Mrs. Extratextuals is an Assistant Professor at Wisconsin too, in another department. She finished her Ph.D. in 2009, and so in 2008 we were both on the market. The Miracle of Miracles occurred and we both got interviews at the respective top programs in our fields (okay, so some would argue the rankings, but best for each of us), followed by us both getting the jobs. While perhaps the Stonemasons were behind it all, to the best of my and her knowledge, she was not a partner hire. But we’d prepared for it a long time, asked endless people about it, and I’ve seen partner hires occur, meaning I still feel able to talk about the process. More after the fold …

At the same time, though, whereas many other parts of this series were written from the joint experience of being on a committee and having looked for jobs, this one’s almost completely from the latter perspective, without much inside knowledge, since I’ve never handled partner hires administratively. That also means that the peculiarities of my and my wife’s situation (straight, diff. depts but same faculty, no kids, me further ahead than her, etc.) means that any reader should discount appropriately for their own situation. And it’s written solely for academic couples; I don’t know the deal for non-academic couples.

(Oh, by the way, if you’ve wondered why I’m dedicating so much time to writing these entries, and what’s in it for me, the answer is in part the Miracle of Miracles. Mrs. Extratextuals and I both worked our living asses off for many years for that miracle to even be possible, but we’re also aware that supreme luck was required. We’ve drawn deeply from academic karma, and now feel forever as though we owe it something in return. Consider these posts a small offering)

So, first, some biographical background. Mrs. Extratextuals (sorry for the name, but I’d rather preserve her privacy somewhat) and I met as grad students in London. Then she got a job at an NGO in New York, following her Masters, while I needed to finish my Ph.D. So we spent a year with me going to New York whenever possible. Then I finished up and got my first job, as a Lecturer at University of California, Berkeley. That got me to the States, but it overshot her. Ooops. So, two years of me going to New York all the time. Jet Blue loved me. Then I got the Assistant Prof gig at Fordham, which got me to New York. Yay, right? Except she then started her Ph.D. … at Penn. At least it was now her turn to commute, and so she spent half the week in New York, half in a tiny room in Philly, living with some very cool Settlers of Catan-loving vegan anarchists. Until her coursework was done, and then we finally got to live together for real. I mention this to underline that though we experienced the Miracle of Miracles, we paid our dues. You too will need to pay your dues.

Indeed, if you are one half of an academic couple, I’d counsel you to learn these rules:

1. Thou shalt realize that living apart or compromising your hopes is going to happen
2. Thou shalt know where one another stands
3. Thou shalt work thine living ass off

With more detail, let’s start with the first rule. I’ve known very few academic couples who’ve been together the whole time. Any who have, they either met at their current university, or one of them agreed to be an adjunct or part-timer. Don’t think you’ll be the exception. Instead, plan for it. Early on, refer often to rule (3), which we’ll come back to. But also talk about it. Sure, Mrs. Extratextuals and I might’ve talked about it too much, but at least we knew where one another stood, and we didn’t pretend it wasn’t happening.

If you don’t know where your partner stands, you’re in trouble, personally and professionally. Work out what your dreams and hopes are, and what those of your partner are with regards work and life. Maybe one of you isn’t really as much into academia as the other one, and doesn’t really care about life as an adjunct or without tenure. Maybe you both love it as much as each other. Maybe one of you has specific institutional needs, or geographic needs, or social ones, that the other doesn’t, which will make it hard for one of you to compromise on certain scores. Mrs. Extratextuals does heavily grant-funded research, which meant an R1 job was virtually required if she wanted her data to be her own. By contrast, I can do my work almost anywhere. So we knew, going into our search, that taking a non-R1 job would hurt her big time, but me not so much. I had niggling concerns about living in non-cosmopolitan America, since I’m not American, so we knew that mattered. Work out what’s truly important for you as a couple and for you as individuals.

And think ahead. When I went to Berkeley, it was as a lecturer in a program, not a department, so there was no possibility of a tenure-track conversion. I knew my time there was limited, which in turn meant that we knew I’d keep trying to get to New York, and Mrs. Extratextuals would consider Ph.D. programs that triangulated (including Berkeley, where there was a great program for her). Planning was very important.

We also knew, though, that our best chance of being together in the long term was for me to publish up a storm, and for her to go to a kick-ass Ph.D. program and be a phenom (which, proud Mr. Extratextuals that I am, I should note that she did. She had full ride offers from every program to which she applied. Let’s be clear on one thing: she’s the smart one). See, neither of us wanted to compromise too much, and neither of us wanted to ask the other one to do so, which left us with rule (3). The more you work, and the more that you turn your depression or nerves into raw smarts and hardwork, the better your chances become. And here’s a little tip: long distance relationships can actually make hard work easier (if you don’t have kids; if you do, it might prove a living nightmare for one half of the pair of you). When you’re not together, you have carte blanche to stay up late working, to work on weekends, to turn into a work machine. You will need to sacrifice if you want a job together, and weekends and evenings were my sacrifice.

See, as an academic couple, your hopes for being together and both employed rest on one of three options: either you get jobs at different universities that are in the same city or region, or one of you sucks it up and takes an adjunct or lecturer position, perhaps with the hope of advancing one day, or a department wants one of you enough to fight to get a partner hire for the other one, who in turn seals the deal. All three situations are made much, much easier by you both being as good as you can be. In the latter, for instance, it’s not just good enough for Partner A to be a hot-shot; Partner B has to be good enough for the university to play ball and give them a job. And in general, your chances of getting a job are always better when you’re better. So put down that fifth beer, get your ass home, and read.

(Please note: sometimes [often?] this is not enough. I don’t mean to imply that hard work will set you free in all cases. Be prepared for suckiness, in other words, but don’t think that luck alone will conquer the suckiness. Herculean labor is required)

Okay, enough lifestyle counseling for me. Let’s discuss mechanics.

First off, if you’re an ABD, I hate to tell you, but your chances of demanding a partner hire for your significant other are next to nil. See, you’re simply not accomplished enough yet to demand a university go to the effort. Instead, both of you should refer to rule (3) and invest in the future.

When the time comes, you want and need a situation in which the department really wants you. Most of all, though, the Chair must want you. It’s the Chair who is going to be arguing for the hire and be your advocate, so when you have your campus visit, make sure you play real nice with him or her. The problem is that most people agree that it’s perilous to mention your desire for a partner hire while at the campus visit. Why? Because you immediately label yourself as someone who will be harder to hire, and thus you hurt your case. Note that it may be very hard to avoid such discussions. Nobody is meant to ask you about your marital status, but truth be told, a lot of people will. Some will do so knowingly and in contravention of university policies, but many will do so very well-meaningly. They’re trying to get to know you as a person, and asking nice questions about your partner can be a part of that. They might also simply want to present the case for why you should come, and so they hope to spring into reaction by telling you where your kids can go to school, how easy it will be for your partner to find work, etc.

(Interlude: This process is way harder for women. I was rarely asked about Mrs. Extratextuals. And even if I brought her up, I think a lot of people simply assumed that my wife would follow me. That assumption makes life very hard for heterosexual female candidates, since departments may assume you’ll follow your husband, and thus it matters more to them what he does and how possible it is to get him work too. It’s a sexist world, even when the individuals don’t realize they’re being sexist. How to deal with such questions? It’s hard. You can say they’re not allowed to ask, but that makes you seem standoffish, and unless you feel like a lawsuit, you’ll be left without a job. You can dodge, but that might make you seem cold and removed. You can be very honest, but that might be a problem. Neither Mrs. Extratextuals nor I worked out an easy answer, except not to be a woman in a patriarchal society, but I invite other readers to offer answers.)

