Like a lot of people, I suspect, I've heard the rumors about using the ad to screen out undesirables, but I have to say that I have never seen that sort of thing in action. You do get people inviting individuals to apply, but that's not exactly the same thing.
I do want to push back on the idea that the administration wouldn't permit it, though: this seems like the kind of thing that an administration would have to be on board with in the first place, if not actively promoting. Actually, to me it sounds like exactly the kind of thing a dean would dream up.
You may not want to hear this, but it is not at all uncommon for people not even to start looking seriously at the files until classes are over for the term. This is because 1). everybody's busy, so anything that can wait does and 2). nobody wants to read the files (I'm sorry) so even lots of people who have time will put it off as long as they can.
On the other hand, SC's were to provide their short lists to the APA for matching/scheduling by 12/2, so anyone still in limbo awaits word from an SC that's running behind.
There is no way in hell that some of these SCs provided short lists to the APA by the 2nd; some of these places didn't even advertise review of applications until the 1st. I'm not complaining; the Placement Service is so incompetent that it doesn't deserve to have other people meet its deadlines. At any rate, a cursory review of previous years' wikis will show you that many schools don't inform candidates of interviews until the second or third week of December.
At any rate, a cursory review of previous years' wikis will show you that many schools don't inform candidates of interviews until the second or third week of December.
This is correct. It is not convenient or satisfying, but it is correct. Wait.
I know of one dept that has met and made its list, but the list has to be approved by some deans or some such person. Different rules, different places.
I can also confirm that there is another department that has decided whom it would like to invite to an interview but is just really shy and afraid of rejection and has not worked up the courage to call yet.
What gives with New Mexico's selection of candidates? Based on their ad and my own profile, I was pretty sure I'd get an interview. Anyone have any special insight as to what they are looking for? (It is so damn unpredictable which schools will choose to interview you!)
11.46 - I can't help but feel the same way, though with such a small department, they may have had a very particular set of criteria they were looking for.
That and the fact that what *we* imagine a department is looking for may have little to do with what they're actually looking for.
Ah, New Mexico does sting a bit. I spent a lot of time on that application. BTW there are some unbelievable stories out there from that department's past, which are unsuitable even for Famae. Google will get you part of the way, or ask your senior colleagues.
Addendum: I mention this because the Whelp posits a secretive, but rational and fair process. We'd all like to believe that, of course, but for all we know, it could be a total shit show. Stranger things have happened.
Let's see. Classes are still going on at UNM. Applications were due Dec. 2. Does six days seem like enough time for a busy academic to read 3000 pages of writing samples and carefully consider a hundred "innovative" syllabi? Or even a third of that, if you throw out 2/3 of the applicants in a cursory way? Doesn't makes sense to me. Somehow I doubt that my application -- which arrived by Dec. 2 -- really received the "best consideration" which the ad promised.
Does six days seem like enough time for a busy academic to read 3000 pages of writing samples and carefully consider a hundred "innovative" syllabi? Or even a third of that, if you throw out 2/3 of the applicants in a cursory way?
Right, most committees will not have everyone read everything, for exactly this reason. You divide it up. You can also toss out a number that have nothing to do with the position advertised—there is always a significant number of those.
Then there are other ways of excluding files that one might be tempted to use.
If a person were to sound deranged or arrogant in the cover letter, that'd do it: people work hard on their letters, and if at the end of all that they still sound like someone it would drive you nuts to have to interact with on a daily basis, that's a good sign that they're pretty committed to being deranged or arrogant. (I'm not talking about "eccentric" or "a little smug"; I'm talking about talking about your pets in your letter or referring to your own work as "brilliant" or "trailblazing"). That'd knock out a few files.
If a person's research as presented in the letter or the abstract were to sound tedious or trivial or obtuse (not that that's ever the case, of course!) I'd be inclined, on the basis of experience, to expect that the writing sample would probably bear out that initial impression.
Likewise, if I couldn't tell from the letter or abstract what a person's research is, what its results are, and why it matters, I'd be strongly inclined not to investigate the file further.
Unfortunately, applying these criteria to the cover letter and dissertation abstract could eliminate a significant number of applications.
Now, could you be discarding some applications from people who would have been great candidates but just wrote a poor letter and abstract? Sure. But you're probably going to have more than enough people who'd be great in the pool that remains. And if you end up with a pool you're not entirely happy with, you could always go back and take a closer look to files you set aside earlier.
To follow up Anonymous at 3:10: the closing date for a search certainly doesn't mean when a committee *begins* reviewing files - it's the date after which new files will cease to be accepted. A committee will begin reviewing the files as they come in, meaning that early files get more attention than late ones. (This has certainly been the case on the search committees I've served on.) I certainly don't have any insight about what is going on at New Mexico, but as a general rule, it's always better to get in applications as early as you possibly can.
They take the abstracts that were accepted and try to group them into panels that make sense. Maybe there weren't enough Roman epic abstracts that got accepted, or maybe they were distributed to other panels ("The Poetics of Whining in Antiquity," "Remembering Dismemberment" etc.).
For what it's worth, over the weekend I was speaking with a (non-ancient) colleague who last year was considered for a tenure-track job in another department at UNM, and he said the salary was something like $20,000. I know a job's a job, but if this current position pays that low one would probably be better off with a VAP elsewhere.
Since there are obviously a few faculty out there who are experienced in the ways of search committees, I have a question, one that can only be asked in a setting that permits anonymity. I am curious about the extent to which age discrimination is present in our field. I know several people who are 35 or older and well deserving of tenure-track jobs, but now get passed over routinely in favor of more junior (i.e. youthful and/or inexperienced) candidates and are stuck with VAP positions or else leave the field. (I'm sure we all can think of examples of both.)
A few years ago the APA had a panel on age discrimination. While I did not attend, I've heard it was well attended, especially by department chairs, and that a good number of people there expressed surprise that it is illegal to not consider someone because of his/her age. My guess is that many of those who have done so consider themselves good people, and would never do the same thing to a gay/lesbian, female, or minority applicant, but won't think twice about excluding someone past his/her mid-thirties.
So, I'd welcome insights, anecdotes, etc. about the extent to which this goes on, whether those who opt against older candidates does so with the knowledge that it is a form of job discrimination, etc. Do deans ever encourage departments to look at more seasoned candidates, just as they so obviously encourage departments to make sure there are some women interviewed? And so on.
If that APA panel was any indication, it seems to me that too many people on search committees are ignorant of this whole issue, which suggests that the APA's placement committee should make sure it educates them.
While I agree that committees could be better trained in legal hiring practices, I think Baucis/Philemon's post makes the faulty assumption that good people who now overlook older candidates would change their ways if they were better informed about the legal situation. I suspect that many do not perceive age discrimination to be as contemptible as gender, race, and sexual orientation discrimination. Change in practice will result from change in perception. The legal stick is not terribly persuasive, particularly because in a subjective process it is difficult to prove bias (though easy to speculate about it). If this is a topic of interest, we might broaden the scope to include younger (26 & under?) as well as older candidates (40 & older?).
I've never seen or heard of a case of discrimination on the basis of age qua age.
However, if you're thirty-five and looking for your first academic job because you did something else with your life for a few years after college and then decided to go to graduate school, that's one thing. It's something completely different if you started grad school when you were twenty-two and finished your dissertation when you were thirty-five, because people will legitimately doubt whether you will ever be able to bring anything to publication. But that's not age discrimination, it's slowness discrimination.
It also has traditionally been the case that if someone has been knocking around in temporary jobs for five or six years after the Ph.D. many people would assume that there's something "wrong" with them—if there weren't, surely they would have found a permanent job (at least, that's the thinking). I think this is probably less the case recently, because everyone is aware that a real convulsion hit the market and that lots of people who would in the past have found permanent jobs quickly are left with a string of temporary gigs. But then the very fact of people having to do this hurts the progress of their research, which doesn't help in the job search, so the greater sympathy for people who end up going from place to place may not mean a lot: no search committee is going to find it easy to evaluate you on the basis of the things you would have written had you had time to write them.
So that's not really "age" discrimination, but it is a case of a disadvantage that gets worse as time passes after the award of Ph.D.—so, as one gets "older" in relation not to the day one was born but to the day one got the degree.
The lawyer guy instance seems hard to transfer to humanities disciplines. His argument seems to be that because he has a lot of professional experience he's highly qualified to teach at a law school. And maybe that's right, if you think law schools should regard themselves as vocational programs (and I do). But law professors regard themselves as academics doing research, and he doesn't seem really to have been into that during the last 35 years or so. Before the one-year at Missouri, the last thing he'd done that was relevant to what they regard as their discipline was clerking way back under the Carter administration.
This strikes me as more of a way in which the legal academy is weird—and probably not serving its students particularly well—than an instance of being put off specifically by his age. If they'd just recognize that their J.D. programs should train people to do lawyering in the same sense that community colleges teach people to plumb or repair engines, the guy would be more attractive. But as it is they're academics running what should clearly be a vocational school, and the consequences are paradox, confusion, and irony.
Hang in there. It's a brutal market, it's true; my application is better in every way than last year, there are more jobs in my subspecialty and yet I think I'll wind up with fewer interviews. The backup of people loitering in VAPs & Postdocs must be staggering. Nonetheless, you must soldier on into April at least; there's been very few VAPs so far and there surely be a flood as current VAPs take T-T jobs.
plan on 3-5 years of limbo, VAPs, post-docs, ad hoc, adjunct ... and then, if you are not deemed too old by that point, maybe you'll get a shot at teaching 4-4 and the kitchen sink at some state uni ...
Or, more precisely, probably not. If most of the positions you applied for have already sent out interview requests and you haven't received one, then of course you should expect to send out more applications in the next round. Otherwise, you have no more reason to despair than you did before interview requests started coming out. If you're a good candidate for the job, then you might get an interview. There are too many contingent factors that determine whether or not someone gets one to make either despair or presumption worthwhile.
If you need just a sliver of optimism, though, it might help to know that I received an interview request over 48 hours after the first notification showed up on the Wiki. I had assumed that I wouldn't get one from that school because the letters had gone out and I wasn't on the list. Turns out they just took a while to send the letters.
You should probably be pessimistic about most things in life. You should not be any more pessimistic than usual because you haven't got any interviews yet. Your anxiety would be better spent worrying about what you'll do in the interviews if you get some.
I'm back on the market this year after having had five interviews for TT positions last time around, including one on-campus. I ended up taking a term position that will end this Spring. I have exactly zero interviews this year. I am, on paper, a MUCH better candidate this year than I was last time around. I suspect that the interview calendar may be as much as a week off this year compared to my previous adventure, but I'm still fully certain that I'll have fewer interviews this year. I think I have other skills and interests that may prevent me from becoming utterly useless to society if I can't land a job in the field. Sure, this all makes me feel a little bit more worthless than I already did, but, on the other hand, maybe that's not such a bad thing.
Anyone heard from Cincinnati regarding their literature search? The Wiki indicates the history search has contacted people...inquiring minds want to know.
Ok, I have too much time on my hands, so I want to ask a question that I know is obnoxious (although I doubt I'm the only one who has thought about it).
If you get one of the wonderful emails from a committee chair saying that they want to interview you, how do you reply and how do you address your reply?
I assume that you would address the reply to "Prof. so and so"; is that always the case? Would you ever say "Mr./Ms. so and so" or use the first and last name?
