Every spring, Joe Black, our exceedingly generous Assistant Graduate Director, holds a job search panel to discuss tips for obtaining an academic job in an ever tightening market. Below are some tips he bestowed just last week. Please contribute any information I may have missed or advice from your own experiences. Thanks!
1.) Begin the application process in early summer. You will rewrite your cover letter and other materials many times and will want several eyes to view your drafts. Also, you will want your academic references to have plenty of time to write you thoughtful letters.
2.) Gather sample documents such as cover letters and CVs from J. Black's office to use as templates and for inspiration.
3.) Nurture the reciprocity that will likely occur between your cover letter and introduction to your dissertation. As you write your letter, you will likely find language that sums up accurately and succinctly your overall project. Use this process to more elegantly craft your introduction and any other documents wherein you describe your work. You may also find that writing your letter will help you better articulate your project to others.
4.) When looking at job listings, consider how the profession categorizes jobs and write your application accordingly. While 3-4 lines will never truly describe who we are as teachers and scholars, we, temporarily at least, will need to fit in a slot.
5.) Contact the graduate dossier service in SEPTEMBER. Historically, they have been very helpful in getting new and lost information to schools very quickly and with little notice. Emergencies like missing letters, etc. always come up.
6.) Prepare ahead for phone interviews. It's helpful to have one sheet of paper in front of you with the following things listed in clear, readable language:
a.) 3-4 unique things you like about their program
b.) the specific language used to describe your dissertation and teaching philosophy
c.) a list of THEIR catalogued classes that you are qualified to teach
d.) a brief description of what you can uniquely bring to their program
7.) Keep the following things in mind when doing in-person interviews:
a.) Don't take notes during the actual interview! Its better to make eye contact throughout and take notes afterward, in your hotel room, when you have time to reflect on the experience.
b.) Have application materials ready to hand out: sample syllabi, writing sample, etc.
c.) Send a thank you email to your interviewers afterward.
Finally, here are some additional tips to keep in mind:
a.) When sending any application documents via email, send them as pdf files so as to avoid formatting problems.
b.) Sometimes jobs come up in the spring! Make sure you look at the job list throughout the whole school year, not just in the fall.
c.) Practice giving job talks with Joe Black and anyone else that will listen to you. The more comfortable you are with your material, the more confident and qualified you will seem during the talk.
d.) Hiring committees read the applications they receive very quickly. Make sure your materials get to the point quickly and are error-free. Don't give the committee a reason to not look at your application in more depth.
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Everything in this article is excellent advice! Absolutely start getting your materials together in early summer; job deadlines are getting earlier and earlier. Some schools are requesting that materials be in-hand by Oct. 1; that's an incredibly short amount of time if you start in September.
Also, when it comes to recommendation letters, it helps tremendously to have someone who can speak to your teaching skills. Talk to an advisor or a professor that you TA for; see if they would be willing to observe you several times over the course of a term. Get them to talk about your teaching strengths in their letter; it's something that can be extremely helpful in securing a job.
You'll need copies of your transcripts to send to some schools; obtain several offical copies from your undregraduate and graduate institutions so you can send them to the schools that ask for them.
Make sure that your CV is as up-to-date as possible; if you do a conference over the summer, make sure that you put the presentation on your CV before you send it out! Joe Black is also an excellent resoruce for editing CVs; he will help you streamline your CV so that it is quick to read.
Don't discount postdoctoral fellowships! They often pay really well and can be a good CV builder, as well as a good way to earn income while looking for a tenure-track position. There are some excellent ones out there. Just keep in mind that postdocs often ask for a lot more material than regular jobs, so you want to start on those applications even earlier. Postings for postdocs are often up in August and have a deadline of early October.
The dossier service, which used to be housed in Goodell, is actually transferring to an online portfolio service called Interfolio. Their website is here: https://www.interfolio.com/index.cfm?event=signup.fullaccount
There's a yearly fee for belonging to Interfolio, but it's certainly no more than you would pay for all the mailings that you would send out, and Interfolio does that for you.
I don't know if the old dossier service will still be staffed, or where they will be; they have a lot of previously opened files that are still active, but they are not accepting any new files as of July 2010.