So, you likely bide your time until you get the offer. Then what happens? You need to be clear that a partner hire is required, and you need to be very honest and open with your Chair. They’re your proxy in this battle, and so they need clear guidance. Don’t be too scared that they’ll go away, not get what you want, and simply revoke their offer to you. If they can’t get what you want, they’ll come back to you … unless they’re a complete douche. Have an open discussion about all the depts or programs in which your partner could work, especially if their work is interdisciplinary. Make sure your partner’s CV and materials are ready to deliver.

I’ve heard of more places offering partner hires these days. Tenure-track hires are hard, and non-tenure-track ones more common. But a lot of universities realize, first, that the best way to get a good person is to give them a partner hire; second, that smart people tend to fall for smart people, and thus hiring partners isn’t the “trash receptacle” that some imagine it to be; and third, that a happy couple with two good jobs is way less likely to go roaming for another job down the line. If a partner hire goes especially well, both individuals tend to arrive happy with the world, and in love with the university that hired them both, and they can thus make great citizens of the university. Also, be aware that some departments welcome partner hires; they’re not the nasty lepers that some make them out to be. Why? Because a partner hire is nearly always a hire you weren’t going to get anyways. Most departments spend a lot of energy fighting for more hires, and especially these days, those fights often fail. So if a university opens up the coffers to get you a partner hire, it’s likely that a department is getting a “free” hire. (Of course, they may feel that hire is mortgaged against an otherwise future hire, so some resent it. I don’t want to lie about the realities here). Finally, if your partner followed rule (3), who knows, maybe they’re a massive blessing in disguise?

Your Chair’s job will be to find a department that could house your partner, convince that department’s Chair to give you a look, and they’ll usually then offer funds from your department’s budget to bring your partner out. They may also pay part of the eventual salary. If it works, and if the Dean gets on board, who knows – you might be happily together in one place.

The other situation is to get the job, get your partner some form of adjunct or lecturer or VAP work, and then hope to make the position better for your partner in the future. In all honesty, I know of more cases where this didn’t happen (see Jason Mittell’s comments on the “inside” hire post for more soul-destroying details), but I do know some situations where it has occurred. In the latter, it’s usually because the dept wants the partner with the better job to stay, and is scared they’re going to leave. It may require a competing offer to seal the deal, in other words.

Whatever your situation, I wish you luck. And go read Jonathan Sterne’s piece about the same issue.

Why should ABDs or assistants even bother to apply?

Last time, we discussed “inside” hires, but the other concern I hear a lot is with regards open rank hires. It’s easy to see why your average ABD may feel that their chances are nil when competing against a senior prof with multiple books, articles, and courses under their belt, and “profile” in the field.

But I once again want to warn you against discounting your chances in such a situation. Granted, this may be an uphill battle, more so than fighting an inside hire; it is, however, by no means an impossible one.

More after the fold …

The best thing that an ABD has going for him or her is potential. I’ve seen committees look at the same file and all extrapolate the person’s career in different ways. If they like you, they’ll all see themselves in you, or at least what they want to see in you. They may also flatter themselves that they can ensure you go in that direction, that with their tutelage and mentorship, you will become the awesome prof they think you could be, not the not-nearly-as-awesome prof that their colleague on the committee thinks s/he can make you into. Versus this, the senior prof is in trouble, since their CV makes it clear who they are. Nobody really “projects” with senior profs, and in a diverse department, there’s bound to be someone who hates their research paradigm, whereas that same person might think the ABD is “cure-able.” You hire senior profs because you know what you’re getting, more or less, not because you see such wonderful potential in them. So as an ABD or recent PhD, your potential is a powerful weapon.

The second best thing that an ABD has going for him or her is hunger. Everyone knows you need a job, and they know you’re going to need to make compromises to get it. A senior prof doesn’t. If s/he doesn’t like the deal, s/he can simply stay wherever s/he is now. Which means a lot of things. First, it means that negotiations with senior profs can drag out, interminably at times. Second, it means that senior profs can afford to push harder for more money, for a spousal hire, for that research lab they want, or for green M&M’s every Tuesday morning served by a dancing monkey in a silver bikini. Senior profs can be a hassle, and sometimes that hassle won’t be judged worth it; at other times, it will be judged worth it, but the hiring attempt will fail, and the committee may need to go to their second or third choice: the hungry, ready ABD.

Third, let’s be honest that some senior profs may not actually want the job. They may simply be applying to get a counter-offer to up their salary. They may be doing so while up for tenure as security against not getting it. Or because their university’s pay structure has stalled out for senior profs, leaving them disgustingly underpaid (a common occurrence). And committees know this. It’s a dangerous game of chicken when you hire a senior prof, since they keep telling you they want to come, but you’re never sure of it. By contrast, everyone believes the ABD when s/he says she wants to come (well, lesser schools may have horrific inferiority complexes, but the good schools certainly believe it). And after the committee has played several rounds of Will S/He, Won’t S/He with the senior prof, they may simply come to resent it, and may find the ABD’s obvious and unmitigated enthusiasm wonderfully refreshing and attractive.

Finally, don’t assume that an open rank search means the committee wants the highest up the ladder they can get, or at least that everyone in the committee wants that. Sometimes, they’re open to seniority, but may realize that they have an age problem in their department, that they need someone who does the cool new thing, or so forth. Your youth may be exactly what’s wanted and needed, and even if they don’t know it when they publish the posting, they might come around.

Or they might hire the senior prof. But the best thing about losing a job to a senior prof is that it’s so easy to move on from it. If I ever lost a job to Charlotte Brunsdon, I’d hardly begrudge the committee, and I’d be able to move on quite easily, actually quite chuffed that I was even in the running with them.

Anyways, if we’re going to talk strategy, think about how to pitch what the average senior prof may not be offering. Tech savvy, abundance of energy, riding the crest of a new and funky wave of scholarship: these must be your weapons of war. And, alas, patience, since you might need to play for second or third, but given the volatility of senior hires, that might become first after fruitless negotiations. Good luck.

Okay, the series may need to take a short break now or after the next one, since school’s starting, and I don’t think UW undergrads are putting themselves into a lifetime of debt to fund me writing this series

Few things seem to get candidates more irate than the suspicion of an “inside hire.” Nobody likes to be invited to a try out for something, then realize the competition was over before it begun. But because inside hire paranoia seems to eat away at so many people’s spleens and kidneys, I thought I’d dedicate a separate post to discussing them.

More after the fold…

Do they happen? Yes. But they don’t happen anywhere nearly as often or unproblematically as some suggest. It is natural to assume that if a department has a tenure-track search, and if they have a non-tenure-track department member who likes the place, that non-tenure-track member will apply. But it’s a very big leap to assume that they’ll get the job (remember, in other words, that Russell Crowe got his Oscar for Gladiator, not The Insider).

Here’s some of the ways that the “inside” candidate may be screwed. First, departments often draw a stark line between their tenure-track faculty and their short-term faculty. This line is institutionalized in many ways. An entire department is needed to hire the former, whereas usually the Chair or a lone faculty member handles the latter. The latter are rarely invited to department meetings or to sit on other committees (not always out of rudeness, but when you’re not paying someone to do service work, it’s not fair to expect them to do any). And the latter change, so it can be hard to keep up, especially for those profs who are somewhat checked out during any given semester. Short-term faculty often come in, teach their classes, then go. The students see them and may love them; the TAs may know and love them too; but they might elude the tenured or tenure-track department as a whole. None of which helps them especially when they’re applying for a job.