And what do you say in the body of the email? Anything besides, "I look forward to meeting you in Philadelphia, and please let me know if you would like any more information before then"?
I think it's a sign of respect -- not inferiority -- to call a fellow professional whom you don't know by their formal title before becoming more intimately acquainted.
How did they sign their email? If they sign it FullFirstName FullLastName with title info below it, go with Professor X. If they sign it "Bob" then feel free to try "Dear Bob."
I'd never use Mr. or Mrs. though as that implies you don't know they have doctorates.
I honestly don't think this will hurt you in any way. On campus visits, it is first names. At this stage, they likely won't read your reply with much thought. Just be confident and not gradstudentish in your actual interview.
I would strongly advise AGAINST using a first name in the reply. I would notice and be quite put off by what I'd read as a "breezy" tone if a candidate addressed me in a written communication (yes, even e-maii) by my first name.
I may be a stodgy old fuddy-duddy, but a lot of members of Classics search committees ARE stodgy old fuddy-duddies.
I can't imagine anyone being offended by the use of "Dear Professor Whoosit," and I can only too easily imagine someone being offended (however mildly) by "Dear Snerdly" or "Dear Magnolia." My advice: Don't risk it!!! Be formal in written communications.
One more bit of advice about your e-mail acknowledging the APA interview: Go with Professor, NOT "Dr." There are still a few -- a very few -- truly old-style types who consider the use of "Dr." for anyone who isn't an MD vulgar and pretentious. They would indeed prefer to be addressed as "Mr." or "Miss" or "Mrs." (probably not "Ms."!). There's no way to know who they are, of course, so you don't want to risk "Mr./ Ms." But I've never encountered anyone who objects to "Professor" as a title, so you're safe with that.
As for the body of the message, what you suggested is exactly right. "i look forward to the interview; let me know if you need anything else from me." Keep it short and on-topic.
Look, the point here is not whether old fuddy-duddies SHOULD object to being addressed by their first names. The point is whether some of them DO so object. Those of us who replied on this topic are trying to give helpful advice to a job candidate. Once you have the job you can, if you choose, set about reforming your colleagues to make them informal, light-hearted, cheerful people. But you need to get the job first, and avoiding unintentionally offending those who have the power to hire you or not (however irrational their offense may be) is merely prudent.
I think Anononymus @ 2:23 is exactly right. If they signed the email, Best wishes (vel sim), Snerdly
Then write back "Dear Snerdly." If they signed the email, Best wishes (vel. sim), Snerdly Snodgrass
Then play it safe and write back "Dear Professor Snodgrass." You definitely don't hurt yourself by being overly formal at this stage, but if they've signed off casually, it's okay to go casual.
sure, err on the side of caution, but admit that your hierarchy is a little outmoded. i think it is telling that everyone is willing to play ultimate smackdown on this site hiding behind monikers or anonymity (as this poster is doing now), but the minute you have to interact with some hoary (or not so hoary) person in this narrow little field then everyone becomes meek as mice, reinforcing a system that really needs changing. so it goes. score one for the status quo (which always wins, btw)
Anonymous 2:56, don't panic. I'm one of those who said "Better to be formal," but in the overall mix of what SCs consider, this is a very small point.
You've got the APA interview; even if Snerdley Snodgrass's feathers were a bit ruffled by your informality, what's really going to count is how you do in the interview. So, forget this whole discussion, concentrate on the fact that you HAVE GOT AN INTERVIEW (congratulations!), and take it from there.
Anonymous 3:33, why do you assume that I'm ascribing to a "hierarchy"? I have said nothing about whether, as an SC member (which I'm not this year), I would address candidates by *their* first names.
And no, I don't think courtesy is outmoded, and I do think the use of formal names on first acquaintance and first names later on allows for a recognition of different stages of professional interaction.
The appropriate way to address us is "dawg." As you're leaving an interview, always remember to turn around, point at the chair, and say "Later, dawg."
You can also personalize this by taking the initial of their first name and appending "-dawg" to it. So you'd address Prof. Jane Smith as "J-dawg" and so on. "Great question, J-dawg!" "So J-dawg, let me ask you how many majors the department has."
look, these people are supposed to look at you as a future colleague. this isn't an interview to become a junior analyst, a personal assistant, an associate, vel sim. these people aren't your prospective bosses. granted, some SC members might be so fucked that they would actually take offense to some asshole daring to use their christian rather than inherited name over email. but, some SC members might be so fucked as to construe the hesitation to use their first name as a sign of weakness, insecurity, or general pussy-ness. just pick a salutation and fucking run with it.
I would also just add that in practice interviews don't really involve many situations in which you'd be called on to address someone by name. You show up, everybody introduces themselves, they ask you some questions, everybody says thanks and goodbye. None of this really requires anyone to speak the name of anyone else present.
You do realize that, unless you actually tell us what comment you're talking about, your comment can't mean anything to anyone except you, and that there would therefore not seem to be much point in going to the trouble of posting it?
This is it. There's no point in writing the last chapter of the dissertation when there's absolutely no chance of getting a job ever. I'm dropping out and going to a temp agency.
This is it. There's no point in writing the last chapter of the dissertation when there's absolutely no chance of getting a job ever. I'm dropping out and going to a temp agency.
I don't see how hiring a temp to finish your dissertation is going to help anything.
I just noticed that the U of Illinois at Chicago job (Department of Classics and Mediterranean Studies and Department of History, t-t Greek History) isn't on the wiki. Did it get canceled?
When you say that you've had two of yours show up on the schedule, is this the same schedule/page as the "Interview Availability Time Slots"? None of mine have shown up yet and I'm concerned I'm overlooking something obvious.
Yes, that's where it showed up, right on top of the block I'd listed as "available." But they haven't gotten them all scheduled yet, so they might not be showing up, especially if you got your interview(s) this week.
I just noticed that the U of Illinois at Chicago job (Department of Classics and Mediterranean Studies and Department of History, t-t Greek History) isn't on the wiki. Did it get canceled?
Odd that it was never listed. I've heard from good sources the names of two people being interviewed for the position. Interview requests would have gone out at least a week ago.
But they haven't gotten them all scheduled yet, so they might not be showing up, especially if you got your interview(s) this week.
People just need to cool their jets and realize that the donkey that turns the mill that powers the system can't work twenty-four hours a day. Maybe someday there'll be an upgrade to a water mill, but till then you're just going to have to show some patience.
Thanks 12:21 am. I expect that it will take some time, but I was just more worried about overlooking something obvious than on the Placement Service taking a bit to post them all.
Just out of curiosity (and I understand if no one responds), but would anyone who received an interview from Brown be willing to divulge what her/his specialty is?
My guess is it has less to do with specialty and more to do with publications and current position. Brown has twice tried to nab midcareer historians at the tenured or soon to be tenured level.
My guess is it has less to do with specialty and more to do with publications and current position. Brown has twice tried to nab midcareer historians at the tenured or soon to be tenured level.
What about the two assistant professors currently at Brown who were ABD when hired? They had an open rank search last year and I think the person they hired (who will start next year) has a fellowship right now but is otherwise fresh out of the gates.
If anything, recent outcomes suggest they will be interested in someone shiny and new. I know of at least two people with interviews who are less than two years post-PhD.
Does it ever happen that schools ask for interviews in stages (i.e. is there some slim possibility of still getting an interview with a place I've been wiki-jected from?). I'm grasping at straws here to maintain my sanity.
Does it ever happen that schools ask for interviews in stages (i.e. is there some slim possibility of still getting an interview with a place I've been wiki-jected from?). I'm grasping at straws here to maintain my sanity.
Seriously, though, I can't see why an SC would split up its notification of candidates. No upside, and it just creates more work and opportunity for miscommunications.
"What about the two assistant professors currently at Brown who were ABD when hired? They had an open rank search last year and I think the person they hired (who will start next year) has a fellowship right now but is otherwise fresh out of the gates. "
you are ignoring the fact that those searches were run by/for the classics dept, while this one is being run by/for the joukowsky. huge difference!
hello there. it's me, from the post just above. i did not realize brown was running a lit. search. feel free to pounce, those who feel the need. tis the season, after all.
WTF Davidson? Was "a Romanist who is both a strong Latinist and will make a significant contribution to the new concentration in archaeology" code for "philologist who went on a dig once as an undergrad"? WTF do I have to do to get an interview?
So, tomorrow the remaining chairs will begin to be pulled away even more fasterer and furiouserer. While you ponder that, here's some fun with numbers:
number of applicants self-designated as "on the market" on the wiki: 59
total number of interviews self-reported on the wiki: 89
number of interviews that have gone to FOUR individuals: 23
percentage of the self-reported applicant pool these four represent: 6.7%
percentage of reported interviews that have gone to the apparent Classics Top Four: 25%
Next time someone tells you that your success or failure to get interviews (note, not a job, but interviews) is mostly down to luck, or some kind of crapshoot, tell that person to stfu. also tell him that I know what a good sample is and what a bad sample is; mention, as a follow-up, that i do not care.
Hold on a minute. Brown hired someone last year? Because last I heard the candidate with the offer turned them down to stay where he was. I think that search failed. Better luck with the lit search!
Be kind, it's probably just an archaeologist who doesn't have your level of philological prowess.
Yeah. Stop showing off, Mr. Hot Shot Word Reading Guy. You think your so smart but really your not. Ooh, look, I'm word guy, I think I'm so much better then you.
Next time someone tells you that your success or failure to get interviews (note, not a job, but interviews) is mostly down to luck, or some kind of crapshoot, tell that person to stfu.
Another noteworthy number from the wiki: there are currently more people listed who have more than one interview (23) than people who have exactly one interview (21). So given that the jobs are mostly divided up by subfield so people are mostly applying to a handful of jobs, it's clear that search committees are converging to a remarkable degree.
It was *ok*, but let's not get carried away. Just b/c you had to fight your every pedantic urge not to autocorrect the errors does not necessitate #brilliant.
"...so people are mostly applying to a handful of jobs..."
Assuming that your hand fits roughly five or so jobs, your claim must be insanely inaccurate. There has been exactly one ad that has mentioned the particular "subfield" of my dissertation, and yet I have applied for twenty positions for which I nonetheless fall within the described desiderata. Anyone with a more canonical specialization who has applied for only a "handful" of positions has made a mistake.
If your hand fits something closer to 20 jobs, then I apologize. It must be hard to type with such big hands.
Have you heard of (1) the etymological fallacy or (2) semantic bleaching? Look 'em up. Anyway, 20 jobs is a vanishingly small number when you compare it to how many people in other disciplines tend to apply for. I just meant the Latin/Greek/Material Culture split.
"WTF Davidson? Was "a Romanist who is both a strong Latinist and will make a significant contribution to the new concentration in archaeology" code for "philologist who went on a dig once as an undergrad"?
From talking to someone there I'd say the answer is NO.
Whoever came up with that, thanks. Just a note, however. I changed it slightly so that red denotes a position filled, and green a second-round interview. I thought red should signal closure, rather than green. As I think about it further, I wonder if the scheme should be Green, Yellow, Red (swapping green for blue, and yellow for green, as it stands). Any thoughts out there?
Can I get a confirmation that people have interviews with Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford? It's marked blue, but people are just saying when interviews will be, not that they actually have them. We've known about the Jan. 11 interview date for a long time (since the initial application materials).
