four legit AOS. Making it look on your CV like you do reeks of dishonesty or self-deception. The same goes for AOCs. You don't have an AOC in area Z simply because you took a grad seminar in it. You need to have some more substantial experience than that. As a rough rule of thumb, you should only list an area as an AOC if you have a pretty substantial background in the area--something like multiple grad courses and real teaching/TA experience in the area. Two or three AOCs is legit, maybe 4 (EDITED). Anything more is seriously pushing it. Indeed, far from helping you, listing too many AOS/AOCs are likely to hurt you, making you look out of touch with professional norms.

The Secret Lives of Search Committees - Part 13: teaching dossiers

I have talked about teaching statements and teaching portfolios several times in two previous series. I still stand by the things I wrote there, particularly about how important it is for teaching statements to use concrete examples of teaching practices rather than broad generalizations and emotive language. However, my recent experiences on search committees and discussion with other people who have served on search committees elsewhere have driven home a few other important things I think candidates should know:

Too many teaching portfolios are indistinguishable: As I mentioned here and here, one of the most important things candidates need to do is "stand out" from the crowd. Your dossier is one of dozens or even hundreds of others the search committee is looking at. Particularly if you are applying for a job at a teaching school, the committee is looking for something that distinguishes you as a teacher - something that makes you "jump off the page" as someone particularly worth interviewing. Alas, in my experience, roughly 8 in 10 teaching portfolios are more or less indistinguishable from one another, saying similar things (such as stating that they diagram arguments, have students do group work, engage in Socratic dialogue, etc.), having similar teaching evaluations (basically, fairly happy students), similar looking syllabi, and so on. Unfortunately, it's a simple fact: if you're doing what everyone else is doing, you're going to have a hard time standing out. So, either you need to develop a more original pedagogy, or you have to show in some clear way how you are particularly good at what you do. In the teaching statement, concrete examples of in-class discussions, assignments, etc. are helpful, as in my experience hardly anyone actually does things the same way in the classroom (even those who do Socratic dialogue typically do so in distinct ways). On a similar note, I think it's important to not only include syllabi in the teaching portfolio, but also examples of term-paper assignments, rubrics, etc.

The Secret Lives of Search Committees - Part 11: interviews

UPDATED 4/30 - 7:15pm

Thus far in this series I've relayed some of my experience on how search-committees (at least at teaching schools like mine) evaluate candidates from afar: in terms of fit, originality, time on the market, career-stage, project choices, teaching experience, and online presence. As the comments section in my posts on horse-trading and online presence indicate, not everyone on the hiring-side of things entirely agrees with some of my experiences--but, on the whole, there hasn't been too much disagreement on other issues. 

In today's post I'd like to move to a different part of the hiring process: interviews. What comes off well in a job interview? What comes off poorly? I'll just share a few things that have stood out to me, and then open things up to comments. Given that my experience is hiring at a certain type of institution (a teaching institution that also values research), I would very much be curious to hear from people who have hired both at institutions similar to mine, but also ones very different than mine (R1's, CC's, etc.). In any case, here are my thoughts.

The Secret Lives of Search Committees - Part 10: online presence

I had two separate conversations about online behavior recently with people who have served on search committees. The first person asked me whether it is ethical for people on search committees to google job-candidates to see if their online behavior (e.g. on facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc.) raises any "red flags." Then, just the other day, someone else expressed to me that people's online behavior can very much be expected to be held against them in hiring, especially if their online behavior is egregious or consistently off-putting. We can of course discuss the ethical issues here, if you like (and I suspect some of you will). Still, setting aside the ethical issues, there are at least two things I think are worth saying here.

The first is that, regardless of the ethics, it seems to me likely at least some search committee members are going to care about candidates' online behavior and be aware of that behavior (via facebook, Twitter, reading blogs, etc.). In other words, like it or not, I think this is an issue candidates need to be aware of and worry about. Even if one thinks it is wrong for search committees to take this kind of stuff into account, I just don't see any feasible way of policing it. Sure, policies could in principle prohibit members of a search committee from bringing up such issues in formal discussion--but I do not see any way to prevent them from doing so in private (i.e. in their own heads). I also suspect it is unlikely for there to be any moral consensus on the ethical issues here, as in my experience there is a great deal of disagreement on these matters. 

The Secret Lives of Search Committees - Part 9: horse-trading

I had a conversation recently with a friend who served on their first search committee. One of the things they said they found most surprising about the experience--and which they never would have really thought much about as a job-candidate--is the role that 'horse-trading' can play.