If anything, being “inside” in a situation such as the one described above might actively work against one. Faculty might forget the reasons why the inside candidate didn’t attend meetings, and note, “hmmm…I never see him/her around,” and feel the insider was pretty insignificant. They’ve likely only seen the inside hire as a teacher, not as an active researcher, or as someone on “their” side of the tenure-track / short-term line, which may make it hard to now see them that way. Indeed, it’s important to note structurally how someone gets “inside.” An insider is in a non-tenured job applying for a tenure-track job. Sometimes a dept got the former when they asked for a t-t line and got the non-t-t job as consolation; sometimes they simply have a short-term staffing shortage that needs rectifying (my own dept, for instance, uses grad students for many undergrad classes. Some years we have more grads in the system, some less, and when it’s less than we need, we apply for a Visiting Asst. Prof position to cover the remaining courses). In either situation, the dept tends to hire later on in the year, and since it’s not t-t, these two factors combine to provide them a less rich pool of applicants. So, automatically, an insider may not be seen as the best the dept could get, and the dept may be biding its time for the full t-t search. Of the two situations noted above, moreover, when it’s a short-term hire, these are often made quite separately from t-t discussions, and with different criteria (“can this person teach the courses on the books?” is the key consideration for non-t-t work, whereas many places will start to ask “what new things can this person bring to the table, and do we want that?” for a t-t job). Once again, then, a dept may see their non-t-t hire as an apple while they’re focusing on the orange.

An “inside” candidate also likely has a crappy teaching load. They might teach 4-4 while everyone else is 3-3, or 3-3 while everyone else is 2-2. They probably teach large lecture classes. They’re probably recently minted Ph.Ds, or not-yet-minted, no less, and thus they might have less experience teaching, meaning in turn that they’re putting long hard hours into their teaching. All that time might be coming at the expense of research productivity, and thus when one compares them to a tenure-track assistant prof elsewhere, they may compare unfavorably in terms of publications.

Inside hires are publicly despised, and many departments know this. Even if they set out wanting to hire the person in question, they may have second thoughts, and start thinking that what they’re doing is wrong. Importantly, too, as discussed in an earlier post, no search committee is a single-cell organism, and thus in a group of five or so people, chances are that at least one is uncomfortable with it. Chances are higher in the department as a whole. That one person might chip away at the others enough to make the rehire non-viable or awkward.

On the other hand, yes, they have certain advantages. They likely have a much better idea of what’s wanted, not just the two or three buzzwords in the job posting, but a sense of which classes need filling. They may have taught those classes, and in all sorts of other ways they’ll hit the ground running where a new hire will take time to get up to speed. They might not fit the description I give above: they might have good, solid connections; they might attend the occasional meeting; they might otherwise participate in things that let the department see them as a researcher, not just a teacher. And they might be in a program that really values teaching and loves their evaluation scores.

Indeed, sometimes an inside hire is a great one. They might be someone who has utterly proven themselves, to the point that you can’t imagine anything better, or at least to the point that you realize you’d be rolling the dice and risking too much to try and find something better. They may’ve come to the job with great gusto, thrown themselves into the position and done everything possible to justify being kept around. To devalue all of that is silly. Sometimes it makes perfect sense, just as many other professions hire from within.

But why doesn’t the department just tell you? Believe me, I know this anguish. It was hurled at the heavens many evenings when I lost a job to an insider. But they may not know. Going into a situation in which an insider is applying for a job, very few departments know for sure that they will be hiring that person, if for no other reason than they’re aware that the person in question needs to go on the market and hence they might take a different, better job elsewhere. Or if “they” know, “they” might be a small faction of the committee or department, who scheme to get their person in (often a failing strategy, I find, by the way. Nobody on a committee likes being played and maneuvered), and so the department or committee as a whole might not know. Or even if they do all know, they can’t very well tell you, for fear of having hellfire rain down upon them from their Dean. Maybe they are turds, maybe not. Let it go.

If I bring up the issue of the “insider,” though, it’s not just to try and convince you to ease the build-up of bile in your spleen (though I’m sure whole libraries of books could be written with the lifeblood sapped from scholars while raging about inside hires). It’s also to remind you that in a year or two you might be the insider. In that case, you’d better believe your moral judgment of hiring insiders will change. But in that situation, you’d also be wise not to believe the hype that you’re a shoe-in. Go to dept meetings, be seen, be active. And meanwhile apply elsewhere widely, since you might get your Oscar from Gladiator … even if your performance in The Insider was excellent.

(And since we’re talking about conspiracy theories, let me offer my own in closing. When you read someone on the wiki claim that a hire is an inside one, you’d be wise to wonder whether maybe, just maybe, someone’s just trying to redirect your energies elsewhere to make their own chances better. Heck, maybe it’s the insider him or herself?).

Next up, the Open Rank hire, and why ABDs shouldn’t lose hope in applying for such positions.

In this post, I’ll go through a few tips for the various materials you’re going to send to the committee. To start with, however, I need to be clear that these are my preferences, and way too many people out there will tell you their preferences as though every search committee member shares them. Rubbish. There’s wide variation. So I share the below with my rationale, but don’t see it as gospel, and most of all have a rationale for your decisions, one that it’s reasonable to think the search committee will share or get intuitively.

More after the fold …

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The CV

I’ll admit that this is where I start with any package. It’s like the executive summary. And I appreciate when candidates treat it that way. Make it attractive, but don’t go crazy. Really spend some time working out what should go in bold or italics, what font sizes and types to use, where white space is needed, and so forth. The point isn’t to create a work of art, but to facilitate the easy and quick reading of the CV. You want the committee to see that you’re qualified, to be interested enough to read the letter, and not to slow them down in the process.

Make sure all the important info is there, too. You’d be surprised how many I’ve seen that don’t mention where the PhD is being conducted, the dissertation title, or other salient points. I’m also a fan of a small section near the front that says what your research interests are. Yes, you’ll repeat those in the letter, ideally with context, but for now it could help. All the more so if your publications don’t really indicate the breadth of who you are as a scholar, because without such a section, many people will simply use your publications for a guide. (With that in mind, be aware of what you publish early on and what it might say of who you are).

Don’t ever bullshit, or even appear to do so. When I read a CV that tries to make a submission to a journal seem like an actual publication, I’m not at all impressed. Most people I talk to agree that it’s good to list submissions, since it tells the committee the kind of things you’re working on, and what communities you’re aiming your work at, but it’s never good to make a submission seem like a bona fide publication. Remember, too, that committee members might be well-connected, so if you’ve gotten a rejection, pull it from your CV straight away – I once read a CV that boasted of a submission to Popular Communication (a journal I co-edit) when we’d rejected it four months prior to the application deadline. In terms of lingo, be clear it’s a submission, or that you have an offer to revise and resubmit, or, if and only if it’s been accepted, that it’s forthcoming.

A CV can in theory be as long as it needs to be, but think about placement of different sections, and think carefully. If you’re waffling on about everything you’ve ever done, you may be pushing important material lower down, where it may not be seen. Think about the university you’re applying to too, so that you don’t, for instance, put teaching really late in an application to a liberal arts college. And while I like and need some white space, don’t go crazy with it just to make the CV look longer, since in such a situation, it looks shorter not longer.

