More job-wiki angst

A friend called me today in job-wiki-induced despair - someone has posted getting an on-campus interview (arranged 11/7) for the only position she's applied for, and she hasn't heard anything yet. She is in a seriously seriously sucky job right now and she was desperate for this position to work out. What can I say to her? On the one hand, nothing's over till it's over, they may still contact her, one never knows. That's the "I want to cheer her up" response, but is it responsible? Because chances are good that no, they're not going to be in touch. Then again, they might. But can she count on that? Probably not. There's no good response.

The silver lining to this cloud (admittedly, not one my friend will appreciate) is that it reminds me that I'm lucky to have been on a search committee/in a department undertaking searches, because it really does help give some perspective that it's not about you. My friend has never been on a search committee and her department hasn't run any searches since she's been there, and she's convinced (I think) that because she sent in her book manuscript as a writing sample, and now hasn't got an on-campus, her book ms. therefore is a problem, isn't good. That she herself is a failure, that this is a judgment on her abilities and value as a scholar/teacher. That her book must be bad if they're not interviewing her. I'm trying to figure out how to tell her, honey, it's not about your book, it's not about your teaching, it's not about you.

As an applicant, you never know what the department really wants; hell, the department probably doesn't know what it really wants. Even when a department writes a really detailed, specific position description,  is SURE that it wants x, y, and z, there are always decisions to be made among the candidates that present themselves.

Say a school's hiring a medievalist. They want someone who specializes in the medieval Mediterranean, who can also teach early modern Europe, and ideally can offer courses in gender history. That's a pretty specific charge (especially when compared with a hire in plain old "medieval Europe"!).

But you, the candidate, may not know exactly what that charge is. You apply in good faith, and end up not getting the job not because you're a poor scholar/teacher/person, but because you just don't fit what the department wants.

For instance, they may not end up articulating all their interests in the job description. Maybe the preference for gender history is just a departmental zeitgeist and not something they think to put in the ad (in interests of succinctness or whatever) (I mean, after all, some job ads are just poorly written). Thus someone who doesn't teach gender can legitimately apply, and can be a good candidate, but there may be someone with the same qualifications who does teach gender who will look more attractive to the committee.

Or maybe their dean doesn't understand that a "medieval Europe" position will net 100+ applicants, is worried about the depth of the pool, and makes them leave out the Mediterranean requirement, or soften it to "preference for" medieval Mediterranean. You, a scholar of medieval Denmark, happily apply, probably thinking you have a better chance than you really do. Not getting that job is not about you.

But say that their ad does in fact state "medieval Europe, specialty in the Mediterranean, ability to teach early modern Europe and gender history." Such an ad will eliminate a lot of applicants who would have applied for a vanilla "medieval Europe" position (or it should, and if you are a scholar of medieval Denmark with an outside field in ancient history who applies anyway, well, it shouldn't be a surprise that you don't get the position).

Even with such a specific charge, there will still be tons of decisions to make that you can't know about and that aren't about you. Would the department/search committee prefer someone who researches Spain or someone who researches the Balkans? Someone who can cover European exploration/expansion, or someone who can do Islamic world? Someone whose focus is religious, intellectual, or economic? Do they think it's better to hire someone who went to a CC, a SLAC, or an Ivy? Which would they rather see, a candidate who has extensive conference/publication experience or someone with less experience but who has oodles of potential (e.g., went through grad school lickety-split, got cool fellowships, has letters of recommendation that could illuminate Manhattan)? Chances are good that a given department/school has a preference for one or the other, but it's hardly something that will show up in a job ad. Do they think a single person is likely to enjoy the camaraderie of the department and the cultural/recreational opportunities that the area offers, or that someone who's married with kids will appreciate the low cost of living and good school system (and yes, I know that it's illegal to ask someone about this kind of thing in hiring, but believe me, hiring committees think about it)? These are all arbitrary/hypothetical examples, but you cannot know how a search committee will decide on these  kinds of questions, and such questions will arise.

It's true that you can often figure out a lot from the job ad and the nature of the institution. Harvard is more likely (though not guaranteed) to hire someone with an Ivy Ph.D. than someone whose degree is from Midwestern Branch U. Chances are good, though, that by the time you've earned your Ph.D. there's not a whole hell of a lot you can do about this. A school with a 4-4 load, of which three are sections of Western Civ, is likely to favor someone who already has some proven experience teaching heavy loads/survey courses - which doesn't mean that if you don't have that experience you shouldn't apply, but you'll have to think of a way to convince the committee that you'd be able to handle the load anyway. But even though there are some things you can and should be able to figure out, you can never know everything about what a search committee wants.

