Launching the Successful Academic Job Search -
From 1st-Year Graduate Student
to Senior Post-Doctorate

Colleen Cosgrove Hegg, Ph.D.
Michigan State University

Acquiring an academic faculty position will be a difficult endeavor in today’s job market, but certainly not impossible. Often, newly hired faculty attribute success in a job search to luck and serendipity. However, luck comes easier to those that are hardworking and prepared. This column will describe the preparation required for submitting the job application. One good all encompassing resource you should consider obtaining is The Academic Job Search Handbook¹.

Succeeding in the job search requires 1) knowledge of yourself, including your strengths, weaknesses, and priorities; 2) knowledge of the search committee, department, and institute that will employ you; as well as 3) knowledge of the process and mechanics of a job search.

Knowledge of Self

Ideally, the job search should start the moment you enter graduate school with a self assessment. You should begin to think about the following:

• What are your long-term career goals?
• What motivates you? What do you need for personal and professional satisfaction?
• In what environment do you work best?
• What are your skills? Do you possess the skills required to be successful?
• How competitive are you?
• Do you like teaching?

For early graduate students it is important to start networking, gain teaching experience, and to think strategically about dissertation topics. For instance, if you know that your ideal job would be at a small liberal arts school, then you should consider using a model system that would be conducive to research by multiple undergraduate students. If an industrial position is what you desire, you should consider joining a lab that has a history of placing students in industry. Start developing relationships with people who could be good references.

Midway through your graduate career, begin to ask yourself questions such as:

• What do you want in your career?
• What’s out there? What options do I have?
• What jobs fit my skills? What skills are required for your desired job?

Strive to obtain experience that will set you apart from others. If teaching experience is expected, ask to participate in the planning of coursework or try innovative teaching methods of which you may have heard. Service and leadership are expected from faculty members, and it would behoove you to volunteer to be on committees. Many departments and societies have student representatives on committees. Participation in these activities is a good opportunity to widen your network. Browse the ads to find a posting that excites you; then make sure that you have or will obtain the requisite skills.

Finally in your post-doctorate, you should begin focusing your questions:

• Which organizations are a good fit?
• What is the size and type of institution at which you would like to be?
• What topics do you feel comfortable teaching?
• What do I need to do to be competitive?
• Are there lifestyle and personal issues that will influence your search?
• Do you have dual-career considerations?

If a dual-career search is in your future, there is an additional set of questions you should be asking with your partner. Julia Vick Miller and Jennifer S. Furlong¹ suggest:

• If you are in very similar fields, will you both apply for the same jobs?
• How are you going to feel if you end up competing against each other?
• How far apart are you willing to live? Can you afford to maintain two households?
• What will you do if you receive jobs on opposite sides of the country?

In addition, Ellen Ostrow² recommends knowing the answers to:

• "Should one of you give up [an] offer for the sake of staying together?
• And if you want to stay together, which offer is better?
• Whose career should take precedence?"

Ideally, you’ll have the answers to these questions long before you begin your job search.
These types of questions should be revisited throughout your career because the answers may change with time. The bottom line is that you should know what you want and what you need to do to get it.

Knowledge of the Search Committee, Department, and Institute

The ability to hire a tenure-track faculty member can be a hard-won prize, especially in this financial climate. Once a department has the authority to hire a new faculty member the job advertisement is made. A job posting may describe a need or desire to build-up a particular specialty area or possibly fill a gap in the department’s range of expertise. Sometimes it can be a “fishing expedition” where applications from both junior and senior levels in an unspecified area are requested. In this case, the search committee is looking for the best possible candidate. Junior candidates should not be discouraged from applying because you will not be directly compared with people more senior to you. Oftentimes, although a department is advertising for a specific area of interest, a strong candidate in another specialty area will still be considered.

Next, a search committee will be formed with the main purpose of identifying potential candidates from the hundreds of applications.

Knowledge of the Process and Mechanics of a Job Search

The Actual Application
Many things can be requested in a job advertisement. Based on a survey of 30 life science-related faculty postings from Science Magazine and the Chronicles of Higher Education, all advertisements requested a curriculum vitae (CV) and a letter of application/cover letter. A description of future research plans/interests was requested by 70% of the advertisements, and letters of reference were requested by 57%. This number is probably low, however, because some search committees will only request references from their short list of applicants. Other items requested less frequently were a teaching philosophy, reprints, transcripts, and descriptions of possible courses you could teach.

As the search committee is leafing through hundreds of applications, the first two items that will be read are the cover letter and CV. The cover letter should be one page and should be tailored for each position and department. It is a synopsis of why you are applying for the position, your research experiences, your future research goals and plans, and how you fit into the department. It is important to provide specific examples of how your research interests would complement that of the department. For example, if you think there are faculty with whom collaborations could occur, name them.