Also, be selective in terms of what you mention from your life pre-PhD program. Remember that you may be applying alongside people with more experience, and the more that you tout your Grade 10 public speaking contest award, Grade 12 honors list, or so forth, the younger and greener you sound. Most departments these days need to fight tooth and nail for a hire, and so they need people ready to jump into the trenches when they finally get that hire – the young person with 12 Brownie badges isn’t likely going to be entrusted with that job. That said, if you did particularly interesting things, include them. When I’m looking through a huge batch, it can be intriguing to see someone who did Peace Corps, who spent a year in Argentina, who wrote a book of short stories, etc.

And the best advice I could give regarding CVs, as with all elements that you send, is to share with peers and profs and ask for their advice. Don’t be silly and vain and too embarrassed to show your friends and advisers your CV – better that they point something out than that you get tossed in the No pile as a result of it.

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The Cover Letter

Personally, I hate cover letters that simply reiterate the CV. A fair degree of this is needed, but what the cover letter should do, above all else, is narrativize your achievements and interests. The CV doesn’t allow you to give context, so you should provide that in the letter. Perhaps your publications seem an eclectic, odd mix, but have a through-line that you can explain? Perhaps you can explain how your year in the Peace Corps impacted your teaching? Etc. Maybe this is just me, but when I look to a cover letter, I want to see the meat that surrounds the bones that the CV gave me.

The cover letter should be either two or three pages. Some love longer ones, some hate them – there is no consensus, though I hear more in the 2 camp than the 3 camp. It should contain a good hearty par. that explains your dissertation, but not just what it does, but also why it does that, and how that speaks to your driving force(s) as a scholar. It should contain a hearty par. about teaching. It should get the department, city, and committee member names correct (seriously: proofread. It’s amazing how many people merely print the same one that they sent to University of X when applying to University of Y). It should explain why you want to work at this university in particular, live in this town, and so forth.

Don’t go overboard with an attempt to be witty, but do put something of your personality into the letter if possible. I want to see a human being when I read these letters.

And, this is very hard, so you’ll likely need friends to proofread for you, but try to strike the right balance between being clear about your achievements without being arrogant. You’re selling yourself, so don’t just sit back and hope the committee notices you. Yes, it feels dirty, but it’s required. At the same time, if you come across as a headstrong prat, you’re unlike to go anywhere.

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The Teaching Philosophy

When I see requests for this, I feel like I’m being asked to write a Hallmark poem. Don’t get me wrong, I love teaching, and it is the engine that allows me to function. But it feels wanky writing my “philosophy.” It also feels dirty, since it makes my personal interactions with students seem somehow staged, pre-scripted, and regimented. But some schools and some committee members love their Hallmark poems, I guess. So what to do?

First off, if you’re asked to write one of these, be strategic with division of material between this and the cover letter. The advantage (if you’re a verbose bastard like me) of being asked to write a teaching philosophy is that it gives you carte blanche to say more about yourself, so don’t just cut and paste the par. from your cover letter – go beyond it and say more. Don’t just repeat metrics that you’ve included elsewhere (on CV or in a “dossier”): explain why and how your teaching works.

Second, to the ABDs – beware that this is a document that might make you look painfully student-y if you indulge the urge to write about teaching solely from the student’s perspective. So remember to frame your comments as those of one who teaches and wants to teach, not simply as one who receives instruction.

Third, a word about liberal arts colleges – they can be cult-like in that they really like their own. If you didn’t go to a LAC for your undergrad, they may already be dubious about your ability to “fit in.” This document might really matter to them, therefore, so if you’re applying to a LAC, make sure you do an extra good job of explaining how teaching matters to your work.

As for the rest, well, that’s kind of up to you, but I’d pick two or three central, unifying points and harp on them. These documents are usually a page, maybe a tiny bit more.

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The Teaching “Dossier”

“What is this?” I’ve often been asked. It’s a collection, primarily of your teaching evaluations and possibly syllabi. At least as I read it, though others should correct me if wrong.

Don’t include the entire batch of evals – just give the topsheet and a sample of comments. If your university doesn’t create a topsheet that tabulates your scores, do this yourself (if the form asks a bunch of questions, just tabulate the numbers for the general one, the one that sounds like “Overall, how would you evaluate this professor?”), but be honest and label it as your tabulation. And by “sample,” I mean a sample of the good stuff. I usually sent about 5 to 8.

As for syllabi, opinions diverge here, and so let’s hope you’re in a position to ask the search committee what they’d like (since dossiers are often asked for later on, not straight away). But personally, I want to see syllabi that a person taught as the instructor of record, not as a TA. Some places are interested in how you would teach a course, though, so if you have no syllabi on hand because you’ve never been the instructor of record, you might want to start devising one or two syllabi now that you can share as prospective syllabi. I say now because syllabi are awful when rushed, so you might as well have things in hand now. Trust me, the experience of doing this could help, too, since it’s a common question for interviews – “we really need someone who can teach X. How would you do this?” – and it’s the question I’ve seen flubbed most spectacularly. A little prep in putting together a syllabus in advance could help you own this question.

~

The Research Statement

In contrast to the teaching philosophy, I love writing these, partly since they don’t seem calculating when they’re about research rather than people, partly because I find it really hard to sum up what my research is all about in only one paragraph for the cover letter.

This is your chance to explain how everything you do as a scholar fits. Bear in mind that when you go up for tenure, your department will need to explain the same thing, so they need to hire someone who they think they can explain. This is where you do it for them. Explain in terms this department will understand and appreciate. Use the opportunity to elaborate more upon your dissertation, yes (and again, don’t just repeat your cover letter). Explain how any other publications you’ve done fit into this. If you have interesting life experiences that connect with your research, here’s a great spot to mention them and involve them. But importantly, remember to talk about what’s next and how that fits. As an ABD, maybe you’re so deep into your project that you don’t know, but remember that the committee wants evidence that you’re actually going to finish on time, and an ability to discuss the next step is strong evidence here. So make sure you can provide.

Again, these are often a page, though I think two, especially for an R1, is fine. That may just be me.

~

Sample of Writing

This may be the only example of your scholarship that a committee reads. If you advance to future levels, it may be circulated to the department. So make sure you think it represents you well, not only in quality, but also in focus.

Here’s where ideally I need to back up and give some advice about publishing. During your Ph.D., try to get at least one article on your topic out to a really solid journal, or placed in another high profile place. This will of course make your CV look better, as will all publications (and ideally it won’t just be one!). But it will be what you can submit. Understandably, you may want to hold onto your diss. material for longer, and hence may be more inclined to send out other papers, perhaps ones that grew out of coursework. It’s okay to send such material out, but remember that if this is all you have published or finished, that may be all you can send to a committee. All of a sudden that eclectic paper you wrote on Buffy and images of blood, when your diss. is actually a history of radio in the sixities, will be your calling card. So be prepared (if it’s not too late to say so!).

As an applicant, I much preferred being able to send something that is typeset and formatted too, not just a Word doc. I felt it looked professional, and was a subtle reminder that, yes, I had been published. And I’m aware that academics read Word docs with red pen in hand, as graders or reviewers, whereas they read typeset material differently; I didn’t want to invite the former type of reading. I’d recommend you do the same.

That said, if your best material, and your most appropriate material, is a Word doc, then that’s what you send. Reformat to 1 or 1.5 spacing, so it seems less classroom-essay-like. Maybe even find a font other than Times to help the cause. And it should be okay – don’t stress too much. But proofread and factcheck. Really closely.