Can I get a confirmation that people have interviews with Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford? It's marked blue, but people are just saying when interviews will be, not that they actually have them. We've known about the Jan. 11 interview date for a long time (since the initial application materials).
My guess would be that they'll notify this week - Oxford colleges were doing undergrad admissions interviews last week so have probably been a bit swamped.
I haven't had any word from the department yet. The interview was just listed on the home page of my placement service account and scheduled on my calendar. I'm just hoping it's not a clerical error!
The shortlist has been drawn up for the Lady Margaret Hall post, but formal rejections haven't been sent out yet. I assume those who are being invited for interview have been informed (though I'm not certain about this).
Following up on yesterday's Anon 9:49, I now count 136 self-reported interviews as opposed to 89 yesterday, yet the number of different schools having sent out first round interview invitations on the wiki has hardly changed. Speculation? Have people just not updated the more specific information below?
The "Big Four" are now the "Big 7" who have 47 of the 136 interviews between them. That means 7 people have over a third of the interviews listed so far.
Yes, certain applications are going to be more appealing to more committees than others, and there are a variety of ways in which they can be more appealing.
Given that that's so, I think the only constructive thing to do would be to have a bitter debate over the Internet about whether search committees are using unfair or deluded criteria in drawing up their lists. Obviously, this will work best if people stick passionately to their pet theories and angrily denounce each other.
If you're not sure exactly how to go about having this argument and would like some good models to follow, please consult the threads from 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010.
The shortlist has been drawn up for the Lady Margaret Hall post, but formal rejections haven't been sent out yet. I assume those who are being invited for interview have been informed (though I'm not certain about this).
I've heard unofficially (from a member of the search committee who happened to contact me) that I am not on the shortlist, but I haven't received any official communication. (I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for it, either - when I applied for a lectureship at LMH a couple of years ago, I was rejected and never received any official notification of that fact. They're a bit crap.)
How reliable is the Wiki? I mean, if there is no comment about interviews for a certain job being offered. Does that really mean, that nothing is decided or at least communicated yet?
Answering Anon 6:26: I have several interview, but I don't see any of them on my placement service homepage. For those who have their interviews on there, where do you see them exactly?
After you log in, click on "view my home page." After that loads, you'll see a section right under "annual meeting contact info" called "My interviews." Under that, there's a calendar, and any interview that appears above seems to have a corresponding slot below.
From a SC Chair: we dutifully reported our list of interviewees to the PS last week in advance of the deadline, and contacted everyone via email, but our interviews have yet to show up on our calendar. It still has just dark blue slots with time notations, no names. Idk if they showed up on individual candidates' calendars, but they are not on our institutional one. Of course, repeated emails to the PS have gone unanswered. So just wanted you all to know that we get ignored as well. Fingers crossed they show up soon...
the placement service has always been crap and always will be. the human infrastructure needs to be replaced. just do it, APA. your lameness is beyond our comprehension.
"Yes, certain applications are going to be more appealing to more committees than others, and there are a variety of ways in which they can be more appealing."
The first half of that sentence is obviously true; the second half, perhaps less so, which might be what the self-reported numbers on the wiki are indicating.
"Given that that's so, I think the only constructive thing to do would be to have a bitter debate over the Internet about whether search committees are using unfair or deluded criteria in drawing up their lists. Obviously, this will work best if people stick passionately to their pet theories and angrily denounce each other."
Given that this conversation is now a couple of days and handfuls of posts old and there has as yet been no bitching or complaining of the sort you imagine, it looks to me like you may have missed the mark here, friend. Instead of reflexively assuming that everything on here is part of some bitchfest, you might want to actually read what people have written and--god forbid--do a little thinking of your own.
In lieu of this unlikely occurrence, let me ( the original poster) spell out for you even more clearly what I was implying: there are certain criteria that are more or less universally agreed upon by SC's (if only manifestly) for sorting and choosing candidates on paper. These criteria, whatever they might be, are perhaps NOT so variable. What they are, whether they should be so important, etc.--all these are things to think about, but really beyond the immediate point of my post. All I was trying to point out was that it is apparently WRONG when people (advisers, friends, enemies, fairies, unicorns, et al.) tell prospective grad students, ABD-ers, unemployed PhDs, VAPers, highly successful TTers, or basically anyone, that the job market is a "crap shoot." People should adjust their advice, preparation, and expectations accordingly, don't you think, buddy?
there are a variety of ways in which they can be more appealing
there are certain criteria that are more or less universally agreed upon by SC's (if only manifestly) for sorting and choosing candidates on paper
Yes, I should have put this better. There is a range of factors in an application that can make it look better than others, and many search committees are influenced by more or less that same set of factors.
Given that this conversation is now a couple of days and handfuls of posts old and there has as yet been no bitching or complaining of the sort you imagine, it looks to me like you may have missed the mark here, friend. Instead of reflexively assuming that everything on here is part of some bitchfest, you might want to actually read what people have written and--god forbid--do a little thinking of your own.
That is so cute, seriously. Thank you. But my point isn't that there had been bitching, but that the path that you're going down is one that has in the past invariably led to rage. Once you start talking about what you think the criteria are, people will start angrily disagreeing about whether those are legitimate criteria and about whether they are being applied correctly. It has always happened in the past, and enthusiasm for taking part will increase as interview after interview goes off the table. There'll be another surge after the conference when people start finding out that they didn't get campus interviews. I'm not even sure that there shouldn't be rage about it. But the rage does always start at this point, when people figure out that interviews are neither equally nor randomly distributed among candidates.
And honestly, I was sort of interested that you were picking at this scab and either didn't know what it was or specifically wanted the cut to start bleeding again as soon as possible.
The one the previous poster seems annoyed with is the people who say (usually out of good will or in hope) that the job market is essentially random.
I think s/he is right that we would do better to point out that the very best candidates usually get jobs, the intermediate candidates sometimes get jobs, and the lower tier are shooting craps. I would like to think that I am in the intermediate range, because I currently have two interviews. Honestly, I know quite well that I might not get a job, and one of the reasons is because there are people out there who are more qualified than I am. It sucks, but accepting the truth is only going to help in the long run.
(Now, determining exactly which criteria led to the best candidates gaining five or more interviews already . . . I would assume it's a mixture of factors, and you can't put it down to any one thing. So, no, I don't want to start fighting about the values of our system. But, I do think it's good to be honest about where we're at, and that is not in some random world in which no one could determine who will get a job and who won't.)
That is, more or less, the point I was trying to make. It is better for us all to be honest with ourselves about how this job market works. People can debate the actual criteria if they want, but that is beyond the immediate point.
As for my other friend above...it is interesting to see that you find the idea of thinking for yourself to be a "seriously cute" proposition. Much as it is with the evaluation of potential sexual partners, cuteness is often an underrated commodity in the practice of critical analysis. I encourage you to give those people/ideas you find cute a try--you might be pleasantly surprised!
Also, if the bitching about search/selection criteria is in fact inevitable, as you posit, I don't see why you should care about my post acting as a catalyst for such. According to you, this bitching was going to start right about precisely now, with or without my my prodding. Pointing out an irrelevant catalyst seems a bit of an empty gesture, no? Of course, there is the chance that my post could have nothing to do with said bitching, but in that case everything you wrote is utter nonsense. Since I'm a nice guy/girl, I'll leave it for you to decide which of these two reasons for your post being misguided you prefer.
I'll share my thoughts, as a still relatively junior faculty member who remembers acutely the pain and stress of the market.
My first year out I got thirteen interviews and was a finalist at six schools, including one I thought was my dream school. I got no job offers. The rejections felt wholly anonymous before MLA (our version of APA), still fairly anonymous after the interviews there (a bit like not getting a call after a good first date), but pretty damn personal after the flybacks. I felt like I was being told (by six different institutions), "we concede that you're smart; we just don't like you enough to want you as a colleague." Making the whole thing much worse was how blithely confident everyone around me (advisor, friends, family, etc.) had been, when they heard my impressive interview and flyback totals, at how certain I was to get a job. I can't tell you how many times I heard, "you're a shoo-in!", how nervously I laughed at the time, or how much I wanted to throttle everyone who'd said it as I got the series of "we *so* enjoyed meeting you, but..." emails after my flybacks. (Plus my boyfriend had just dumped me.)
The next year I got the MIT job. I was no longer ABD, and I had a good letter from my VAP school, but otherwise I was the same candidate, on paper at least (no more pubs, perhaps just one more conference presentation).
Now having been through 1.5 searches on the other side, and in very different disciplines (contemporary lit and film two years ago, classics now), I feel pretty confident that being a "good candidate," in the sense of having all those objective boxes ticked that other posters have mentioned, is a necessary but not sufficient condition for getting a job. You also need to be lucky, where by luck I mean not necessarily sheer randomness (though that doubtless plays some role, too) but also the whole set of factors that you can't control, some of which you know about, some of which you don't. So when people say "the job market is a crap shoot," my own perspective is that this is both true (luck plays an important role) and misleading (since there are, as others have noted, some quasi-objective factors that are also crucial). I guess that's what I was driving at when I wrote that encouraging post earlier this fall: there are a ton of factors at play in every search that you simply aren't aware of and can't influence in any directed and helpful way, and I found the best response to that to be to surround myself with good friends at a range of different removes from academia: at least a couple who could really empathize with the pain and uncertainty and godawfulness of it all, but also at least a couple who were like, "WTF?! They don't want you? Screw them! You're awesome, so let's get drunk and go dancing and flirt with the bartender and laugh at the go-go boys and make fun of how bad your ex looks with his nasty hipster mustache." Or, you know, whatever your own particular non-academia friends are like.
I could go on, but you get the idea. As Oprah says, "surround yourself with only people who are going to lift you higher." Then read The Oatmeal's visual rendition of that sickly-sweet tweet:
Also, if the bitching about search/selection criteria is in fact inevitable, as you posit, I don't see why you should care about my post acting as a catalyst for such. According to you, this bitching was going to start right about precisely now, with or without my my prodding.
As I said, I was interested to observe that there was someone who seemed to be eager to be the catalyst. People are interesting!
And the point of my original comment wasn't so much that having the argument was bad in itself as that the argument is had every year, goes the same way, makes a lot of people really angry and depressed, and then is completely forgotten in time for it to be had the next year, when it's all experienced as though it were magical and new (and I realize that, in any given year, it is in fact new to some people).
the idea of thinking for yourself to be a "seriously cute" proposition
Yes, I think if you go back and look, you'll see that that's obviously what I was trying to say, and that I definitely did not mean that I found it amusing that you were patronizing me.
I basically subscribe to "the crapshoot" view of the job market. But I'd tweak it a bit. It's a dice game where you need a high roll in order to advance. But some candidates have more dice (so-called pedigree, sexy diss, publications, especially active letter-writers, conference talks, "fit", etc.) than others, which gives them an advantage in scoring. That doesn't mean, however, that a "weaker" candidate won't occasionally roll a full set of sixes, and thus rise to the top. It happens. But as a candidate you want to start September with as many dice as you can. It's easier to roll a 30 with eight dice than it is with five. There's random luck, and then there's weighted luck. The job market tends more to the latter than the former.