The CV is one of the first documents that will be read, so it is important that it gives a good first impression. You can format and order the CV to highlight your strengths. For instance, if the position is primarily for teaching undergraduates, you’d want to format the CV so that your teaching experience is first; likewise, if the position is in a research institution, you’ll want your grant support up front on the first page.

The research statement should be a persuasive agenda of your research that clearly and succinctly describes why your research must be done. It should provide a description of the problems you seek to answer and the context and importance of these problems to the field. It should have your short-term goals and possible outcomes. If you are planning on submitting to a funding agency, list your timeline for expected submission and a brief outline of your proposal. If possible, the research plan should be tailored to each institution (for instance, indicating possible collaborations).

Finally, it is important to keep your references informed of where you are applying and whether they need to provide letters. One strategy to stay organized is to create a spreadsheet with details about the institution, department, research interests of the job posting, address to send the letters, due date of the application, and items to send.

There are many resources and workshops that can help you create these documents. It might be helpful to attend workshops prior to when you begin the application process, so that you have plenty of time to obtain feedback. As many job advertisements are posted in the fall, you should begin gathering your application materials in the early summer at the latest. Again, it is important to have your network of mentors read your application materials to provide insight.

Typical Job Search Time Line
In September, about one year from the anticipated start date, you should begin to look for postings and to send in applications. There are many sources for job postings depending on your field. Conferences, publications, and the good old-fashioned networking are also good resources for jobs. You should apply to all jobs that are in your specialty area or close to your specialty area, taking into consideration your preferences in geography, department, and type of institute. The only job you are guaranteed not to get is the one to which you do not apply.

Once you have applied, the work doesn’t stop. You should prepare for the possible phone interviews and get your job talk together. Interviews usually occur between late October and May. There are many resources available for preparation for the interview and negotiation stages of the job search (see below).

Final Thoughts

In addition to being a hard working scientist with good ideas and the ability to communicate those ideas, early planning and careful preparation are the keys to a successful job search. As Louis Pasteur said, “Chance favors the prepared...”

References

¹Vick,  J.M. and J.S. Furlong. The Academic Job Search Handbook (4th ed.). Univ. Pennsylvania Press, 2008.
²Ostrow, E. How to Cope on the Market as an Academic Couple. Chronicle of Higher Education, Feb. 2003. http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2003/02/2003021701c.htm

COMMENTS:

This is a very comprehensive guide to the interview process from start to finish! Another potential resource which may often be overlooked is the website for the Department of Human Resources at an Institution or University. Human Resource websites may contain faculty recruitment, interviewing, and selection guides for their campus. These guides often contain potential interview questions for both phone and on-campus interviews, and may also include a guideline for the faculty interview process at that institution.
Barbara Alexander
University of Mississippi Medical Center

This article provides a very helpful goal-focused strategy for considering jobs in academia. In interviewing at several universities for academic positions over the past couple of years, I learned that it is very important to be knowledgeable about the university and specific department to which you will be applying. Several key pieces of information can be acquired by reading through the university and department web pages – which can then be incorporated into your application materials – such as the mission statement of the university, specific department mission statements, goals of the department in terms of scholarship and teaching, and research of the current faculty. By including a cover letter, research statement, and teaching statement that are focused on how your strengths complement a specific department will give the search committee the impression that you are serious about the SPECIFIC job that has been advertised (not simply focused on landing ANY job). Additionally, be prepared to discuss how you see yourself integrated into the university and specific department during your phone or on-site interview.
Angela Grippo
Northern Illinois University

QUESTIONS:

How do you know when you are ready to apply for a faculty position?
Are there certain benchmarks you should meet, or should this decision be based solely on time in your postdoctoral position?

The time to apply for faculty positions is when you have a clear vision for the research program you want to develop.  Ultimately, when you begin as a faculty in a research institution, you should be ready to perform independent research.  In order to do this, you should have an idea of the research program you are going to develop.  This plan should encompass the next 5 years and should include crucial experiments you are going to perform as soon as you arrive to get preliminary data to submit a grant.  It should include a plan for how to overcome possible problems you may encounter.  The development of a vision for a research program is going to vary among individuals as well as in different fields of study.

Other benchmarks that would be important to meet prior to application is the acquisition of independent funding for research, either as a post-doctoral fellowship, and possibly even small grants for your research. 

How do you address weaknesses in your CV such as low number of publications?

There are many ways one could address a weakness such as low publication numbers without outright identifying the weakness in words. How you address such a weakness will depend on the individual situation.  If, for example, the research project you were working on was very exploratory and risky, and as a result the number of publications was low, then you might consider emphasizing the high-risk nature of your research in your cover letter.  If the low publications rate is not because of anything you’ve done, you might ask one of the people writing a letter of recommendation if they would be able to bring up this issue, highlighting it in a positive way.  If, for example, you have many publications that are in preparation, then incorporate that into your CV, and perhaps provide drafts to be submitted along with your application.

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