~

Bonus Materials

Go easy with submitting things that weren’t requested. Usually a committee will request what it wants when it wants it. If you start including all sorts of other shit, you may come across as too intense or as arrogant. Play by the rules they give you, in other words.

That said, if, for instance, you’re applying for a job in a dept that does production, and you’ve produced something spectacular that can be included easily (i.e, on a CD or DVD), that’s acceptable.

~

What You Don’t Send

So there’s this incredible thing called Google. And another thing called Twitter. And another thing called Facebook. And Ratemyprofessor.com. And onward. None of them are all that hard to use. Search committees may use them. When I visited Madison, a committee member let me use his/her computer to check my flight status home, and when I shook the computer out of sleep, in the little Google search bar in the to right of the browser I found my name.

Thus, be very aware of your online presence. What’s available to non-friends on Facebook? (often people’s likes are widely available, for instance, so what will it say about your politics, tastes, causes, temperament, etc.?). What pictures of you are available online? Are you an aggressive Tweeter, and if so, what sort of things do you say? If you’re fond of snark, criticism, argument, etc., you might not want your Twitter account to be public. Or more to the point, just be a good person online in the first place, so you don’t have to hide your badness.

And here’s a biggie: what are you saying about the jobsearch online? I know someone who made the shortlist at a major university (not mine), then got cut because the search committee (one of whom told me about this) saw his/her posting online about the search, and about which universities s/he liked, didn’t like, etc. The committee felt this showed a lack of maturity and professionalism … even though they were one of the favored universities.

Search committee’s ability to use Firefox isn’t all necessarily bad, however. After all, perhaps you have a great online presence. You might have a lovely personal webpage that goes beyond the CV on one hand, while illustrating your tech literacy on another (and remember that most search committee members will be quite tech illiterate by comparison, so you can impress them easily here). If you do new media, you really should have such a site. You may have a blog where you write smart things about your research that allow you to supplement the single article you sent them (blog URLs are often circulated by committees). Perhaps your Tweeting shows you to be a good, supportive, colleagial human being.

Indeed, and to close this post, let’s add an important coda to the Think Like a Search Committee task we engaged in last time. Search committees want nice people. They can’t ask you “please send evidence that I will want to have dinner with you,” and thus the things they ask for are tailored towards showing them other things. But if you get the job, get tenure, and stay, and if they stay, you may be colleagues for 30 or so years. Search committees really want nice people. And they’ll go looking for evidence of what kind of a person you are. So be nice and make sure you look nice online.

And I’ll tell you why I can’t put up with you people: because you’re bastard people! That’s what you are! You’re just bastard people! And I’m goin’ home and I’m gonna… I’m gonna bite my pillow, is what I’m gonna do!

– Corky St. Clair, Waiting for Guffman

~

(continuing our tour …)

Try to think about how it all works from the committee’s perspective. In saying this, I’m not asking you to pity the committee; I’m encouraging you to know the system so that you can be smart about your interactions with it.

Let’s begin with this. It’s common to receive 60 or 70 applications at the low end, 500 (yes, 500) at the high end for an opening. Imagine you’re on the committee, with an average number of about 150 applications. How long would you spend with each? You’re teaching classes yourself. You need to be publishing things, and if you’re untenured, your tenure committee won’t really care about your work on this search, and they certainly won’t forgive a lack of publications because of the time you spent on it. Indeed, you’ve got a paper that you really need to find some time to work on right now. You may have family who require your time. And hey, maybe, just maybe, you have a life too. So how long will you spend on each application?

More after the fold:

If you think through this question in earnest, you’ll realize that a committee simply cannot and will not give each application a great deal of time. From your (necessarily selfish) position, you may conceive of the search committee as pulled out of their regular duties, locked in a room with shrimp cocktails and a fine sherry, and given endless time to look at files and do that alone, but in truth, a committee is a group of already-overworked people who just got given more work to do. Some are excited to be on the committee, and some will take the task very seriously (though some won’t), but they have a lot of other things to do too.

I’m sure most of us would like to think that a committee spends at least 15 mins reading our materials, for instance, but with 150 applicants, that’s 2250 mins, or about a single work week. So instead a committee must work out short cuts. Some will simply cut all ABDs. They may’ve originally been open to ABDs, hence no stipulation to that effect in the posting, but once looking at the depth of applicants, they may realize they don’t “need” to entertain ABDs anymore, and they may appreciate cutting the stack in half. They may not (read: very likely won’t) read all materials from all candidates. They may go straight to your publications and see where you’ve published. They may weed out anyone who has silly typos. They’ll almost definitely weed out anyone who doesn’t fit the bill of what’s been asked for (indeed, all three committees that I’ve been on have attracted a high number of completely unqualified candidates, yet in today’s market, fishing expeditions are mostly pointless).

Beyond simply weeding out, though, the committee is looking for reasons to weed in. Publications in good places means a lot (and not just lots of publications. Publishing a lot isn’t the point: placing work in good places is. Publishing in “bad” places may work against you, especially at bigger name institutions, who don’t want their faculty “wasting time” with “lesser” publications [how do you know what they consider good or bad? First, know the bigger name journals. Second, check out the CVs of those on the dept and see where they publish, since you can bet they respect their own venues]). A cover letter that makes you sound interesting means a lot. Having rec letters from respected, big names means a lot. And if any of those big names know people on the committee or in the department, and are willing to write an email to them too, that can mean a whole heck of a lot (don’t be one of those doofuses who wants to “get the job myself.” Play all cards that you have).

Knowing something about the university, department, and program also means a lot. This one provokes ire from some applicants, who from their perspective don’t want to learn the intricacies of 40 different departments and write a separate letter to each. Tough shit. If there’s an especially ugly attribute to have on the market it’s a sense of entitlement. Don’t be that way. Yes, you spent these many years of your life studying. Yes, you probably thought the market would be better than it is and now wish someone told you the cold hard truth earlier on. And yes, it sucks that you need to learn about all these departments, many of whom will never even bother to let you know they didn’t consider you. Many committees behave badly and make all this work seem pointless. But if you conduct your search with the attitude that the system needs to be nice to you before you’re nice back to it, you’ll be miserable, angry, and unemployed. Besides, you’re not applying to the system, as far as the committee is concerned: you’re applying for one singular job. Everywhere likes to feel special, and candidates who communicate that they’re not just applying for a job, but that they really want this job and this university can leapfrog over others. Remember, too, that if you’re an ABD, you’re likely not just applying against other ABDs – there are likely a bunch of people who don’t like their jobs and are trying to “upgrade”; these folk don’t need to apply to everything, since they have a job, and so they can afford to get to know a dept and make that show. Those folk already have natural advantages (Ph.D. in hand, teaching experience, likely more time to have published more), so don’t just roll over and let them take your job.

You’ll need to personalize applications. Think about what are the buzzwords that any given department wants to hear. If the job posting says they want P, Q, and/or R, you should not only be able to tell them that you do P, Q, and/or R (which means you should do them, not that you should stupidly lie and say you do them when you don’t), but you should be able to use those words. If it’s a humanities-ish department, that’ll require a different vocabulary from a social sciences-ish department (for instance, when applying to more Comms departments, I didn’t use the word “textuality” much, but I’d happily use it when talking to humanities-friendly departments). Liberal arts colleges will want to know how your work matters in the classroom; R1s will want to know that your research is good enough to get you tenure down the road, and that you’re ready and able to teach grad students; if you did your degrees at R1s and you’re applying to a rural, smaller name university, they may want assurance that you want to be there (and don’t patronize them while doing so – if it’s clear you’re deigning to apply, you’re dead on contact); and so on.

