Joint TWU-UNT Sociology Job Search Workshop
1. Don’t worry about aggregate statistics on placements, the job market, etc. The
academic job market is tough, it’s been tough since the late 1960s, and it will continue
to be tough. There’s nothing anyone can do about it.
2. All you can do is work very hard, and anticipate going on the market up to 3 years in a
row. If you don’t get any job the third time around, it’s time to try something else.
Think of the process as a poker game: you can only go ‘all in’ so many times before you
have to cut your losses and begin to consider non-academic jobs. This is especially the
case if you are offered a post-doc, a lectureship, or some kind of adjunct position. In
each case you have to be very honest with yourself, and your advisor needs to be honest
with you, about whether such positions will lead to a tenure-track position down the road
(if that’s what you’re after).
3. Your primary sources of information on job openings are the ASA job bank the
Chronicle of Higher Education. There are other sites as well.
4. Everyone knows that the job market is sort of random and very arbitrary. Everyone
gets lots of rejections, but you only need one offer.
5. Departments are not necessarily searching for the ‘best’ candidate, but for the
candidate who will be the best ‘fit’: who will hit the ground running, be a productive
scholar, not have problems with undergraduates, do a good job of mentoring if there are
graduate students, stay out of personality conflicts and departmental politics as much as
possible, and contribute in a positive way to the department as a whole. I think that
search committees tend to be conservative, and perhaps rightly so: they want someone
who won’t cause problems at least as much as they want someone who will be a major
upgrade.
6. So while the job market as a whole is sort of arbitrary, I think that if candidates and
search committees do their jobs efficiently and professionally, the whole thing is a pretty
effective sorting mechanism. It may be retrospective bias on my part, but I do feel that
while there were a few jobs I interviewed for in the past that I didn’t get, I’m glad I didn’t
get most of them, because I wouldn’t have been a great fit. While in the short term the
job-seeker is desperate for an offer, in the long run s/he is better off in the job that suits
them (in terms of the character of the department, institution, and location), and it is the
search committee’s responsibility to judge fit.
7. You are what you are! That is you are, at the start, to search committees, your
publications, teaching experience, research interests, future research plans, grants,
awards, etc. You can’t change that at all, but you can package yourself appropriately for
each opening.
8. The sequence is usually: 1) phone interview or conference interview, and then 2) fly-
out.
9. Some random points:
a. Experience in and ability to teach quantitative methods is a real plus. Departments
value this, in my experience.
b. An institution’s reputation and prestige are important insofar as they enhance its
ability to attract talented people who form a scholarly community that is more than the
sum of its parts. However, you can’t eat prestige or put it in your bank account. In the
end, in my view, academic jobs are just that: jobs, with advantages and disadvantages
over other types of jobs. Put prestige in perspective, and try to find the job that is best for you.