I'd also add that each application constitutes a throw of the dice. The more applications you submit, the better your chances of throwing a high score. The problem is that you don't know how many dice you hold in your hand for each application/throw. Some places won't care about your shiny Stanford degree. Others will double or triple your "fit" roll. Some others will double your publications die. So, it's like a twisted game of midnight Yahtzee without flashlights. That's it.
some candidates have more dice (so-called pedigree, sexy diss, publications, especially active letter-writers, conference talks, "fit", etc.) than others
I do like it that all considerations of merit have been completely figured out of this. Even the "diss" isn't "good" or "interesting" but "sexy."
"the idea of thinking for yourself to be a "seriously cute" proposition
Yes, I think if you go back and look, you'll see that that's obviously what I was trying to say, and that I definitely did not mean that I found it amusing that you were patronizing me."
C'mon, we both know that you are well out of my price range, mein lieblings! Seriously though, the overlap in meaning between what your awkward wording left open as an interpretative possibility and the lack of any general point to your earlier posts implied created a nice opportunity for rhetorical play. So, thanks for that.
"As I said, I was interested to observe that there was someone who seemed to be eager to be the catalyst. People are interesting!"
Allow me to point out, for your convenience, that your assumption that my original post would prove to be a catalyst for that sort of whining thus far lacks substantiation of any sort---unless you count your own preemptive strike against it as evidence for it. I might also further remind you that my intent was not to do so; that is, if we are still believing in the fallacy of authorial intent, or even better reasserting it, around these parts. I'll leave it to you to fill me in on this point of famae mores as well.
C'mon, we both know that you are well out of my price range, mein lieblings! Seriously though, the overlap in meaning between what your awkward wording left open as an interpretative possibility and the lack of any general point to your earlier posts implied created a nice opportunity for rhetorical play.
Tell your engineers that they need to keep working on your software, HumorTron 5000. Humans can still tell you're not one of them.
I'm working on a theory that the APA Placement web lackeys are filling in interview slots for those who have very small stated windows of availability before those who have been very generous with their time. Anyone else get this feeling?
“I do like it that all considerations of merit have been completely figured out of this.Seriously confused. Surely (blind reviewed) pubs and conf talks are merit-based?”
Tobias, you blowhard!
In the context of the comment, it's clear that the commenter means that publications are numerical factors that get you more throws of the die: a publication is a number, and one publication is the same as another. That's as non-merited-based a way as possible of looking at publications. Likewise with "sexy": it's the term you use of research when you mean "speciously appealing" or "faddish."
For what it's worth, the commenter immediately agreed that s/he had meant that merit didn't factor into it in any way: "I don't writes da rules, I just plays by dem." And that's consistent with the person's view that the whole process is totally aleatory.
I did indeed use "sexy" in that widely recognized manner: interesting, cutting edge, good. I'm sorry to be the one to introduce you to this unfortunate, conventional locution. Welcome to the world, young thing.
As for your imputation that my aleatory schema is so crude as to confuse numbers of publications with quality: I merely sought to imply that a SC will look at a candidate's publication record as a whole and assign them n dice. One publication in Classical Antiquity for some SCs will result in a higher n than six articles in, for example, Classical Bulletin. Conversely, other SCs may assign n dice in some other, equally unpredictable, manner with respect to publication record. For some positions a substantial record of publications in high-tier journals will be detrimental (low, even negative n dice): the SC may worry that you will seek to jump ship at first chance. For others it is a baseline qualification.
Surely all of this is non-controversial, and surely you should have considered these facts before mis-reading and responding to my finely-tuned and well-considered aleatory theory of job allocation, yes? Fret not, dearie, the wetness behind your ears will dissipate with time.
I did indeed use "sexy" in that widely recognized manner: interesting, cutting edge, good. I'm sorry to be the one to introduce you to this unfortunate, conventional locution.
So if you agree that there is better and worse research, why did you ask me "So which considerations of 'merit' in this process can you articulate, O Luded One?"? That sounds like a pretty skeptical question to me. Or would you say that quality of research shouldn't be thought to have anything to do with "merit"? In which case, what would merit be?
And when I observed that your comment had cut merit out of consideration, why did you respond "I don't writes da rules, I justa plays by dem" and not "no it didn't"?
Fret not, dearie, the wetness behind your ears will dissipate with time.
Welcome to the world, young thing.
A possible thing to keep in mind would be that middle-aged and even old people are also permitted to use the web, if we can figure out how to open a browser.
I think I made it clear that merit, sensu lato, serves to increase your odds.
Publications are one measure of merit. But even there I think we'd all agree that luck plays a not-insignificant role in publication. Did the editor send your piece to friendly readers? Did they act expeditiously in reviewing it? Does your piece fit in with the direction the current editor wants the journal to take. And so on. There are too many variables at work even in the peer-reviewed world to think that publication record is a straight-up meritocracy.
Fit, to take another factor, is even trickier. I don't think it has much relationship to merit as we conceive it, but we'd also agree that it can play a large part in a SC's decision.
So, too, pedigree. Some think it is a proxy for merit, so much so that they will equate the two (Stanford/Harvard = Excellence!). I disagree, but I do recognize that pedigree can act to increase one's odds. But it can also decrease them, as I showed.
All of these things are bundled up together, and the SC judges on that bundle. I likened the bundle to a handful of dice, in order to take into account the response that a SC will have to that bundle. Each SC is different, and the judgments of the individuals and the groups are necessarily subjective. From the outside this seems (and I, quite frankly, believe that it is, largely) aleatory.
Now, when I posed the following: "So which considerations of 'merit' in this process can you articulate, O Luded One?" I sought to encourage you to offer a different explanation for the selection process. Preferably that would be one that hangs little weight on the notion of luck, and more on merit, however you choose to define that.
I, along with the rest of the peanut gallery here, am still waiting for that articulation. Can you hammer it out? C'mon, be an author, not a critic.
Now, when I posed the following: "So which considerations of 'merit' in this process can you articulate, O Luded One?" I sought to encourage you to offer a different explanation for the selection process.
Uh-huh. I think I'll just post that again and let people decide for themselves whether that explanation makes sense.
As for the other question, I don't see an answer, but I'll assume that if you gave us one it'd be equally good.
It was looking as though you started out by talking out of your ass, then changed your mind when you decided you didn't actually think what you'd said, and then for some reason felt compelled to pretend that you hadn't been talking out of your ass earlier. It is a relief to know that that wasn't the case.
Ah, well, I suppose you are just a tenured oldster who really, truly believes that your hire, and subsequent career, came about all due to the steady hand of virtue. Congrats on that. The times they have a changed, and those of us on the market now understand the differences between our circumstance and yours.
OK, this witty repartee is fascinating, to be sure, and there are some nice nuggets of wisdom from a number of sides, but perhaps we can try to sum up objectively for the inexperienced and the ignorant what really matters, in order of importance (I lack some of these things and am consequently getting mostly dogged in this market, but I've been around the block a few of times):
1) "Fit" (yes, there is definitely luck involved here; do you fill a need? do sparks fly at the interview? I put this first because it can clearly torpedo an applicant who has everything else on the list.)
2) Refereed publications in reputable, established journals (and there is luck involved here too, as you know if you've ever gotten back a report from an ignorant reader)
3) Teaching experience (some luck involved here too, as you know if you ever were assigned to the same class over and over again in grad school)
4) Where you got your PhD (this can help you or hurt you, or do neither)
5) That you have at least defended (but this is definitely not a deal-breaker for some committees)
6) A paper at the APA
7) That you didn't take ten years to finish, or haven't held six different VAP positions (this of course is very unfair, but it does seem to be a factor)
7) Other stuff (papers at CAMWS vel sim., at brown-bag seminars, at grad student colloquia, encyclopedia articles, book reviews, service, awards, kai ta loipa)
What do you think, famosi? Is this a fair summary?
I am confused about number 6, though. It seems that this can do as much harm as good. What is the value of the APA (as opposed to CAMWS, etc.) in particular? What's your thinking in singling the APA out?
I would make one addition to Silenus's excellent list:
Good writing, in the sense of an engaging and clear prose style, the written equivalent of being easy on the eyes. Something that can draw in SC members who may be bored, jaded, distracted, and/or sleepy, and then make your insights and qualifications alike stick in those same SC members' minds for when the meeting comes round to pick interviewees. We all know that lots of academic prose is dry or convoluted; if yours isn't, it can really help.
Pretty much everyone who submits an abstract presents at CAMWS. This is not at all true of the APA.
Also, an APA talk gives the search committee an additional way to evaluate you, if they choose to have someone attend. If your talk is good and goes over well, that's definitely to your advantage.
Yes, I was thinking of the fact that the APA accepts 16-20% of submissions, whereas CAMWS, even when submissions are at a record high (as they were apparently this year) still accepts 75%. But, on the other hand, the APA has gotten to the point where it accepts basically no papers in certain fields, so giving a paper there, while it looks good on a CV, is hardly sine qua non. And giving a CAMWS paper is a good idea for other reasons: to interact with people working on the same thing, to move your research along, to impress future SC members who might be among the ten people in the audience etc.
I find CAMWS talks to be, generally, superior to those at the APA. People are at CAMWS, mostly, for the talks. The audiences are much larger, and better engaged. I realize that it is easier, statistically speaking, to get a talk at CAMWS, but I think one has a better chance of making a good impression there than at the APA. I get the sense that a candidate is more likely to hurt themselves when delivering an APA talk than help themselves, assuming that the SC sends somebody to listen. Lastly, I think the stress of dealing with an APA talk detracts from one's ability to cope with the stress of interviews at the APA. Better to tackle one thing at a time.
One more addition to Silenus's list: Proofread your cover letter.
That shouldn't need to be said, but alas, it does. I've been on four SCs in recent years (three VAPs in a couple of different departments, one TT in classics) and every time there have been at least two or three candidates whose cover letters included spelling errors, faulty punctuation, or typos. One letter writer included a sentence saying "This position at X College would be perfect for me" and -- you guessed it -- s/he gave the wrong name; we're not X College, we're Y College.
Of course we all know that you're sending out multiple letters and applying multiple places, and that you're pressed for time, harried, worried, and flustered. But precision matters; accuracy matters; the ability to concentrate on small details matters (especially in teaching, and grading student work in, ancient languages). And we have to eliminate the majority of applications we get somehow, to reduce the 100-plus stack to a workable APA interview list. Evidence of sloppiness and imprecision in the cover letter gives us an easy and quick way to sort you right out of consideration.
Whenever I am on a SC, I deduct points for an APA paper... to me this means the person is well connected with a certain "in-group" and therefore doesn't need my help to get a job. Haha JK. sort of.
RE: College Park- I got an email from the search chair asking for an interview on 12/12. It does not, however, show up on my placement service page yet.
I guess this isn't on everyone's list of helpful characteristics, but for archaeologists, running or being involved in a field project can shoot you up the list.
Those of you who insist on adding your interviews to the wiki's interview counters without adding to the number of interviews listed for each particular position should at least be reminded that you are not helping the wiki reflect the market situation accurately. Many of us would like to know how many people have received interviews for a given position, or whether the candidates all receive interview notifications on the same day. If you'd like to contribute to making the wiki more useful for all of us, add to the number of interviews listed for particular positions as well as to the general counters.
How would it help you at all to know how many people are being interviewed? Does that change how much you prepare or how you prepare? All that is is you wanting to give yourself a percentage "chance" which really is meaningless. I personally hate the "x2" etc - not everyone uses the wiki, so to attempt to get such information is futile.