To give an example from my own experience: when Former College ran the search that hired me, there were three people on the search committee. Although the job ad defined the position only as "medieval," two of the three ended up rejecting anyone with my regional specialty, because of what they believed were the needs of the department. The third member saw the needs of the department differently. In the first round of the search, the committee divided up applications and each had the responsibility of choosing which candidates they thought were worth considering further - meaning that each had the power to consign candidates to oblivion in that first round. It was pure chance that my application ended up in the third committee member's pile; if it had landed in either of the other committee members' piles, my application wouldn't have gone any further. But it didn't end up in their piles, it did go further, and I got a phone interview, then an on-campus interview, then the job. Now, in hindsight that may not have been a good thing! But my point is that what divides finalists in a job search from those who don't make the cut is probably nothing to do with you and all about them.

In any case, what I mean is: even when they have a clear idea of what they want, search committees are always going to have to choose between different qualifications/characteristics among their candidates. Because they choose one qualification over another does not make that qualification objectively better than the other. No one candidate can be/do all things. It's not a question of one candidate lacking something - it's just that people are different, and can't possibly be all things to all search committees. One group of people reading applications will go for one quality, another group would favor another. Just because a search committee decides they want something else does NOT mean there's anything wrong with you - it's just the way the world works.

I think it's easy for applicants to fall into the trap of thinking, "If I could offer courses in EVERYTHING, I would be a great candidate! I should be able to embody ALL desirable characteristics!" But you just, just, just CAN'T. Sure, maybe you can legitimately sell yourself as someone able to teach ancient, medieval, and early modern history, northern and southern and eastern Europe, Islam, European exploration, as well gender/political/religious/economic history. I think most hiring committees would wonder whether you actually cover any one thing in any depth at all, but maybe you can make that case (though I really doubt you can make the case that you can do research in all those things). Even then, you can't be the perfect candidate for all people. You can't simultaneously be a hot young thing fresh out of grad school, oozing potential , and a mature, experienced candidate with a proven track record. You can't simultaneously be a footloose and fancy free single person who will love the local nightlife, and someone with a family who will put down roots in the community. You can't simultaneously declare research the most important thing in your life and teaching the most important thing in your life.

In short: not getting a job is not about you. It does not mean you're a bad scholar/teacher/person. It means you're not what that committee wants at that time in that institution. While it's true that when you apply for positions you need to tailor your application to the needs of the institution, this only goes so far. You can spin your qualifications, but you can't create them out of thin air, and you can't know what particular spin will appeal most to a particular school. You are far better off being the best "you" that you possibly can, than trying to be a zillion different things at once  in order to try to appeal to everyone.

This doesn't mean that getting rejected from a job doesn't suck. It does suck. It sucks for everyone, if in different ways. It sucks for someone like my friend, whose current situation is incredibly desperately crappy. It especially sucks for people finishing their degrees or in one-year positions, who need a job. It can determine where you do (or don't) live, what you do (or don't) teach, the future trajectory (if any) of your career.

But it shouldn't make you think you're a bad scholar/teacher/person. Because it's really not you - it's them.

(This isn't to say that there isn't anything that you, as a candidate, can do to screw up your chances of getting a particular position. You certainly can - but what will kill your chances of getting one job might well make you an even stronger candidate for another. Unfortunately, you just can't always know which one of those things you're doing.)

Comments

[Sally]

Many large public universities are not permitted to hire someone who does not fit the position description. If the ad states that someone must have a specific degree or a field of expertise, or must teach certain classes, they cannot hire someone who does not meet that requirement (or pass over those who do meet it in favor of someone who does not, no matter how spectacular their accomplishments). I think many job applicants do not understand this about public universities with lots of bureaucracy tying their hands during searches. There is a lot more flexibility at some places than at others. It is helpful to highlight in your letter the ways in which you fit the qualifications listed in the ad.

[k8]

Thanks for writing this! This is my first time on the job market (in English) and posts like this really help to demystify the process.

[Belle]

I think this is a great post; your emphasis on the non-personal angle is the hardest to accept, but the most likely factor. It's truly not about you. It just always feels like it is.

[Ancarett]

Good post, NK. You're right that there are so many things going on in departments during the move to hire, from defining the position to determining the short list to actually signing the candidates.

I've been on so many hiring committees (it's actually a relief to have not been on board with the last few departmental hires!) and I've seen hirings resolve in ways far different from what we originally expected. And they almost always take far longer than we would like. But the sad thing is that we look at those staggering piles of applications and usually think "there but for the grace of whatever go I".

It's the truth that any one of us could be the one behind that hopeful and promising pile of papers we're not considering. Say we find three or four applicants who've got experience in transatlantic topics when we'd only thought to hire an early modern Europeanist. Hmmm! Maybe that's the direction we want to go. Or finding some one who can liase with the Native Studies program, hmmm! And those decisions, by their very nature, end up excluding lots of really great prospects from further consideration.