This person said that as a candidate, one sort of imagines that search committees sit down, agreeing who the best candidates are, developing a coherent rank-order of candidates, and then interviewing them. However, the reality is quite different. Typically, what happens is that each person on the committee develops their own ranking of candidates. Then the committee gets together to share and discuss their rankings, and what often occurs is something like this:

Candidates A and B are near the top of everyone's list.

Candidates C and D are at the top of some people's list, but far down other people's.

Candidate E is at the top of one person's list (who feels very strongly about them), but far down everyone else's list.

The same search committee member is ambivalent about C, but strongly opposed to D.

This actually simplifies a great deal. Things can be much more complicated than this. Indeed, in some cases there may be no candidates at the top of everyone's list. But let's stay with this simple example. What will tend to happen in this sort of case?

The Secret Lives of Search Committees - Part 8: teaching experience

In my post, "Two Enlightening Job-Market Conversations", I paraphrased the following remark from a friend of mine who has been on a hiring committee at a small teaching-focused institution:

Many candidates only or primarily have experience as TA's or maybe one or two solo-taught courses, which is totally insufficient for getting a job at an institution like mine.

I think this is a really important and under-recognized point--one that a lot of grad students, grad programs, and job-candidates may not adequately appreciate. My sense is that grad programs (and their students) have a tendency not to prioritize breadth of teaching experience. This sense is reflected in the following conversation, which occurred in the comments section of the above post.

The Secret Lives of Search Committees - Part 7: AOS and project choices

In the comments section of my post in this series on originality, Pendaran Roberts wrote:

If you're going to be original, based on my experience, it needs to be within a well-worn and, preferably, popular topic...Anyway, originality is certainly not something to shoot for simpliciter. I think what you want is a 'cool' project, immediately understandable and appealing to non-philosophers, in an acceptable and popular area. I'm not sure 'originality' really captures this idea correctly. I'd use words like 'cool,' 'popular,' 'trendy,' 'consistent with the zeitgeist...'

Pendaran's point here actually gestures toward several different issues that, in my experience, grad programs and their students may not pay enough attention to: the role that one's choices (of AOS, dissertation topic, etc.) can play in one's competitiveness (or lack thereof) on the market. 

Secret Lives of Search Committees - Part 6: career stage

In the comments section of my introductory post to this series, Humanati wrote:

I have a topic that I'd like to see covered: to what extent do search committees really adjust accomplishments and (e.g. teaching) experience to career stage? I ask because of my own experiences of the market this year. Here’s my situation: a few publications (some in top 10, others in top 20 journals), Leiter-ranked R1, great teaching evaluations and a decent (though not overwhelming) amount of teaching experience, went on the market the same time I began a post doc. Not unhappy with the outcome; I did well. But what I found most interesting was the feedback I received (through various channels) from places where I *wasn’t* first choice. I was told time and time again that an important deciding factor was comparative seniority/experience. I often lost out to people who’d been visiting assistant professors or postdocs or assistant professors for 1-3 years already—people who, largely owing to a 1-3 year head start, had slightly more or slightly more impressive publications than me, or slightly more teaching experience than me. This made me suspect that these universities were just favouring a sure thing (someone who has *already* demonstrated that they can get x number of publications, teach y amount of courses a semester) over a slight risk (someone who has demonstrated potential, but less hands-on experience). But then, these prospective employers consistently emphasised how ‘incredibly impressive’ my CV, etc. was *for my career stage*. A related point that a friend has often made to me concerns time spent completing a PhD. I understand that institutional norms play some role in this. But one point that this friend put to me (one with which I’m inclined to agree) is that it can sometimes seem slightly unfair not to take it into account. Suppose Dr. X has one publication and took 9 years to do her PhD, and that Dr. Y has two publications of comparable quality and took 6 years to do her PhD. If all else is equal, I’m inclined to think that Dr. Y is the more impressive candidate! Do search committees ever take this into account—how long a candidate took to do his or her PhD and what he or she accomplished in that time span?

This is a really good query. I've encountered something like it on many job-market discussion boards: if candidate Y has accomplished more than X in shorter amount of time, isn't Y the more impressive candidate, all things being equal?  More generally, do search committee members take into account 'career stage'? If so, how?

I'm very curious to hear from other people who have served on search committees. However, my own sense is that this is probably yet another place where research and teaching jobs differ greatly. Allow me to explain.

The Secret Lives of Search Committees - Part 5: jobs abroad

In the comments section of my post in this series on originality, Pendaran Roberts writes:

This is a great blog with a lot of interesting insights. However, I seriously wonder how much the anecdotal data presented in this search committee series is worth. For example, the stuff about originality is quite questionable in my experience. In the UK at least, it looks like big funding bodies stray away from originality. I had a pretty original research program. However, the funding bodies preferred to fund stuff on Kant, for example.

