Entries Tagged 'The Academic Job Calendar' ↓

For those of you who couldn’t make the orientation session (with its drive-by overview of the market timeline, what materials you’ll need, etc.), the video for the “lecture” portion of the overview is available here. It’s approximately 34 minutes. You should right-click to download and view it offline so it’ll run faster.

The Previous Spring:           

Contact letter writers.  Set up dossier with credentials office. Begin drafting cover letter and dissertation abstract.  Join the MLA if you haven’t already. (See Summer Checklist post)

September:

First, if you didn’t ask for letters of recommendation last spring, ask right away when classes begin. Set up your dossier (see post on how to do that). Begin reading the Chronicle of Higher Education for job ads.  Spent major time writing job letter dissertation paragraph and draft some generic teaching paragraphs. Make sure your CV is complete (and attend a CV workshop with us). Choose your writing samples and start polishing them. Budget for MLA. Distribute application materials (drafts of cover letter(s), abstracts, vitae, and statements of teaching philosophy) to advisor and others for feedback. Follow up with writers of letters of recommendation if you did contact them last spring.  You may also wish to start making MLA travel plans by the end of this month.  (You get better deals on hotel and airfare that way.) 

Last Friday in September:

This is usually the day when the MLA begins posting job ads on-line. You can access the Job Information List through www.ade.org.  You will need a password that the Department can provide (I’ll send that to you all via e-mail).  These ads continue to be updated weekly. 

October:

You will want to keep working on your job materials through the first part of the month.  Check to ensure that the dossier is complete, and contact those who have letters of recommendation outstanding. Most ads have application deadlines of Nov. 1-15.  Some will ask for a dossier up front, and a few will even ask for writing samples.  Continue to check the Chronicle for other ads.  Begin preparing materials to send out.  If possible, begin sending out applications in late October.

November:

Continue to respond to advertisements.  By the second half of the month, you may start receiving requests for writing samples.  Don’t forget to continue checking the Chronicle.  We will be contacting you about scheduling a mock interview. Some schools may have phone interviews. 

December:            

Requests may continue for writing samples.  Departments usually begin calling and e-mailing to set up MLA interviews around the middle of the month. New ads continue to appear online. 

January:           

This is usually the earliest time that you may have a campus visit.  Departments that did not conduct MLA interviews may begin scheduling phone or video interviews.

February:           

February is often high season for campus visits.  However, departments will be in radically different stages of their searches.  Some will be running their ads, finally. Others will be reviewing applications or setting up first interviews. Some will be holding campus interviews. Others will be making offers.

March- May:

Many departments will be concluding their searches in March.  However, ads will still be appearing.  While many of the job advertisements that appear during these months are for one or two-year replacement positions, there are also tenure-track jobs that are advertised during these months.  Department chairs, particularly local ones, might write to chairs of graduate departments at this time.  A summer supplement to the Job Information List also appears in July.

Questions to Already Be Asking Yourself the Summer Before You Go on the Market:

Being on the market means answering the big questions about yourself as a scholar and teacher, about why you are in this field and what you hope to achieve in it. The summer is the perfect time to start working through your answers to those big questions. While I advocate jotting down your revelations (you will be repeating them in your job letter and at interviews later, I promise, and will kick yourself if you came up with something good and didn’t write it down!), you should AT LEAST be thinking through them casually.

•  At what stage are you with your dissertation? 
• If you got a job for next fall, would you be done? 
• What would you need to do to be ready? 
• Do you have funding for fall 2009?
• What’s your dream job?  And what are you willing to settle for? (think teaching load, research  or teaching focus, dept. size, state/private, small/large, region, types of courses you would teach, etc.)
• What, in terms anyone could understand, is your dissertation about and why is it important?
• How are you contributing to your field?
• If a potential employer walks away remembering only one or two things about you, what do you want those one or two things to be?
• What makes you a good teacher?
• What would make you a good colleague?
• What would be my best writing samples? (20-30 page samples, usually more toward the 20-page end)
• Do you have enough money to go on the market? (to get to MLA or other interviewing conferences and find lodging and food, to buy supplies, to pay postage, to be well dressed for interviews, etc.)