So, NK's right, people. It's not about you. Really, truly!

[psycgirl]

Thank you so much for writing this! I honestly had no idea that it worked this way, and I'm so glad I will now when I go on the market.

[meansomething]

I'm going to bookmark this post, and so should everyone who will ever be on the job market again. This is why graduate students should have the opportunity to sit on hiring committees. It gives you a sense of what things you can control to some extent and of the many, many things that you can't possibly know when you're the candidate. Thanks, NK!

[Another medieval professor]

Great advice, NK--I couldn't have said it better. But I could say the exact same thing because I have sat on a search committee EVERY YEAR I have been at my position (I'm still on tenure track and there have been retirements). It has nothing to do with you at all. In fact, our college is currently running a search for a most SATURATED field of history, one that will probably generate applications over a 100, and the damn job ad is general. And I know why it is general. We left it open to avoid narrowing the pool unnecessarily because we do want a specific sub field but we also would like to have more than that, and to craft an ad to such an extent would probably discourage a number of people from applying.
Also, I cannot emphasize the personalities on any particular search committee. I have worked with every member of our department and sometimes the candidates I think are fabulous and deserve the job are NOT the same as the ones desired by others on the committee. You wouldn't believe the warped sense of reality. "I just can't hire him--he would annoy me with his indecision." !!!!
Power goes to some people's heads. It really is not about you as a candidate. Never, never, never take it personally.
And by the way, regarding that damn job wiki, I have heard that some candidates intentionally post false information on it to "psych out" other candidates. So, your friend may not be out of the running...

[historyprof]

Many of these ads are just perfunctory exercises so that the department can hire someone from the inside -- the spouse of a colleague, a friend, a lecturer, or someone they already had in mind for the position. This person actually may be OUTSIDE the advertised field. I interviewed for a position in intellectual history and it went to a MILITARY HISTORIAN, a guy who had taught there in the past and was a friend of someone's in the department. It's a really frustrating process.

[Matt Gabriele]

Thanks, New Kid. This clarifies a lot of what I've always suspected.

[New Kid on the Hallway]

You know, historyprof, I'm not going to say that such things never happen, that there aren't schools where the ad has nothing to do with who actually gets hired and that hire in a skeevy way, but I don't think it actually happens that often. I think most departments know by now that they can get sued for this kind of thing, and even if the department will go for it, the Dean and HR won't. And while there is the spectre of the inside candidate, I think profession-wide that's balanced by the departments who consider someone who's already been in the position used goods, and would never hire the temporary person for the t-t job.

I have been at schools that had some preference for hiring temporary people onto tenure-track, but 1) such people always fit the job description (and not because the department wrote it to fit the person they wanted) and 2) those schools were SLACs that really really REALLY valued "fit" and for which getting along with faculty/students were really really big criteria. If they hired a temp person into such a position, it was because their experience with that person provided concrete evidence that yes, that person would fit in with the community/students. They certainly didn't hire all temp people into the t-t positions that opened up, and they never automatically did so - all candidates were given full consideration.

Thing is, though, I think it's a department's prerogative to hire the inside candidate if they're convinced that person is the best one for the job. Yes, if a school really is running a sham search and really isn't going to consider anyone else, well, that really sucks. But I actually don't know of any school that's done that, even if after the fact, when they hire the inside candidate, it might feel that way (obviously searching in one field and hiring something else is different).

My sense is that in a lot of cases, if a school has someone in a temporary position and they want that person to take the permanent position, they can convert the position without running a national search (as long as the person was originally hired in a national search. If the person got hired in a "we need someone to teach a section of Western Civ, let's call up Joe" way, then they usually need to go through the national search process, unless the school can make an argument for a "target of opportunity," i.e. here's someone who's so perfect and so rare that we can't miss that chance. I see this latter usually used in terms of diversifying faculty).

So short response: it sucks if a school strings candidates along without ever intending to consider them seriously. But I don't think that happens very often, even if the inside candidate is the one who gets hired. It's just the case that if you've already worked somewhere, you have much more information to go on when you're writing your application than even the most diligent outside candidate, and thus you can tailor your application in a way that outsiders can't. This can't guarantee a job, but I'm sure it helps.

[Navel Gazer]

Thanks for the great post. After 2 years on the job market and NO job (one-year or tt or adjunct), I've been told so many times that it isn't personal. It certainly feels like it some times. Especially the time when I was the only person interviewed and they hired a recent graduate instead... But, I really liked your post and its nice to hear it again.

Just a small word in defense of the job wiki (since this is called "job-wiki angst"). I would so much rather know that I didn't get an interview than think I was in contention months after they've hired someone. My angst from the job-wiki is brief, my angst before the job-wiki was long, involved, and worse. For your friend, can she still apply for other jobs, now that she knows? Can she apply for post-docs or other fellowships? Will this help her move on?