But as you personalize, beware. Perhaps the greatest mistake you can make is to assume that the committee or department think as one. Here’s the honest truth: a lot of departments are populated by people who don’t get along and/or who have profound professional disagreements. There are often factions fighting for power. Undoubtedly, therefore, several people in the department didn’t want this search to be prioritized in the first place, and wish they could hire someone else in a different area. Some individuals may have a long-term desire to hire a particular person, or to attach their own stipulations to the hire, while others may have competing requirements. So, know the department in full, not just the one or two folk you like. You may know the department as the home of Scholar H, and be proud of the fact that you’re pitching yourself as the ideal colleague for H, but maybe everyone else hates H, and will read your application and say, “Oh dear God, not another H!” Don’t just make your pitch to a single person.

Another note: especially in these economic times, departments often need to hire people who don’t do what they do, at least not completely. So while in applying for a Ph.D., you would have been wise to focus on places where faculty do what you wanted to do, now that you’re applying for a job, if you’re too close to another department member, there may be no reason to hire you. (Of course, some places’ narcissism may win out, so this isn’t a hard and fast rule). Most programs will usually want someone to cover a research area or to teach a class that others in the dept don’t (usually they can only get a hire from a Dean or dept vote in the first place if they make this case). Your chances of getting the job are low if you’re a clone of a current faculty member, or if you seem like a clone. So, for instance, when you look through courses that are taught, by all means point out a few in their books that you feel you could teach, but beware that those courses may already be spoken for, and be able to offer new courses you might add. And, taking into account the above paragraph in particular, don’t overplay how much of a BFF you’d be with any dept member in particular.

And while we’re at, a final point. Say the due date for an application is, oh I don’t know, December 25 and you’re on the search committee. Do you wait till Dec 25 to start looking at the applications, especially if you expect a couple of hundred to come in? Of course not. These aren’t Christmas presents, and your dept isn’t going to wrap them up and put them under a tree. Instead, as they come in, they’re usually made available. So let’s say you’ve looked at 100 applications by Dec 25, and have a shortlist from that group. Since this is before the crunch when a mountain of apps all come in on Dec 25, you may have extra time to look at them. You may even, if you’re a keen search committee member, have time to ask around about the candidates whose files appeal to you. You might have discussions with others on the committee, noting excitement about someone’s candidacy. So now let’s shift the “you” here back to being the applicant. I hope you see why getting your application in early is smart. It probably guarantees your file will be looked at with more time. And most importantly, it allows you the chance to get pole position, with subsequent applicants needing to displace you. If the committee’s already found 10 or 15 candidates who look great by the time that last batch come in, yes, they’re meant to look at all files, and yes, they probably will, but you might imagine how easy it would be to do so half-assedly if they’re already happy with their group of 10 or 15. And in today’s market, they’ll definitely be able to find that 10 or 15 without you. Moral of the paragraph? Apply early. Not crazily early, and not at the expense of putting thought into how to personalize your application, but still, don’t wait till the deadline, or you’re playing in a much harder bracket than if you turn up early.

Okay, next time I’ll discuss the materials you send to the committee. Meanwhile, for those who have been on committees, what other nuggets of wisdom can you share?

(the second in a series …)

If you decide to run for President of the United States one day, that process will make the academic job application process seem quick and efficient. For all but presidential candidates, though, the academic job market is disgracefully slow. Remember I said the market was like dating? Well, imagine asking someone on a date and not getting an answer for seven months, and you have the academic job market. In this post, I’ll discuss some of the reasons why this might be so, while also trying to give a sketch of what to expect. When I explain why, this isn’t a defense, it’s simply an explanation, based on the idea that knowing makes things a tiny bit easier. More after the fold …

First, you’ll tend to find three waves of applications. The first begins in summer and carries through to about September. These are the departments that likely had approval to get a hire at the end of last year, or whose senior faculty worked in the summer to approve a job posting’s language. The next wave runs from about late September to January. Here, departments might have received notice that they have a hire in the summer, but need to wait till everyone’s back for a September meeting before they can officially approve the posting’s language, and before the Dean can then sign off on it. If a job is tenure-track, it will nearly always be in one of these two waves, and most of the better schools’ tenure-track hires in particular are in these waves. Why? Because the best schools don’t stay good by picking after everyone else; they like to pick first and make everyone else choose from their leftovers. Some departments may be awarded a hire in, say, February, and consciously decide to wait to post till the next academic year for this reason.

That leaves the third wave, which takes up much of the Spring semester, and can bleed into Summer too. Many of these jobs are non-tenure-track, as the department sits down to work out its short-term staffing issues and decides it needs someone for the next year. You also get some knock-on effects of early hires, with a department scrambling to replace someone hired away from them, either with a tenure-track hire or something more temporary. A lot of these temporary jobs don’t appear till the Spring semester, since most departments are smart enough to know that most candidates would prefer a tenure-track job, whereas once Spring arrives, they can bank on the candidates’ chances slimming down. There are of course exceptions, for all sorts of reasons – some great places hire late, some awful jobs go early, etc. This is just a rough sketch.

Okay, so now you’ve applied (early, as I’ll explain why in a future post), what can you expect, and why? Some universities will acknowledge receipt of your application, but many won’t. Why, you might ask, won’t these evil turds simply let you know they have your application? It only takes a few seconds to send that email, right? Well, don’t get too mad about this, as frustrating as it is. Basically, the faculty usually don’t get involved with the applications as they’re coming in, since they have classes to teach, students to supervise, projects to work on, etc. Instead, the secretarial staff often handle applications initially. And your likelihood of getting a response is largely related to how crazily over-worked the department’s front office staff is. When I was at Fordham, for example, we had two campuses, and the lone office administrator at the Bronx campus had to make photocopies of everything sent to her for the second campus. Her job was already insane, without having to do any of this. Other universities have five or six folk in the admin, and might be able to do more. Don’t read too much into this.

Anyways, following the application deadline, the search committee will start laboring through the pile. Telling you that this is hard work may be like complaining about the time it takes to grade papers, as you’re unlikely to feel empathetic. But search committee work is rarely rewarded, so members will need to slot this in and around their regular responsibilities, some of which may be hefty. It’s also a nightmare to schedule meetings for academics, and thus a large amount of time could be wasted simply because someone’s away at a conference, while two other committee members’ schedules clash, and so forth.

If you’re lucky, the committee members started looking at applications as they came in, in which case the process of winnowing down the stack may have begun early; otherwise, it’ll be at least a week, more likely two or three, before their first meeting. At that meeting, they may cut it down to ten to twenty or so, if they’re on the ball, or they may simply come up with a rationale for future winnowing.

When they create that longlist, if they didn’t ask for a huge amount of materials originally, they’ll likely then pause and wait (another week or two) while they contact everyone on their long list for more materials. If they do so, be ready to supply them, or you might miss the boat’s onward progress. Slowness on your part is often read as lack of enthusiasm or as haughtiness (yes, this is ironic, since the committee is way slower than you are, but hey, welcome to the power differential!). Have a teaching philosophy and evidence of teaching effectiveness on hand. Have a research statement. Have copies of published work, or work in progress. ABDs must have copies of a chapter or two. Have a syllabus ready. And finally, if you didn’t need to send reference letters originally, have your referees primed and ready to go in case they need to send one in midstream.

