How I approached the job market

I know there’s been some mutterings floating about in comments on the blogosphere that people who get junior faculty TT jobs are just luckier than everyone else and may have gotten the job ahead of someone who was more deserving.

I’m not going to get into a shitfight about it as it’s unlikely that anything I say will alter these opinions. Sufficed to say that I worked my ass off to put myself in a good position to apply for this job, thoroughly deserved to be given this opportunity and am now working my ass off to ensure that I succeed.

Rather, I thought I might give some indication of what I did to position myself for the job market, how I went about applying and interviewing and why I think I deserved to get the job I did. To that end, I thought I would break up this post into specific points rather than one big long ramble.

Disclaimer: I am not the smartest person on the planet, I did a LOT of things wrong during my job search and I was incredibly naive about the whole thing. Live and learn.

First off, my plan of action that was carefully worked out in close consultation with my postdoc mentor (more or less in order of priority):

Plan A: Get tenure track assistant professor position in chosen specialty at R1 school.

Plan B: Get tenure track assistant professor position in chosen specialty at a non-R1 school.

Plan C: Get junior faculty research position anywhere (my postdoc mentor sent my cv out to all of his collaborators on my behalf).

Plan D: Get independent investigator funding and stay at Postdoc U as non-tenure track instructor.

Plan E: Stay in Dr J’s lab at Postdoc U but move to research associate classification indefinitely.

Plan F: Get junior faculty position in chosen specialty in land far, far away.

Plan G (aka The Last Resort): Move back to land far, far away and live with parents.

Added note: you'll notice that there's no mention of exploring jobs in industry and that's mostly due to visa restrictions. Universities are not subject to quotas on H-1B visas but industry positions come under the annual limit and these slots are always filled on the first day they become available each year.

Obviously, Plan A was successful, but I had already done a lot of work towards Plan D by the time that came about.

When I sent out my applications, I knew that the job market was tough as I had seen some friends struggle in the past and they were infinitely more qualified than me. But, I also knew that I had a very strong cv relative to most of my peers as my sub-specialty postdoc training put me in a unique position within my broader, often-less-academically-rigorous field. That being said though, I only applied for 6 positions, got one phone interview which led to one campus interview and the job offer for the position I have now … oh, and there was the other school that were chasing me after I had accepted this job so I guess that makes 2 interviews out of 6 applications.


Why was I a strong job candidate?

1. I was applying for positions that emphasized teaching AND research and I have a ton of teaching experience as well as a lot of research experiences both through grad school, postdoc as well as other stuff that I did as an undergrad and during my between-college periods of full time employment.

2. My teaching and research interests/background suited the positions perfectly.

3. I had very strong letters of recommendation that emphasized my success and maturity as a researcher/teacher, leadership skills, initiative and capacity for independent thought. Also, all three referees commented that they ranked me at the top of all of the students/trainees they’d had previously.

4. I had a (relatively) high number of publications in high IF journals – they’re not in C/N/S mags but are in journals that have a higher IF than the top journals in my field (I published all of my stuff in more basic-sciencey type journals rather than the applied ones my field tends to favor).

5. My PhD and postdoc were done at very good schools. We’re not talking Ivy League but both are very well-respected institutions in their respective fields.

6. I had won several institutional and conference research awards.

7. My research had been presented at at least two major international meetings per year since I was in grad school so my list of published abstracts was rather extensive.

8. I’ve been a regular manuscript reviewer for several journals since finishing grad school.

9. My research plan was novel, innovative and, above all else, seems to be fundable. Bringing my postdoc expertise back to my grad school field of interest will elevate my field of research to a much higher level than has been done previously and that always looks good.

10. When I was approached about the phone interview, I didn’t have a clue what to expect so I asked a few friends who were new assistant professors and they sent me questions used by their departments and gave me good advice about how to answer each one. That really helped as I was asked about 75% of the questions that appeared on their lists.

11. When told that I would be required to give a research seminar as well as a separate teaching presentation, I immediately spoke to my grad advisor and my postdoc mentor to get some tips. My grad advisor gave some great insights into good and bad teaching presentations he’d seen from recent job candidates and we spent a lot of time talking about how to approach the whole thing. On the other hand, my postdoc mentor is great at research seminars and he went through my slides and gave very constructive criticism/feedback.

12. I was already an associate advisor for two graduate students in the land far, far away.

13. I demonstrated a keen interest in relocating to wherever it was that the job was located although this was probably helped by the fact that I had only applied for positions in locations that I really wanted to live.


What didn’t matter?

1. Gender (so far anyway).

2. Nationality or race. The only thing that mattered in this regard is that I was able to communicate well in English.

3. Advisor/mentor pedigree. This is important in some fields and for some people, but it didn’t matter at all in my situation. My grad advisor was just out of grad school himself when he took me on and still isn’t well known in our field (the manuscripts that came from my thesis work were his highest IF publications). My postdoc mentor is quickly becoming internationally recognized in his field but that is not a field in which my current department is familiar so his name carried little/no weight at all.

4. Current funding. I still don't have any but I'm busting my butt to try to get some.


What did I do wrong?

1. I only applied to the schools that I was interested in working at and that were in areas in which I could see myself living. I was already working on Plan D by that time so I figured that staying at Postdoc U was better than moving to somewhere I didn’t want to work/live. Pretty arrogant given the current economic climate I know, but that’s what I did. And I was lucky that I had the option to stay at Postdoc U and to continue working with Dr J.

2. I had absolutely no idea of what a statement of teaching philosophy should contain or what a research plan should look like. I just winged it as I didn’t want to look stupid by asking one of my mentors. I think I totally screwed them up and that my cv carried me through to the phone interview stage.

3. The whole tenure thing was a totally foreign concept and I didn’t think to check with friends and/or mentors about it before the phone interview when I proceeded to ask some of the stupidest questions ever.

4. I screwed up several things during my campus interview, particularly when asked what I would theoretically require to get my research lab up and running – I was incredibly nervous and seem to recall saying that western blotting rigs would be all I would need. Idiot.

That's pretty much it. I was fortunate that I was on the job market in a year when there were a lot of jobs open in my particular field and that required my particular skills.

That being said though, if I hadn't come up with a plan of attack, put myself out there and made an effort to ensure I had a strong and competitive cv, I would still be wallowing in postdoc misery and subsisting on a paltry postdoc salary.

It's well past my bedtime and I'm certain that none of the above is coherent so take from it what you will.