Not the OP, but here's how it would help me: if the person changes the counter and also adds information on which place is interviewing that person, then I have a better sense of whether that place is interviewing "desirables" vs. "undesirables" like me. So if they change the counter from 5 to 6 interviews, that's very different from changing the thing from 0 to 1 or 1 to 2. And knowing where they're interviewing is of more than just passing interest. That's my view, anyway. Since this is all largely anonymous, I'm not sure why we're not all more forthright about things like this. Oh, maybe it's because we all hate each other.
The useful information conveyed by the multiplier numbers is that if everyone uses them we can gauge the approximate percentage of job seekers who actually use the wiki. Of course this is irrelevant information for things like confirmation and rejection letters where we don't know the size of the pool, but I would posit most committees do between ten and twelve interviews, so it provides real information if five of those people note their interviews on the wiki.
"but I would posit most committees do between ten and twelve interviews"
Really? In my (limited) experience as a grad student rep on a search committee and as a candidate on the market for the second time, it seems like most SCs interview between 15 and 20 candidates at the APA.
I'm curious if anyone else has thoughts on the general average.
@Scaevola (December 11), re Davidson College: No, actually, we aren't. We are looking for exactly what the job advertisement said (and I realize that makes us a very narrowly defined job): a Romanist who is a strong Latinist whose interests lie in material culture and who can contribute to our archaeology concentration. So philologists who 'once went on a dig' were as out of the running as archaeologists without strong skills in Latin. It's what we, as a small department, need.
Whenever I am on a SC, I deduct points for an APA paper... to me this means the person is well connected with a certain "in-group" and therefore doesn't need my help to get a job. Haha JK. sort of.
Have I been naive to believe the APA that their abstract selection process really is anonymous? Or are you suggesting that members of an in-group just know each other's work well enough to pick it out from an anonymous line up?(Incidentally, I'm ABD at a middle tier school, no "in-group" ties, and have gotten 3 of the 4 abstracts I've submitted accepted. So your suggestion that it's about connections comes as a surprise to me.)
Twelve is a number that has quoted to me by SCs in the past, and it seems a very sensible number, since I've also heard SC members complain that after interviewing twenty applicants, one starts to get them confused. I think doing twenty interviews can also be (not that always is, of course!) a sign of a committee that can't decide what they want; i.e. instead of agreeing that "we really need X more than Y right now", they come to an impasse and say "OK, we'll just interview 10 people that do X and 10 people that do Y and just pick the best." And that can be disastrous.
Whenever I am on a SC, I deduct points for an APA paper... to me this means the person is well connected with a certain "in-group" and therefore doesn't need my help to get a job. Haha JK. sort of.
This is the weirdest opinion I have ever heard expressed about the APA. It's even weirder than the one implied by the annual exclamations that the APA should exert its tremendous might to ensure that there are more jobs for classicists.
@Jeanne Neumann, I'm impressed that you chose to address my immature posting written in utter frustration over this year's job market. I respect the needs you are addressing, however, I do wonder on what basis your committee evaluated what constitutes a "strong Latinist". Those of us who work with material culture are by definition not focused upon Latin, however, many of us with PhDs in "Classics" should fit the bill in that regards, no? Especially when it comes to the ability to teach undergraduates Latin. I've dedicated plenty of effort to mastering the languages, and I don't know how else to convey this to search committees since my research does not address philological issues.
Regardless, I hope you find what you are looking for.
I'm sure that especially in this saturated market there are people who can wear the Latinist and the archaeologist hats equally well and equally strongly, but as a (recent) SC member at a SLAC, I admit that ad struck me as a bit off-kilter too. What exactly does one mean, anyway, by "strong Latinist"? The old bar for undergrad institutions was the archaeologist should be able to teach intro and intermediate levels, but probably wouldn't be doing advanced. Some places, facing budget cuts, want each position to be covering as many things as possible, as if multa was better than multum (especially when they tell themselves each of the multa will be held to multum standards of excellence).
Whenever I am on a SC, I deduct points for an APA paper... to me this means the person is well connected with a certain "in-group" and therefore doesn't need my help to get a job. Haha JK. sort of.
This was plainly meant as a joke, the "sort of" notwithstanding.
As for APA interviews, we go all the way up to eleven. That's one louder!
This was plainly meant as a joke, the "sort of" notwithstanding.
The "JK. sort of." seems to apply to the poster's the claim that s/he holds APA talks against a candidate. But that joke only makes sense if the poster is serious about the claim that APA talks are actually selected based on "in-group" connections.
Thanks. I hesitate to say this, given the flack the person from MIT took, but I understand that you are exasperated. I know it sounds hollow from someone in my position to talk about the frustration of people just getting started, but for what it’s worth, I get that it’s a wildly bleak and infuriating market and you have a lot to be anxious and angry about. The only thing I can do is be as supportive of applicants as I can be—it doesn’t get everyone a job, but it does personalize the system. If I take your message right, it seems you were someone who was not the right fit. I am (genuinely) sorry. I read every application as they came in. It is an amazing pool of bright, talented, committed scholars. And a much smaller pool of people who fit the admittedly very narrow criteria we asked for.
@Anonymous, December 15, 2011 2:13 AM:
I’m not so interested in ‘old bars.’ We have a very strong language program. We attract strong language students. We want a someone with significant training in Latin. I guess had we gotten no good applicants, I’d agree that our job was ‘off-kilter.’ But we got (in addition to a lot of good, strong applicants whose credentials just did not fit) a lot of candidates who, in fact, have the kind of qualifications we need for our department. We are not cutting back—this is a new fifth line, an expansion. We evaluated what we and the college needed, asked for it, and got a great response.
I really hate to say this, but I'm impressed by how this blog has matured over the last few years that I've been paying attention. When I started, it was all name calling and bitter rants. Now, it seems to be ironic rants generously interspersed with constructive sincerity. I like it.
I agree. On the other hand there is more venting and snark on the wiki, which should really be free of those things. "PFO." "Pleasant rejection letter, but without personal salutation." Do we really need that over there too?
That's true. The wiki does feel somewhat crowded with useless information (do we really have to leave up information on department meetings for posterity?); but even that is probably the result of increased use.
I can confirm everything Jeanne Neumann has said here. Although I did not get an interview with them, I know at least one person they are interviewing, and that person truly does have amazing Latin pedagogy as well as a committed research focus in Roman archaeology (and has been a leading member of many digs for years now). And as for being as supportive of applicants as she can be, I can also confirm that. I had an interview at the APA for a Davidson job some years ago. I did not get the job (or even a fly-out), but it was and still is the best interview I have ever had, simply because of the respect and support given me by the search committee, including Jeanne Neumann. It remains the only interview (out of many now) I have had where I truly felt I was being treated as a human being, a colleague and an equal, and not as a commodity to be traded on some faceless "market."
Yes, it is some consolation, in fact. I've been on the market for a couple of years now and it is usually a horribly dehumanizing experience. Out of the handful of jobs that I feel I can apply to, there are usually only one or two that I feel confident are "me". These are where I really hope to at least get an interview. Davidson was one of those - so it's at those times when even my greatly diminished hopes are smashed that I want to scream at the wall. Turns out the wall talked back this time. I may not understand still how a pool of archaeologically trained candidates can have better Latin chops than the rest of us, but I do appreciate the effort you've made to inject some humanity into the process. Class act. Seems like the person who gets the job will be lucky.
I may not understand still how a pool of archaeologically trained candidates can have better Latin chops than the rest of us
I don't understand what process of reasoning has led you to conclude that they do. What I'm hearing is "we want someone who's credible as a teacher of both of these subjects." Nothing about having Latin that is absolutely better than that of everyone else who is seeking a job.
I don't understand what process of reasoning has led you to conclude that they do. What I'm hearing is "we want someone who's credible as a teacher of both of these subjects."
If that's what I was hearing I would wholeheartedly agree. But it's not. Prof. Neumann has specifically said in this forum they were looking for "a strong Latinist" with "significant training in Latin". If they specified they were looking for somebody with proven pedagogical chops and lots of experience in the Latin classroom, I could see how candidates could be weeded out. Maybe I'm hanging on semantics here, but I feel slightly insulted by the insinuation that my training in the language of my main research area was not as credible or significant as the next guy with a Classics PhD. Nonetheless, I am still impressed with the sincerity with which she approached the subject, and wish more searches were run with the same openness.
Prof. Neumann has specifically said in this forum they were looking for "a strong Latinist" with "significant training in Latin".
Yes, I think that the thing here is that you're understanding that to mean "scholar of Latin literature who has a better sense of Latin as a language than your average scholar of Latin literature." The trick is that sometimes when people say "Latinist" they just mean "reader of Latin," not "expert in Latin literature." I think that here by "strong Latinist" they mean "person with Latin strong enough to teach competently at the undergraduate level" and by "significant training in Latin" they mean "possessing a Ph.D. that required passing a non-laughable translation exam" (so, I'd reckon this could be a history Ph.D. or an archaeology Ph.D., for example, so long as it involved demonstrating actual competence in Latin). That's a much different bar from the one you're thinking of, and lots and lots of people clear it.
1,406 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 601 – 800 of 1406 Newer› Newest»Like a lot of people, I suspect, I've heard the rumors about using the ad to screen out undesirables, but I have to say that I have never seen that sort of thing in action. You do get people inviting individuals to apply, but that's not exactly the same thing.
I do want to push back on the idea that the administration wouldn't permit it, though: this seems like the kind of thing that an administration would have to be on board with in the first place, if not actively promoting. Actually, to me it sounds like exactly the kind of thing a dean would dream up.
Please, search committees, give us something. We're dying here.
Just because the APA isn't for another month doesn't mean you need to wait that long to DECIDE OUR FATE.
You may not want to hear this, but it is not at all uncommon for people not even to start looking seriously at the files until classes are over for the term. This is because 1). everybody's busy, so anything that can wait does and 2). nobody wants to read the files (I'm sorry) so even lots of people who have time will put it off as long as they can.
As far as reasons to delay, those are two very good ones.
Fair point.
On the other hand, SC's were to provide their short lists to the APA for matching/scheduling by 12/2, so anyone still in limbo awaits word from an SC that's running behind.
There is no way in hell that some of these SCs provided short lists to the APA by the 2nd; some of these places didn't even advertise review of applications until the 1st. I'm not complaining; the Placement Service is so incompetent that it doesn't deserve to have other people meet its deadlines. At any rate, a cursory review of previous years' wikis will show you that many schools don't inform candidates of interviews until the second or third week of December.
At any rate, a cursory review of previous years' wikis will show you that many schools don't inform candidates of interviews until the second or third week of December.
This is correct. It is not convenient or satisfying, but it is correct. Wait.
One more month... just one more month.
FWIW, a years back I received an APA interview call on Dec. 30th. Still lots of time left, folks.
And let's not forget that the VAPs are (hopefully) still on their way.
I know of one dept that has met and made its list, but the list has to be approved by some deans or some such person. Different rules, different places.
I can also confirm that there is another department that has decided whom it would like to invite to an interview but is just really shy and afraid of rejection and has not worked up the courage to call yet.
What gives with New Mexico's selection of candidates? Based on their ad and my own profile, I was pretty sure I'd get an interview. Anyone have any special insight as to what they are looking for? (It is so damn unpredictable which schools will choose to interview you!)
11.46 - I can't help but feel the same way, though with such a small department, they may have had a very particular set of criteria they were looking for.