Then they’re at it again, and may now be aiming to get a list to phone interview. But not all universities do this. No, it’s not necessarily a stitch-up when they don’t phone-interview: they may just be close readers in other areas. Then it’s on to deciding who to bring to campus. Each step of this process can take a couple of weeks. All in all, then, you should be prepared that it may take two months from application deadline to a decision on campus visits.

But wait! Some universities are forced to delay their search, and may take longer. Sometimes a department has more than one hire, and realizes they simply can’t do both at the same time. Or, recently, some university administrations have frozen hires, stopping the committee in its tracks in mid-stream. For various reasons, they may take longer.

A frequent complaint of mine when I was on the market was that a university should really contact you and tell you when you’re out of the running. So one would hope that at every step of the way with shortlisting and so forth, those cut loose would find out soon. Alas, while this would be the nice and civil way to do things, it often runs up against university policy. After all, sometimes the shortlist is found to be wanting, and it’s not unheard of for a committee to go back to the pool late in the game. Many departments simply don’t say anything until a person has been offered the job and put pen to paper. By all means check the wiki, but remember that some people on the wiki lie and post updates to ward others away (I had my ear close to the ground two years ago, and was amazed at the crazy crap I read on the wiki occasionally).

Well, let’s assume you’ve had your campus visit and now want to know how long you might be waiting. Here’s the hard part, since you’re agonizingly close, but you may still have to wait a long time. Realistically, assuming there’s been no freeze put in place (and don’t assume they’ll tell you if there is), if you’re the first choice, you should probably hear in no more than two or three weeks after the last candidate has visited. If holidays intervene, add them to the waiting time. But not all departments schedule visits back-to-back. Once I was candidate #1 (in line, clearly not in preference) for a university that had two hires going on. They then, for some unknown reason, had the three candidates out for the second position, then paused for Spring Break, before returning to my hire. It was about four or five weeks till they’d even seen my competition! And the decision itself takes time. It may take a while till the committee meets. Then the department needs to meet, which might also take time to schedule. Then the Dean or Deans need to get involved, and they might be handling other hires or issues.

If three weeks have passed after the last candidate, not including holidays, sadly I’d bet you weren’t the first choice. But check your ego at the door—being picked first isn’t the point, getting the job is. Especially if this hire was open rank, realize that many negotiation processes are long, protracted, and messy (as I’ll discuss further in the post on applying for open rank hires). In such a situation, I think that a department should let you know where you stand. But some university policies don’t allow this. And some departments won’t want to tell you, since they may have decided that you’re on base, and if they offer the position to you, they wouldn’t want you thinking forever more that you weren’t really their pick.

[An aside: Is it bad to take a job when you weren’t the first pick? Not at all! They’re under no obligation to keep you around just for the heck of it, so if you’re still in the running, they liked you. It may even be a very close call. Besides, do you want the paycheck or not?]

I’ll discuss what happens after getting the offer in a much later post. Next up: Think Like a Search Committee. Till then, anyone care to add specifics about or variations on the timeline?

Anyways, I plan to have posts on (likely in this order): (2) The Timeline, (3) Think Like a Search Committee, (4) Application Materials, (5) “Inside” Hires, (6) Open Rank Hires (the ABD version), (7) Searching with a Partner, and (8) The Upgrade Search (for non-ABDs). Later on, I will try to add two more: (9) The Interview, and (10) After the Offer.

So, I’ve decided to write a series of posts with advice and comments on the whole process of the media studies job market. Sorry to any non-academic readers, but since I don’t think I have any readers anyways, I’m not too concerned!

Why? Well, there’s a dearth of good advice out there (for a major, lovely exception, see Jonathan Sterne’s site here). The main site seems to be the job search wiki, which while an at-times great source for updates, can also be populated by some bad eggs who post misinformation or speculation on how search committees work, masked as authoritative. Understandably, too, a lot of the posting on the wiki is motivated by fear, anxiety, and anger, and hence doesn’t always see the forest through the trees.

I’m also feeling the job season right now. I finished my Ph.D. in 2003, and almost every year since 2002 until last year, August meant one thing – pouring over Chronicle job listings, white with fear that it’d be another bad year, and playing a stressful game of alternate worlds in which I imagine what my life would be like in a variety of different university towns and cities. But here I am in my second year at Wisconsin, and since I love it here, I ain’t applying for anything. It’s so blissfully wonderful to be off the market … and yet since it’s that time of the year, and the fear and stress is emblazoned upon me by now, I find myself thinking about the market a lot.

(addition/clarification to respond to a comment below: For all those years I was on the market, I was also gainfully employed. First job was a lecturer at UC Berkeley, though, so needed to keep trying to get tenure-track. Second job was t-t at Fordham, but wife and I needed to be on market since she was finishing up)

Pardon the long intro, but before I begin, let me fill in some background, so you know where I’m coming from. I’ve probably applied for 40 jobs in total over the years (20 when I was a PhD student, and I’m guessing 20 since). I’ve had 7 on-campus interviews, with 3 job offers, 3 rejections, and 1 case in which I accepted another job before the decision was made. I’ve also served on 3 search committees officially, and “advised” in 2 other cases. I write from the experience of someone who has had some interviews, some good, some obviously not so much, and I’ve done some interviewing. But I’m not claiming to be an expert. These are simply my opinions, and I sincerely hope that others who’ve applied for jobs and who’ve been on search committees will chime in with their own opinions, even if and especially when they differ from my own. Don’t take anything I say as gospel – it’s just me pontificating.

Three more opening disclaimers and requests, then down to business after the fold:

First, as said, these are my opinions. I will no doubt be on search committees in the future. These posts should not be regarded as the strategic dispersal of information by those committees. Nor should anyone make the mistake of thinking that simply because I feel this way that the committee on which I sit agrees. This ain’t MCS at Wisconsin speaking, in other words.

Second, there is already a site for nasty recriminations and venting and anger – the venting page on the wiki. I don’t want the comments section here to turn into the same, and if they do, I will shamelessly delete or block responses. Don’t make the mistake of assuming that I agree with how things are, either. I’m trying to give advice, which means dealing with the system as it is, not envisioning how it could improve or change.

Third, by all means ask questions. Or answer them. Especially for those attempting the latter, if possible do post with your real name – anonymity may be required in some instances, but your name could also help readers contextualize what’s being said.

A fourth point, added after the fact: note that my blog holds most comments, so bear with me while your comment sits waiting for me to approve it later in the day.

Thus, without further ado, I’ll begin with this:

1) A Warning to Those New to the Market

If you don’t know already, being on the market sucks. There are some fun and exciting parts to it, namely the rush of seeing postings in your precise area, learning that cool schools want people, hopefully meeting other people, finally getting a chance to think beyond your current project and tell people about your next one, the anticipation of getting a real salary or a better one and/or a better living situation, and joining the fraternity of fellow applicants. But it’s also very hard.

It’s really hard on your self-esteem. It’s very common for universities to not even bother to let you know you didn’t get a job. Some will do so even when you’ve been shortlisted and had a campus interview (and some don’t even tell those who they invite for interviews. Dante’s Hell wouldn’t even allow them, they’re such vile creatures). You’ll see postings from universities that you think are bad, but you’ll suck it up and apply, only to never hear from them, leading to the inevitable neurotic thought, “I’m not even good enough for Big Dave’s State University?” You’ll wonder if what you’re working on is stupid, as a result, if you’re just not doing work that matters, and if your cover letter somehow shows you up as an ass.