 Write, Write, Write:

 Recommendations: Write a preliminary and very polite e-mail to your recommenders (3-5, with 4 or 5 recommenders the ideal number) asking for letters for your job search. Follow up with a second e-mail the first week of the fall semester. Give recommenders an early October deadline even if applications aren’t due until November 1. Who do you ask to recommend you? Think variety. You need faculty (2 ideally) who can comment on your scholarship and contribution to your field, 1 or 2 to comment on your teaching (2 or more if you’re applying to teaching-focused schools), and another faculty recommender who may know you in another academic capacity (administrative work you may do, service work, leadership positions, or if you “straddle” fields a faculty member who can speak for the other area(s) you study).

 CV: If you don’t have a CV already, look at colleagues’ CVs and draft your first one. Cheryl and I will be happy to look at your CV, and we hope to have CV workshops in the fall for real-time help. In the meantime, make sure your CV is completely updated and look at the MLA’s website, “CV Doctor.” You can also find some sample layouts and content on this site.

Dissertation Abstracts: Even if you aren’t far along in your dissertation, write ONE paragraph about what your dissertation is about (often we write a description of what we wish our dissertation to be, not what it necessarily turns out to be, and that’s fine). Don’t worry if your description actually sounds like a better dissertation than what you think you’re writing – your description can help you make the dissertation better. After you have a paragraph, write 1 ½ to 2 pages maximum describing in more length your argument and what you accomplish in the chapters.

Teaching Philosophy Statements and Portfolios: If you haven’t already put together a teaching philosophy statement and portfolio, you’ll need to start at least with the statement and imagining what archives you would include to show how good a teacher you are. Many schools won’t ask for them, but some will.

 Job Letters: Begin looking at sample letters and drafting your own.  I recommend drafting paragraphs rather than whole “generic” letters, since each letter should be tailored to the institution. Some paragraphs can be pretty similar across the board, though, like the dissertation paragraph, the service paragraph, and to a certain extent anecdotes or main ideas expressed in your teaching paragraphs. We’ll discuss the structure of these letters in a workshop.

Buy Supplies

• address labels you can print in your computer printer
• printer cartridges and plenty of paper
• return address labels with your preferred name and address (hint: you can print 50 or more of these ahead of time and save yourself work later)
• white or yellow large envelopes to send materials OR express mail envelopes from the post office
• an organized file system with folders for: Job Ads, CVs, Job Letters & Drafts, Resources, ISU Dept. Letterhead, Abstracts, Writing Samples, Deadlines, and Interview Schedule.
• Grab a stack of dept. letterhead now while you’re thinking of it — but don’t be really obvious about it as the department only approved your use of letterhead for job searches last spring 2008.
• Resume paper for your CVs
• A schedule book if you don’t already use one. I also kept track of application deadlines and requested materials for each institution on a single sheet of paper and taped it to my wall, so I could see at a glance who needed materials and by when.

 Talk to Others

Ask colleagues in the department, friends in the program, past teachers, and even family and friends outside academe:

•  What do you think is special about me as a scholar and/or teacher?
• To your advisor: what do you see to be my strengths and weaknesses? This is how I see my work contributing to our field . . . what do you think?
• Will you (advisor, other faculty mentors, family, friends) read my job letter and tell me what you think? Non-academic readers can be especially helpful when it comes to clarity. Academic readers can also help you with structure.
• Will you ask me what my dissertation is about? It may feel awkward, but you need practice verbally describing your work to colleagues, family, and friends. 

The information below is compiled from Professor Robillard’s summary of the job search process in the Graduate Student Handbook as well as various resources collected by Katherine and Cheryl.

Stage 1: Gearing up and Goal setting

Late spring

• Seriously consider how ready you are for the market. Will you be finished with your dissertation by August of the next year? Does your advisor think you’ll be finished? Would you like to get your feet wet with a concentrated search before diving in the following year? 
• Meet with your advisor IN THE SPRING (remember that faculty often cannot or do not want to meet over the summer) to discuss start-up procedures, a timeline for helping you with materials, and developing your job strategy.
• Read over this blog and the schedule and materials of each stage. The more you know in advance about what’s coming, the more success you’ll have. 

What is a Job Strategy? Your Signature and Target.

A “signature” is that set of characteristics that helps distinguish one job candidate as unique among all others. You and your advisor should analyze what distinguishes or best characterizes you as a job candidate. Questions to ask yourself include:

• What exactly is your field? If you bridge disciplines, how would you describe what you do?
• How does your work intervene in and contribute to the field (or multiple fields)?
• How would you translate your teaching/service/administrative experiences into language that the search committee can understand?
• What are your special skills or strengths? (archival research, new media innovations, a kind of teaching strategy, publication record)