That and the fact that what *we* imagine a department is looking for may have little to do with what they're actually looking for.
Ah, well. There are still others.
Ah, New Mexico does sting a bit. I spent a lot of time on that application. BTW there are some unbelievable stories out there from that department's past, which are unsuitable even for Famae. Google will get you part of the way, or ask your senior colleagues.
Addendum: I mention this because the Whelp posits a secretive, but rational and fair process. We'd all like to believe that, of course, but for all we know, it could be a total shit show. Stranger things have happened.
Let's see. Classes are still going on at UNM. Applications were due Dec. 2. Does six days seem like enough time for a busy academic to read 3000 pages of writing samples and carefully consider a hundred "innovative" syllabi? Or even a third of that, if you throw out 2/3 of the applicants in a cursory way? Doesn't makes sense to me. Somehow I doubt that my application -- which arrived by Dec. 2 -- really received the "best consideration" which the ad promised.
Does six days seem like enough time for a busy academic to read 3000 pages of writing samples and carefully consider a hundred "innovative" syllabi? Or even a third of that, if you throw out 2/3 of the applicants in a cursory way?
Right, most committees will not have everyone read everything, for exactly this reason. You divide it up. You can also toss out a number that have nothing to do with the position advertised—there is always a significant number of those.
Then there are other ways of excluding files that one might be tempted to use.
If a person were to sound deranged or arrogant in the cover letter, that'd do it: people work hard on their letters, and if at the end of all that they still sound like someone it would drive you nuts to have to interact with on a daily basis, that's a good sign that they're pretty committed to being deranged or arrogant. (I'm not talking about "eccentric" or "a little smug"; I'm talking about talking about your pets in your letter or referring to your own work as "brilliant" or "trailblazing"). That'd knock out a few files.
If a person's research as presented in the letter or the abstract were to sound tedious or trivial or obtuse (not that that's ever the case, of course!) I'd be inclined, on the basis of experience, to expect that the writing sample would probably bear out that initial impression.
Likewise, if I couldn't tell from the letter or abstract what a person's research is, what its results are, and why it matters, I'd be strongly inclined not to investigate the file further.
Unfortunately, applying these criteria to the cover letter and dissertation abstract could eliminate a significant number of applications.
Now, could you be discarding some applications from people who would have been great candidates but just wrote a poor letter and abstract? Sure. But you're probably going to have more than enough people who'd be great in the pool that remains. And if you end up with a pool you're not entirely happy with, you could always go back and take a closer look to files you set aside earlier.
To follow up Anonymous at 3:10: the closing date for a search certainly doesn't mean when a committee *begins* reviewing files - it's the date after which new files will cease to be accepted. A committee will begin reviewing the files as they come in, meaning that early files get more attention than late ones. (This has certainly been the case on the search committees I've served on.) I certainly don't have any insight about what is going on at New Mexico, but as a general rule, it's always better to get in applications as early as you possibly can.
Anyone know why there is not a Roman Epic panel at the APA? Or was it misfiled somewhere in the placement service?
Does anybody know whether the APA still accepts abstracts on any relevant topic?
They take the abstracts that were accepted and try to group them into panels that make sense. Maybe there weren't enough Roman epic abstracts that got accepted, or maybe they were distributed to other panels ("The Poetics of Whining in Antiquity," "Remembering Dismemberment" etc.).
Are any of you three interview people interested in selling me one? I can pay in ramen or sexual favors.
To clarify, would the ramen include the flavor packet?
For what it's worth, over the weekend I was speaking with a (non-ancient) colleague who last year was considered for a tenure-track job in another department at UNM, and he said the salary was something like $20,000. I know a job's a job, but if this current position pays that low one would probably be better off with a VAP elsewhere.
My packet has plenty of flavor.
Since there are obviously a few faculty out there who are experienced in the ways of search committees, I have a question, one that can only be asked in a setting that permits anonymity. I am curious about the extent to which age discrimination is present in our field. I know several people who are 35 or older and well deserving of tenure-track jobs, but now get passed over routinely in favor of more junior (i.e. youthful and/or inexperienced) candidates and are stuck with VAP positions or else leave the field. (I'm sure we all can think of examples of both.)
A few years ago the APA had a panel on age discrimination. While I did not attend, I've heard it was well attended, especially by department chairs, and that a good number of people there expressed surprise that it is illegal to not consider someone because of his/her age. My guess is that many of those who have done so consider themselves good people, and would never do the same thing to a gay/lesbian, female, or minority applicant, but won't think twice about excluding someone past his/her mid-thirties.
So, I'd welcome insights, anecdotes, etc. about the extent to which this goes on, whether those who opt against older candidates does so with the knowledge that it is a form of job discrimination, etc. Do deans ever encourage departments to look at more seasoned candidates, just as they so obviously encourage departments to make sure there are some women interviewed? And so on.
If that APA panel was any indication, it seems to me that too many people on search committees are ignorant of this whole issue, which suggests that the APA's placement committee should make sure it educates them.
Someone could always file an age discrimination lawsuit.
What, like this?
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2011/07/former-attorney.html
While I agree that committees could be better trained in legal hiring practices, I think Baucis/Philemon's post makes the faulty assumption that good people who now overlook older candidates would change their ways if they were better informed about the legal situation. I suspect that many do not perceive age discrimination to be as contemptible as gender, race, and sexual orientation discrimination. Change in practice will result from change in perception. The legal stick is not terribly persuasive, particularly because in a subjective process it is difficult to prove bias (though easy to speculate about it).
If this is a topic of interest, we might broaden the scope to include younger (26 & under?) as well as older candidates (40 & older?).
I've never seen or heard of a case of discrimination on the basis of age qua age.
However, if you're thirty-five and looking for your first academic job because you did something else with your life for a few years after college and then decided to go to graduate school, that's one thing. It's something completely different if you started grad school when you were twenty-two and finished your dissertation when you were thirty-five, because people will legitimately doubt whether you will ever be able to bring anything to publication. But that's not age discrimination, it's slowness discrimination.
It also has traditionally been the case that if someone has been knocking around in temporary jobs for five or six years after the Ph.D. many people would assume that there's something "wrong" with them—if there weren't, surely they would have found a permanent job (at least, that's the thinking). I think this is probably less the case recently, because everyone is aware that a real convulsion hit the market and that lots of people who would in the past have found permanent jobs quickly are left with a string of temporary gigs. But then the very fact of people having to do this hurts the progress of their research, which doesn't help in the job search, so the greater sympathy for people who end up going from place to place may not mean a lot: no search committee is going to find it easy to evaluate you on the basis of the things you would have written had you had time to write them.
So that's not really "age" discrimination, but it is a case of a disadvantage that gets worse as time passes after the award of Ph.D.—so, as one gets "older" in relation not to the day one was born but to the day one got the degree.
The lawyer guy instance seems hard to transfer to humanities disciplines. His argument seems to be that because he has a lot of professional experience he's highly qualified to teach at a law school. And maybe that's right, if you think law schools should regard themselves as vocational programs (and I do). But law professors regard themselves as academics doing research, and he doesn't seem really to have been into that during the last 35 years or so. Before the one-year at Missouri, the last thing he'd done that was relevant to what they regard as their discipline was clerking way back under the Carter administration.
This strikes me as more of a way in which the legal academy is weird—and probably not serving its students particularly well—than an instance of being put off specifically by his age. If they'd just recognize that their J.D. programs should train people to do lawyering in the same sense that community colleges teach people to plumb or repair engines, the guy would be more attractive. But as it is they're academics running what should clearly be a vocational school, and the consequences are paradox, confusion, and irony.
Job market first-timer here.
Interview offers keep rolling in for other folks, and I have none to speak of yet.
Should I just abandon all hope now?
Hang in there. It's a brutal market, it's true; my application is better in every way than last year, there are more jobs in my subspecialty and yet I think I'll wind up with fewer interviews. The backup of people loitering in VAPs & Postdocs must be staggering. Nonetheless, you must soldier on into April at least; there's been very few VAPs so far and there surely be a flood as current VAPs take T-T jobs.
plan on 3-5 years of limbo, VAPs, post-docs, ad hoc, adjunct ... and then, if you are not deemed too old by that point, maybe you'll get a shot at teaching 4-4 and the kitchen sink at some state uni ...
@Job Search First Timer:
No.
Or, more precisely, probably not. If most of the positions you applied for have already sent out interview requests and you haven't received one, then of course you should expect to send out more applications in the next round. Otherwise, you have no more reason to despair than you did before interview requests started coming out. If you're a good candidate for the job, then you might get an interview. There are too many contingent factors that determine whether or not someone gets one to make either despair or presumption worthwhile.
If you need just a sliver of optimism, though, it might help to know that I received an interview request over 48 hours after the first notification showed up on the Wiki. I had assumed that I wouldn't get one from that school because the letters had gone out and I wasn't on the list. Turns out they just took a while to send the letters.
You should probably be pessimistic about most things in life. You should not be any more pessimistic than usual because you haven't got any interviews yet. Your anxiety would be better spent worrying about what you'll do in the interviews if you get some.
On whether to despair or to despair not:
I'm back on the market this year after having had five interviews for TT positions last time around, including one on-campus. I ended up taking a term position that will end this Spring. I have exactly zero interviews this year. I am, on paper, a MUCH better candidate this year than I was last time around. I suspect that the interview calendar may be as much as a week off this year compared to my previous adventure, but I'm still fully certain that I'll have fewer interviews this year. I think I have other skills and interests that may prevent me from becoming utterly useless to society if I can't land a job in the field. Sure, this all makes me feel a little bit more worthless than I already did, but, on the other hand, maybe that's not such a bad thing.
Do VAPs tend to pay moving expenses?
yes, in my limited experience
Anonymous said...
Do VAPs tend to pay moving expenses?
December 9, 2011 1:25 PM
a few will pay a portion, but most will not. depends on the school and the offer.
has the job at Florida State disappeared? their committee posted on here awhile back ...
Anyone heard from Cincinnati regarding their literature search? The Wiki indicates the history search has contacted people...inquiring minds want to know.
Anyone see an interview time slot up on the placement website yet, as per the last email?
Ok, I have too much time on my hands, so I want to ask a question that I know is obnoxious (although I doubt I'm the only one who has thought about it).
If you get one of the wonderful emails from a committee chair saying that they want to interview you, how do you reply and how do you address your reply?
I assume that you would address the reply to "Prof. so and so"; is that always the case? Would you ever say "Mr./Ms. so and so" or use the first and last name?
And what do you say in the body of the email? Anything besides, "I look forward to meeting you in Philadelphia, and please let me know if you would like any more information before then"?
Is there anything more or other to say?
go with first names, except in the case of exceedingly formal places (these are easy to spot).
I disagree! First names are way too presumptuous and informal. When in doubt, be polite. Professor so-and-so should suffice.
if the point of the interview is that you hope to become their colleagues, then get past calling them 'professor'.
I think it's a sign of respect -- not inferiority -- to call a fellow professional whom you don't know by their formal title before becoming more intimately acquainted.
How did they sign their email? If they sign it FullFirstName FullLastName with title info below it, go with Professor X. If they sign it "Bob" then feel free to try "Dear Bob."
I'd never use Mr. or Mrs. though as that implies you don't know they have doctorates.
I honestly don't think this will hurt you in any way. On campus visits, it is first names. At this stage, they likely won't read your reply with much thought. Just be confident and not gradstudentish in your actual interview.
