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Job Search Workshop

 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.


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