[Notorious Ph.D]

Wise words, NK. But job-seeking angst is never reasonable.

I'm actually glad there was no job wiki when I was on the market. I think I would have made myself crazy.

[sm]

"As an applicant, you never know what the department really wants; hell, the department probably doesn't know what it really wants."

You really understand this when you see it as a member of a committee in another department, where all you can do is try to interpret what the in-department members are saying.

As for that other kind of deceptive ad: I once applied for an entry level job at an Ivy, and they hired the most qualified senior medievalist in North America.

[Paris]

The Ivys hire whoever they want - I get the impression that most ads are just fishing to see who among the high and mighty might be interested. Example 1: the Berkeley Latin position.

The Wiki is unearthing more medievalists that need to read this post (& lots more on academia) by the day. I almost don't want to contribute to it anymore.

[historyprof]

The 2006-07 wiki contains a position that was filled by someone already in the department, in my field. It definitely happens.

[Shane in Utah]

One thing about this post really puzzles me: if NK's friend is so desperate to leave the "seriously sucky job," why did she only apply for one job? When I was desperate to leave my own Former University, I applied one year for 60 positions (no joke). For all the reasons NK points out, there's no reason not to apply for every position that even vaguely fits your own qualifications.

Another product of the fact that departments don't always know what they want is that sometimes they hire someone very different from what they thought they were looking for. In my own case, Former U. was looking for someone to teach multicultural American lit. My area was postcolonial/African lit, but my secondary specialization was multiculti American, and I saw from FU's web site that they didn't have a postcolonialist, so I figured, why not? I guess they were intrigued by my credentials, gave me an interview, and I ended up getting the job.

In short: you never know, so apply for everything...

[Rebecca]

I just want to say, the job wiki is full of shit. I can say that uncategorically, as I've watched completely false rumors spread about our nineteenth-century U.S. job at Rice.

[wiccachicky]

You are very right here -- I am currently the chair of a search in our department and we have weird considerations that we couldn't put in a job ad - like specific schools the admin have said they will approve based on where a degree was earned, how the degree program ranks in comparison to others, and then of course, departmental needs in teaching in addition to that overall question of "fit" -- it's given me a lot of perspective on my own choices to apply for jobs elsewhere, and makes it not as hard to face rejection as a result! I hope many folks on the job market read your post.

[New Kid on the Hallway]

historyprof, I'm not saying that departments don't hire from people who are already there - the question is, did they hire that person through a legitimate search or did they stack the deck? That's hard to know unless you're actually there.

I mean, unless the ad asks for 20th c. US and they hire colonial Africa or something, which is obviously bogus. And yeah, that does happen, but I really don't think it's that common, because of the legal implications. If a school advertises for an east Asian person, and hire an east Asian person who's already working there, well, I don't think that's illegitimate. If they knew they wanted to hire the person, why go through the trouble of the search?

I'm not saying there aren't goofy f-ed up searches. But I think it's safer to assume there are factors you don't know about in a department rather than to assume that all committees are gaming the system.

But it may be, too, that I've just been lucky in my own experiences with searches.

Shane in Utah - well, my friend would have to be the one to answer that. My sense is that this was the only job that was more desirable to her than her current position, as much as she hates her current position - she's really only interested working at a relatively narrowly-defined institution. Myself, I'd apply for a lot more places, but you know, everyone has to decide for themselves what they're willing to do/not do.

Rebecca, I can totally believe that. I check out the job wiki to see if people are reporting interviews etc., but the gossip stuff seems pretty wildly speculative. I have a completely unscientific theory that the more competitive the field, the higher heat to light ratio you're ending up with. ;-)

[historyprof]

NK -- both. At the risk of self-identifying: The person was already there. They did a national search which ended up taking a long time. Ultimately it went to the dept person, whose area of expertise absolutely was the advertised field/s, no problem there and everything looks legit. But in my opinion the deck was stacked for this person from day 1. I'm still a bit insulted about NOT getting an interview ... I was absolutely 100% qualified wiht a solid vita and even had a nice "inside" connection to the committee. Frankly, for me not to get an interview was stunning. But maybe I'm just being arrogant. The whole thing pissed me off so much that I probably will never apply for another job again. I'll be here for the next 25 yrs, which is OK, but not perhaps me reaching my full potential. Whatever. :)

[New Kid on the Hallway]

Hey, thanks again for the positive responses, everyone, especially since a certain blogger apparently finds this post "too neurotic" for him. It's nice of someone in a field with lots of available positions to pass judgment on the state of mind of people in fields where the market is much, much worse, isn't it?