I would strongly advise AGAINST using a first name in the reply. I would notice and be quite put off by what I'd read as a "breezy" tone if a candidate addressed me in a written communication (yes, even e-maii) by my first name.
I may be a stodgy old fuddy-duddy, but a lot of members of Classics search committees ARE stodgy old fuddy-duddies.
I can't imagine anyone being offended by the use of "Dear Professor Whoosit," and I can only too easily imagine someone being offended (however mildly) by "Dear Snerdly" or "Dear Magnolia." My advice: Don't risk it!!! Be formal in written communications.
get over yourselves.
One more bit of advice about your e-mail acknowledging the APA interview: Go with Professor, NOT "Dr." There are still a few -- a very few -- truly old-style types who consider the use of "Dr." for anyone who isn't an MD vulgar and pretentious. They would indeed prefer to be addressed as "Mr." or "Miss" or "Mrs." (probably not "Ms."!). There's no way to know who they are, of course, so you don't want to risk "Mr./ Ms." But I've never encountered anyone who objects to "Professor" as a title, so you're safe with that.
As for the body of the message, what you suggested is exactly right. "i look forward to the interview; let me know if you need anything else from me." Keep it short and on-topic.
Anonymous 2:43 said...
get over yourselves.
Look, the point here is not whether old fuddy-duddies SHOULD object to being addressed by their first names. The point is whether some of them DO so object. Those of us who replied on this topic are trying to give helpful advice to a job candidate. Once you have the job you can, if you choose, set about reforming your colleagues to make them informal, light-hearted, cheerful people. But you need to get the job first, and avoiding unintentionally offending those who have the power to hire you or not (however irrational their offense may be) is merely prudent.
^Nailed it in one!
F*!&. I am now hoping that I did not screw myself over by calling a SC Chair by his first name in the reply. He just seemed so friendly...
I think Anononymus @ 2:23 is exactly right. If they signed the email,
Best wishes (vel sim),
Snerdly
Then write back "Dear Snerdly." If they signed the email,
Best wishes (vel. sim),
Snerdly Snodgrass
Then play it safe and write back "Dear Professor Snodgrass." You definitely don't hurt yourself by being overly formal at this stage, but if they've signed off casually, it's okay to go casual.
sure, err on the side of caution, but admit that your hierarchy is a little outmoded. i think it is telling that everyone is willing to play ultimate smackdown on this site hiding behind monikers or anonymity (as this poster is doing now), but the minute you have to interact with some hoary (or not so hoary) person in this narrow little field then everyone becomes meek as mice, reinforcing a system that really needs changing. so it goes. score one for the status quo (which always wins, btw)
Anonymous 2:56, don't panic. I'm one of those who said "Better to be formal," but in the overall mix of what SCs consider, this is a very small point.
You've got the APA interview; even if Snerdley Snodgrass's feathers were a bit ruffled by your informality, what's really going to count is how you do in the interview. So, forget this whole discussion, concentrate on the fact that you HAVE GOT AN INTERVIEW (congratulations!), and take it from there.
Anonymous 3:33, why do you assume that I'm ascribing to a "hierarchy"? I have said nothing about whether, as an SC member (which I'm not this year), I would address candidates by *their* first names.
And no, I don't think courtesy is outmoded, and I do think the use of formal names on first acquaintance and first names later on allows for a recognition of different stages of professional interaction.
The appropriate way to address us is "dawg." As you're leaving an interview, always remember to turn around, point at the chair, and say "Later, dawg."
You can also personalize this by taking the initial of their first name and appending "-dawg" to it. So you'd address Prof. Jane Smith as "J-dawg" and so on. "Great question, J-dawg!" "So J-dawg, let me ask you how many majors the department has."
I was the one who asked about salutations.
Thanks all of you for the quite informative discussion, and thank you 4:06 for making me smile.
"Dear Profizzle J-Dawg: Thanks for the interview!"
look, these people are supposed to look at you as a future colleague. this isn't an interview to become a junior analyst, a personal assistant, an associate, vel sim. these people aren't your prospective bosses. granted, some SC members might be so fucked that they would actually take offense to some asshole daring to use their christian rather than inherited name over email. but, some SC members might be so fucked as to construe the hesitation to use their first name as a sign of weakness, insecurity, or general pussy-ness. just pick a salutation and fucking run with it.
I would also just add that in practice interviews don't really involve many situations in which you'd be called on to address someone by name. You show up, everybody introduces themselves, they ask you some questions, everybody says thanks and goodbye. None of this really requires anyone to speak the name of anyone else present.
Ooohh, I'm just barely resisting feeding a troll!
Ooohh, I'm just barely resisting feeding a troll!
You do realize that, unless you actually tell us what comment you're talking about, your comment can't mean anything to anyone except you, and that there would therefore not seem to be much point in going to the trouble of posting it?
Damn, man. You wasted the 666th comment on something not even remotely satanic. The dark lord is not pleased.
Sorry. If you play it backwards, though, you'll find it says "Your servant awaits your bidding, dark master."
This is it. There's no point in writing the last chapter of the dissertation when there's absolutely no chance of getting a job ever. I'm dropping out and going to a temp agency.
This is it. There's no point in writing the last chapter of the dissertation when there's absolutely no chance of getting a job ever. I'm dropping out and going to a temp agency.
I don't see how hiring a temp to finish your dissertation is going to help anything.
I just noticed that the U of Illinois at Chicago job (Department of Classics and Mediterranean Studies and Department of History, t-t Greek History) isn't on the wiki. Did it get canceled?
Anonymous said...
Anyone see an interview time slot up on the placement website yet, as per the last email?
December 9, 2011 1:53 PM
I've had two of my interviews show up in the schedule on the Placement site. Times, but not locations.
When you say that you've had two of yours show up on the schedule, is this the same schedule/page as the "Interview Availability Time Slots"? None of mine have shown up yet and I'm concerned I'm overlooking something obvious.
Yes, that's where it showed up, right on top of the block I'd listed as "available." But they haven't gotten them all scheduled yet, so they might not be showing up, especially if you got your interview(s) this week.
I just noticed that the U of Illinois at Chicago job (Department of Classics and Mediterranean Studies and Department of History, t-t Greek History) isn't on the wiki. Did it get canceled?
Odd that it was never listed. I've heard from good sources the names of two people being interviewed for the position. Interview requests would have gone out at least a week ago.
But they haven't gotten them all scheduled yet, so they might not be showing up, especially if you got your interview(s) this week.
People just need to cool their jets and realize that the donkey that turns the mill that powers the system can't work twenty-four hours a day. Maybe someday there'll be an upgrade to a water mill, but till then you're just going to have to show some patience.
Thanks 12:21 am. I expect that it will take some time, but I was just more worried about overlooking something obvious than on the Placement Service taking a bit to post them all.
Just out of curiosity (and I understand if no one responds), but would anyone who received an interview from Brown be willing to divulge what her/his specialty is?
My guess is it has less to do with specialty and more to do with publications and current position. Brown has twice tried to nab midcareer historians at the tenured or soon to be tenured level.
My guess is it has less to do with specialty and more to do with publications and current position. Brown has twice tried to nab midcareer historians at the tenured or soon to be tenured level.
What about the two assistant professors currently at Brown who were ABD when hired? They had an open rank search last year and I think the person they hired (who will start next year) has a fellowship right now but is otherwise fresh out of the gates.
If anything, recent outcomes suggest they will be interested in someone shiny and new. I know of at least two people with interviews who are less than two years post-PhD.
Does it ever happen that schools ask for interviews in stages (i.e. is there some slim possibility of still getting an interview with a place I've been wiki-jected from?). I'm grasping at straws here to maintain my sanity.
Does it ever happen that schools ask for interviews in stages (i.e. is there some slim possibility of still getting an interview with a place I've been wiki-jected from?). I'm grasping at straws here to maintain my sanity.
I think this is the appropriate link.
um, the answer is ... nope.
Harsh ... but that *is* a pretty funny link....
Seriously, though, I can't see why an SC would split up its notification of candidates. No upside, and it just creates more work and opportunity for miscommunications.
Split over 24 hrs? Sure, that happened to me twice. Split over more than that? Nope, sorry.
Oh well. Beep! Beep! Sanity maintenance failure! Monkey thesis hedgeclippers Zoroastrian funk band, mullet-induced leisure with seventeen aorist concubines.
Oh well. Beep! Beep! Sanity maintenance failure! Monkey thesis hedgeclippers Zoroastrian funk band, mullet-induced leisure with seventeen aorist concubines.
Precisely.
I'm afraid that I just blue myself all over the wiki. Helpful?
Personally, I prefer my concubines to have continuous aspect.
"What about the two assistant professors currently at Brown who were ABD when hired? They had an open rank search last year and I think the person they hired (who will start next year) has a fellowship right now but is otherwise fresh out of the gates. "
you are ignoring the fact that those searches were run by/for the classics dept, while this one is being run by/for the joukowsky. huge difference!
hello there. it's me, from the post just above. i did not realize brown was running a lit. search. feel free to pounce, those who feel the need. tis the season, after all.
WTF Davidson? Was "a Romanist who is both a strong Latinist and will make a significant contribution to the new concentration in archaeology" code for "philologist who went on a dig once as an undergrad"? WTF do I have to do to get an interview?
Personally, I prefer my concubines to have continuous aspect.
Continuous/repeated? No thanks. "Hit it and quit it" is in the aorist.
So, tomorrow the remaining chairs will begin to be pulled away even more fasterer and furiouserer. While you ponder that, here's some fun with numbers:
number of applicants self-designated as "on the market" on the wiki: 59
total number of interviews self-reported on the wiki: 89
number of interviews that have gone to FOUR individuals: 23
percentage of the self-reported applicant pool these four represent: 6.7%
percentage of reported interviews that have gone to the apparent Classics Top Four: 25%
Next time someone tells you that your success or failure to get interviews (note, not a job, but interviews) is mostly down to luck, or some kind of crapshoot, tell that person to stfu. also tell him that I know what a good sample is and what a bad sample is; mention, as a follow-up, that i do not care.
Hold on a minute. Brown hired someone last year? Because last I heard the candidate with the offer turned them down to stay where he was. I think that search failed. Better luck with the lit search!
Yes, I heard the same as Mr. 10:20 PM. Incidentally, when I heard it and its details, I laughed. A lot.
Anon 9.49, which schools do you consider the Big Four? Just curious.
Anon 9.49, which schools do you consider the Big Four? Just curious.
Read the comment again.
^Nailed it in one!
Aha. Hasty reading. My bad.
Anon 9.49, which schools do you consider the Big Four? Just curious.
Read the comment again.
Be kind, it's probably just an archaeologist who doesn't have your level of philological prowess.
Truly a rhetorical feat!
Oh sorry, I didn't specify, that last post was for the "Nailed it in one!" person.
Oh, c'mon! Loyal readers of this blog will know the butt of the "nailed it in one!" joke stopped posting on here about a month ago! Exclamation point!
^Nailed it in one!
Be kind, it's probably just an archaeologist who doesn't have your level of philological prowess.
Yeah. Stop showing off, Mr. Hot Shot Word Reading Guy. You think your so smart but really your not. Ooh, look, I'm word guy, I think I'm so much better then you.
^OK, this is performatively brilliant.
Next time someone tells you that your success or failure to get interviews (note, not a job, but interviews) is mostly down to luck, or some kind of crapshoot, tell that person to stfu.