I suspect the explanation is that who to fund is decided by a committee largely comprised of non-philosophers, so the stuff that gets funded has to seem on the surface to be acceptable and worthwhile...

If you're going to be original, based on my experience, it needs to be within a well-worn and, preferably, popular topic...Anyway, originality is certainly not something to shoot for simpliciter. I think what you want is a 'cool' project, immediately understandable and appealing to non-philosophers, in an acceptable and popular area. I'm not sure 'originality' really captures this idea correctly. I'd use words like 'cool,' 'popular,' 'trendy,' 'consistent with the zeitgeist...'

Now it's perfectly possible that search committees for TT jobs in America or the equivalent here in the UK function quite differently...but one of the best ways to secure yourself a permanent job in the UK is to get a 'fancy' grant or grants. So, I think PhDs in the UK (and Europe) should be thinking about how to get these grants...I know grants are less of a thing in the US, so maybe originality matters more in America than it does in the UK.

The Secret Lives of Search Committees - Part 4: Staleness

In the comments section of my second post in this series (on "fit"), Daniel Brunson wrote:

Solid advice, but I wonder if you could consider the balance of "do all the things!" with the supposed (?) "stale PhD" phenomenon in a future post.

An excellent query - one I was very concerned with on the job-market myself. Does one's PhDs 'go stale' the longer one is on the market? That is, is more time on the market a disadvantage? And if so, can anything be done to ameliorate it? 

The Secret Lives of Search Committees - Part 3: Originality

In the comments section of my previous post in this series (on 'fit'), Shen-yi Liao wrote:

Out of 100 job applications, I think there are 80 people who would be perfectly good for the job. And choosing from that often just comes down to highly circumstantial, if not arbitrary, factors that are really hard to predict from the outside, even from the ad. 

Then, however, Al wrote: 

I’ve been on 1 US search committee (R2 with MA) and involved in two U.K. searches (R1)...In both the US and the U.K. my experience has it that an interesting project made a big difference. I don’t think it’s easy to say what this comes to since people on a committee will have different preferences, but if your search is in, say, mind you start to get pretty tired seeing the same thing over and over and then someone with a decent pub or two and some nice teaching experience breaks out because they have a different take on an issue or a different application of something familiar. I know that’s pretty vague but hopefully you get the idea.

Together, Shen-yi's and Al's points underscore a general issue about the job-market that seems rarely discussed: the importance and nature of originality. Allow me to explain.

The Secret Lives of Search Committees - Part 2: Job Fit

When I was a candidate, I was a bit baffled by the interviews I got (and didn't get). Judging by the job-ads, sometimes I got interviews for jobs I seemed a good fit for; other times I got interviews for jobs that seemed like a bad fit; and still other times I didn't get interviews for jobs that I seemed like a perfect fit for...even though I got interviews at "better" schools for which I seemed like a worse fit. It made no sense to me. What in the world were search committees looking for? I expect many candidates can empathize.

So, let me try to address (and then open for discussion) the three questions I raised in the introductory post to this series:

1. What is fit?
2. Why does it matter to search committees?
3. What can candidates do to improve their likelihood of fitting jobs?

Readers should bear in mind that my answers to these questions are based upon my particular experience, and I encourage others with different experience to share their thoughts in the comments section!. 

The Secret Lives of Search Committees - Part 1: Introduction

I recently had a conversation with someone who served on a search committee for the first time, who expressed surprise at just how different the process was than they might have expected as a job-candidate. Being on the other side of the process was very illuminating, they said, and it might help candidates to learn more about it. Because I was on the market as a candidate for seven years and have now served on three search committees (two for tenure-track hires, one for a non-TT hire), I'm very well acquainted with what it is like to be a job-candidate and a search committee member (at least at a teaching school). Consequently, I thought it might be helpful to share a bit about what the process is like. While I don't think it would be appropriate to discuss any particulars about actual hires (viz. how actual hiring decisions were made), there are general things about the search and hiring process that seem to me entirely appropriate to make candidates aware of.

In my next post, I will talk about the oft-mentioned notion of "fit" (i.e. what it is for a candidate to fit a particular job). My general sense, having perused many online discussions of the job-market, is that candidates often think of competitiveness for jobs in general terms: publications, teaching evaluations, and so on. But, as is often noted, "fit" appears to play a large role in search committee deliberations--larger, it seems, than many people may be aware of. So then:

1. What is fit?
2. Why does it matter to search committees?
3. What can candidates do to improve their likelihood of fitting jobs?

As I will explain in my next post, my experience is that the answers to all three questions are complex--far more complex than people who have never been involved in a hire may be aware of. So, I hope current and future jobs-candidates find the next post--and this new series--helpful.