It’s really hard on your nerves. Very few other jobs are so patently absurd in delaying and drawing out decisions, meaning that you may well be waiting multiple months to hear even a hint of where your application stands at any given place. Most jobs happen at different speeds, too, meaning that if you’re lucky enough to get traction somewhere, you’ll agonize over the likelihood that you’ll need to make a decision before all your options are clear. And worst of all, you’ll spend weeks imagining what life would be like in an assortment of different places, enough to become emotionally attached to some of those possible lives of yours, only for many of them to be killed on the vine. This latter process is all the worse if you’re not single, since some places will be ideal for your partner or kids, some horrible, and you’ll curse your selfishness for applying to some places, and/or your inability to seal the deal with those ones that would’ve been ideal.

It’s really hard on productivity. Don’t think that you’re going to be productive while on the market, since the angst will likely drag you down. You’ll spend your days waiting for news, clicking refresh on the wiki and various job search sites, agonizing, etc. When I was finishing my Ph.D. in the UK and applying to jobs in the US, I did my best work before 2pm, since that was 9am Eastern Time, after which I’d be waiting for phones to ring. Even when you do sit down to work, the self-esteem issues brought on by the market could make you second guess what you’re writing.

So how to cope?

First, don’t go to the dark side. You’ll need to vent to someone, but limit the list of people to whom you vent, so that you don’t become Mr. or Mrs. Poopy Pants. Depts like to hire upbeat, energetic people, not downtrodden, nasty trolls, and ours is a small enough field that word of your attitude may travel far and wide without you knowing it, so you might as well benefit from good word of mouth.

Second, don’t isolate yourself. Keeping your self-esteem up is important. Going to conferences when you’re in your final year is said to be important for networking, and it is, but that networking may occur less at the level of you meeting Dr. I Have a Job For You, and more at the level of meeting Dr. Wow I Love Your Work, or Your Work Sounds Awesome, ABD, both of whom may be instrumental in keeping your spirits up. But be sure to talk to others, too, not just endlessly about how the market sucks this year, but also about what you do, what your diss. is about, etc., so that you retain perspective on why you’re going through all this, and what it is about academia that you love.

Third, think of it like dating. Because at root, the market is a lot like dating. Sometimes you think someone else is awesome, but they don’t even know you exist. Sometimes people dump you and you don’t know why. Sometimes the dumping will make you pine and howl and feel crappy. You may even want to call the person up and ask what you did wrong and how you can change. But it’s likely just a chemistry thing. You might even think the other person just doesn’t see the chemistry that you do. That may be true. But you have to move on. Don’t dwell. Find a way to pick yourself up and get ready for the next one. And keep sight of who you are – some ex’s may hate that you do X, but your eventual lifelong partner may love it, so while of course you should be self-aware (“hmmmm … I wonder if constantly telling my date I think they’re really ugly has something to do with them not wanting to go out again?”), don’t overdo the “what did I do wrong?” latenight thoughts, since many decisions have nothing to do with you.

Indeed, and fourth, this is the key point. Let’s repeat it. Many decisions have nothing to do with you. Some committees have unspoken mandates. Some have inside candidates (though, as we’ll discuss later, not as many as you may think). Some are stupid, don’t know what’s good for them, and are bound to pick a loser, or simply at random. Some committee members are too busy to bother looking at your file. Maybe they didn’t like that font you used. Maybe they had a bad day when they picked your file up, and so all of that day’s batch suffered. Maybe they’re in love with their alma mater and automatically pick someone from there to endorse their petty concerns about whether they chose the right school themselves. Or maybe there are just many other good people in the stack. Or just one. Perhaps that person’s font choice was brilliant. Perhaps s/he opened with a witty line that the committee just loved. Perhaps s/he has secondary skills the department needs. Perhaps they finished their PhD a while back, and are trying to move to a better school, with a lot more experience, publications, etc. under their belt. Don’t self-flagellate and automatically assume that you did something “wrong,” since it may just be that the committee did something wrong, or that someone else did more right, or right for the committee.

What a cheerful start, eh? I promise to be more upbeat with some more specific tips. Next time, I’ll discuss the hiring timeline. For now, I invite anyone who has been on the market to share their own tips for keeping sane.

A very delayed follow-up post, this time with the DVD text for Season 1. Thanks to Jason Mittell for linking to this wonderful collection of pirated DVD covers, which made me realize it’s time to post this. My favorite is the third paragraph!

Since the US ABC television broadcast after the alias of the most popular elements of the latest series. ABC’s Chi Juzi in Hawaii filming the whole story ups and downs, actors performing most vividly, had become a prime-time TV ratings were the highest one.

Story from a professional perspective doctor Jack started on a major airliner crashed in the Pacific islands, a total of 48 passengers lucky survivors. At first, people fortunate survivors, looking forward to the arrival of rescue forces, they gradually found that the island.

New Year’s more creative experts cracked the increased fan! Sina major breakthrough in treatment of liver disease Tourism Jobs Nashi.

Cengjinglaiguo and they seem to like the people, their distress signals had been the release of the 16, but it seems that no one found their presence ……

Face with this barren island populated, how can they survive? Without a good medical equipment, Jack can only use the most rudimentary way people will be dying one by one save. In the struggle for survival in the …

And that’s it. So, if you still want answers about the island, even after watching the whole series, clearly it’s something about liver disease and tourism.

Part of my fieldwork therefore involves hanging out in marketplaces and talking to folk who sell DVDs, CDs, VCDs, etc. I like to see what’s available, usually buy something to make the store-owner comfortable with me, then chat about what people like, whether what I bought is good, and so forth. Indeed, given all my work on parataxts and extratextuals, I’m especially fascinated with how Hollywood and Nollywood are sold in a town in Malawi.

Well, the other day I found a gem. Alongside the usual suspects of CSI, Prison Break, wrestling, and 24 that I got used to seeing two years ago, the latest show to hit the stands is Lost. Yet, I should explain that action does extremely well here — the “video shows” (rooms that fit anywhere from 20 to 50, and that play movies and television on tiny televisions for an admission price of about 3-5 cents) exhibit a lot of Nigerian soaps, but when it’s Hollywood, it’s nearly always Van Damme, Schwarzenegger (and I don’t mean Twins!), Stallone, Cruise, Snipes, Seagal, and friends. With that in mind, it was interesting to see the copy on the back of the DVD package for Season 5 of Lost (spoiler alert):

“Phil and the gunmen showed up, and Jack plotted his course toward the swan. Phil spotted Jack and started shooting at him. Jack shot back and the rest of the group provided cover for Jack by driving him by in the van and shooting. Sawyer snuck up behind Phil and held him at gunpoint, ordering him to tell everyone else to drop their guns. Sawyer told Jack to do his business. The drill wouldn’t shut down. Jack held the bomb over the hole, looked back at Kate and Sawyer looked at Juliet. Jack dropped the bomb and … nothing happened. ‘This don’t look like LAX,’ Sawyer said. Metal objects started being pulled into the hole. Jack was knocked about by a metal box, Chang was trapped for a moment by a piece of scaffolding and Miles helped pull him free. Phil was about to shoot Sawyer, when another piece of scaffolding knocked him over, then a series of metal pipes shot toward him, with one of them hitting Phil in the chest, presumably killing him.”

Just in case you wondered what genre Lost was, we now have an answer, for Malawi at least: it’s full-on action.

Maybe later I’ll type up the waaaaay cooler notes for Season 1.

Apologies, in the meantime, if formatting is messed up here. I can’t access the rich text editor in WordPress here, and my knowledge of html is strictly limited.