Another noteworthy number from the wiki: there are currently more people listed who have more than one interview (23) than people who have exactly one interview (21). So given that the jobs are mostly divided up by subfield so people are mostly applying to a handful of jobs, it's clear that search committees are converging to a remarkable degree.
It was *ok*, but let's not get carried away. Just b/c you had to fight your every pedantic urge not to autocorrect the errors does not necessitate #brilliant.
"...so people are mostly applying to a handful of jobs..."
Assuming that your hand fits roughly five or so jobs, your claim must be insanely inaccurate. There has been exactly one ad that has mentioned the particular "subfield" of my dissertation, and yet I have applied for twenty positions for which I nonetheless fall within the described desiderata. Anyone with a more canonical specialization who has applied for only a "handful" of positions has made a mistake.
If your hand fits something closer to 20 jobs, then I apologize. It must be hard to type with such big hands.
Have you heard of (1) the etymological fallacy or (2) semantic bleaching? Look 'em up. Anyway, 20 jobs is a vanishingly small number when you compare it to how many people in other disciplines tend to apply for. I just meant the Latin/Greek/Material Culture split.
Have you heard of (1) the etymological fallacy or (2) semantic bleaching?
Yes, and believe me I'm up for it, but it has turned out to be pretty hard to find a woman who's willing to try it.
^^Cool story, Bro.
"WTF Davidson? Was "a Romanist who is both a strong Latinist and will make a significant contribution to the new concentration in archaeology" code for "philologist who went on a dig once as an undergrad"?
From talking to someone there I'd say the answer is NO.
Regarding new Wiki color scheme.
Whoever came up with that, thanks. Just a note, however. I changed it slightly so that red denotes a position filled, and green a second-round interview. I thought red should signal closure, rather than green. As I think about it further, I wonder if the scheme should be Green, Yellow, Red (swapping green for blue, and yellow for green, as it stands).
Any thoughts out there?
wv = wompous
^^ just fyi, talking to yourself can be an early sign of dementia
Can I get a confirmation that people have interviews with Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford? It's marked blue, but people are just saying when interviews will be, not that they actually have them. We've known about the Jan. 11 interview date for a long time (since the initial application materials).
I used to be a Classicist like you, then I took an arrow to the knee.
Can I get a confirmation that people have interviews with Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford? It's marked blue, but people are just saying when interviews will be, not that they actually have them. We've known about the Jan. 11 interview date for a long time (since the initial application materials).
My guess would be that they'll notify this week - Oxford colleges were doing undergrad admissions interviews last week so have probably been a bit swamped.
I decided against the stoplight scheme because it seemed so discouraging. But I suppose it's easier to keep track of.
Did people who got a University of Maryland Interview (college park) get an email, or was it just listed on the their placement service site?
I haven't had any word from the department yet. The interview was just listed on the home page of my placement service account and scheduled on my calendar. I'm just hoping it's not a clerical error!
The shortlist has been drawn up for the Lady Margaret Hall post, but formal rejections haven't been sent out yet. I assume those who are being invited for interview have been informed (though I'm not certain about this).
Damn, I can't even get an interview to teach 4-4. I suck.
Following up on yesterday's Anon 9:49, I now count 136 self-reported interviews as opposed to 89 yesterday, yet the number of different schools having sent out first round interview invitations on the wiki has hardly changed. Speculation? Have people just not updated the more specific information below?
The "Big Four" are now the "Big 7" who have 47 of the 136 interviews between them. That means 7 people have over a third of the interviews listed so far.
WV: proconk
Yes, certain applications are going to be more appealing to more committees than others, and there are a variety of ways in which they can be more appealing.
Given that that's so, I think the only constructive thing to do would be to have a bitter debate over the Internet about whether search committees are using unfair or deluded criteria in drawing up their lists. Obviously, this will work best if people stick passionately to their pet theories and angrily denounce each other.
If you're not sure exactly how to go about having this argument and would like some good models to follow, please consult the threads from 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010.
does anyone have interviews that aren't showing up on their placement service site (that they know of anyway)?
The shortlist has been drawn up for the Lady Margaret Hall post, but formal rejections haven't been sent out yet. I assume those who are being invited for interview have been informed (though I'm not certain about this).
I've heard unofficially (from a member of the search committee who happened to contact me) that I am not on the shortlist, but I haven't received any official communication. (I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for it, either - when I applied for a lectureship at LMH a couple of years ago, I was rejected and never received any official notification of that fact. They're a bit crap.)
How reliable is the Wiki? I mean, if there is no comment about interviews for a certain job being offered. Does that really mean, that nothing is decided or at least communicated yet?
Answering Anon 6:26: I have several interview, but I don't see any of them on my placement service homepage. For those who have their interviews on there, where do you see them exactly?
After you log in, click on "view my home page." After that loads, you'll see a section right under "annual meeting contact info" called "My interviews." Under that, there's a calendar, and any interview that appears above seems to have a corresponding slot below.
From a SC Chair: we dutifully reported our list of interviewees to the PS last week in advance of the deadline, and contacted everyone via email, but our interviews have yet to show up on our calendar. It still has just dark blue slots with time notations, no names. Idk if they showed up on individual candidates' calendars, but they are not on our institutional one. Of course, repeated emails to the PS have gone unanswered. So just wanted you all to know that we get ignored as well. Fingers crossed they show up soon...
get it together placement service!!
ha!
the placement service has always been crap and always will be. the human infrastructure needs to be replaced. just do it, APA. your lameness is beyond our comprehension.
"Yes, certain applications are going to be more appealing to more committees than others, and there are a variety of ways in which they can be more appealing."
The first half of that sentence is obviously true; the second half, perhaps less so, which might be what the self-reported numbers on the wiki are indicating.
"Given that that's so, I think the only constructive thing to do would be to have a bitter debate over the Internet about whether search committees are using unfair or deluded criteria in drawing up their lists. Obviously, this will work best if people stick passionately to their pet theories and angrily denounce each other."
Given that this conversation is now a couple of days and handfuls of posts old and there has as yet been no bitching or complaining of the sort you imagine, it looks to me like you may have missed the mark here, friend. Instead of reflexively assuming that everything on here is part of some bitchfest, you might want to actually read what people have written and--god forbid--do a little thinking of your own.
In lieu of this unlikely occurrence, let me ( the original poster) spell out for you even more clearly what I was implying: there are certain criteria that are more or less universally agreed upon by SC's (if only manifestly) for sorting and choosing candidates on paper. These criteria, whatever they might be, are perhaps NOT so variable. What they are, whether they should be so important, etc.--all these are things to think about, but really beyond the immediate point of my post. All I was trying to point out was that it is apparently WRONG when people (advisers, friends, enemies, fairies, unicorns, et al.) tell prospective grad students, ABD-ers, unemployed PhDs, VAPers, highly successful TTers, or basically anyone, that the job market is a "crap shoot." People should adjust their advice, preparation, and expectations accordingly, don't you think, buddy?
there are a variety of ways in which they can be more appealing
there are certain criteria that are more or less universally agreed upon by SC's (if only manifestly) for sorting and choosing candidates on paper
Yes, I should have put this better. There is a range of factors in an application that can make it look better than others, and many search committees are influenced by more or less that same set of factors.
Given that this conversation is now a couple of days and handfuls of posts old and there has as yet been no bitching or complaining of the sort you imagine, it looks to me like you may have missed the mark here, friend. Instead of reflexively assuming that everything on here is part of some bitchfest, you might want to actually read what people have written and--god forbid--do a little thinking of your own.
That is so cute, seriously. Thank you. But my point isn't that there had been bitching, but that the path that you're going down is one that has in the past invariably led to rage. Once you start talking about what you think the criteria are, people will start angrily disagreeing about whether those are legitimate criteria and about whether they are being applied correctly. It has always happened in the past, and enthusiasm for taking part will increase as interview after interview goes off the table. There'll be another surge after the conference when people start finding out that they didn't get campus interviews. I'm not even sure that there shouldn't be rage about it. But the rage does always start at this point, when people figure out that interviews are neither equally nor randomly distributed among candidates.
And honestly, I was sort of interested that you were picking at this scab and either didn't know what it was or specifically wanted the cut to start bleeding again as soon as possible.
There are various possible scabs here.
The one the previous poster seems annoyed with is the people who say (usually out of good will or in hope) that the job market is essentially random.
I think s/he is right that we would do better to point out that the very best candidates usually get jobs, the intermediate candidates sometimes get jobs, and the lower tier are shooting craps. I would like to think that I am in the intermediate range, because I currently have two interviews. Honestly, I know quite well that I might not get a job, and one of the reasons is because there are people out there who are more qualified than I am. It sucks, but accepting the truth is only going to help in the long run.
(Now, determining exactly which criteria led to the best candidates gaining five or more interviews already . . . I would assume it's a mixture of factors, and you can't put it down to any one thing. So, no, I don't want to start fighting about the values of our system. But, I do think it's good to be honest about where we're at, and that is not in some random world in which no one could determine who will get a job and who won't.)
That is, more or less, the point I was trying to make. It is better for us all to be honest with ourselves about how this job market works. People can debate the actual criteria if they want, but that is beyond the immediate point.
As for my other friend above...it is interesting to see that you find the idea of thinking for yourself to be a "seriously cute" proposition. Much as it is with the evaluation of potential sexual partners, cuteness is often an underrated commodity in the practice of critical analysis. I encourage you to give those people/ideas you find cute a try--you might be pleasantly surprised!
Also, if the bitching about search/selection criteria is in fact inevitable, as you posit, I don't see why you should care about my post acting as a catalyst for such. According to you, this bitching was going to start right about precisely now, with or without my my prodding. Pointing out an irrelevant catalyst seems a bit of an empty gesture, no? Of course, there is the chance that my post could have nothing to do with said bitching, but in that case everything you wrote is utter nonsense. Since I'm a nice guy/girl, I'll leave it for you to decide which of these two reasons for your post being misguided you prefer.
I'll share my thoughts, as a still relatively junior faculty member who remembers acutely the pain and stress of the market.
My first year out I got thirteen interviews and was a finalist at six schools, including one I thought was my dream school. I got no job offers. The rejections felt wholly anonymous before MLA (our version of APA), still fairly anonymous after the interviews there (a bit like not getting a call after a good first date), but pretty damn personal after the flybacks. I felt like I was being told (by six different institutions), "we concede that you're smart; we just don't like you enough to want you as a colleague." Making the whole thing much worse was how blithely confident everyone around me (advisor, friends, family, etc.) had been, when they heard my impressive interview and flyback totals, at how certain I was to get a job. I can't tell you how many times I heard, "you're a shoo-in!", how nervously I laughed at the time, or how much I wanted to throttle everyone who'd said it as I got the series of "we *so* enjoyed meeting you, but..." emails after my flybacks. (Plus my boyfriend had just dumped me.)
The next year I got the MIT job. I was no longer ABD, and I had a good letter from my VAP school, but otherwise I was the same candidate, on paper at least (no more pubs, perhaps just one more conference presentation).
Now having been through 1.5 searches on the other side, and in very different disciplines (contemporary lit and film two years ago, classics now), I feel pretty confident that being a "good candidate," in the sense of having all those objective boxes ticked that other posters have mentioned, is a necessary but not sufficient condition for getting a job. You also need to be lucky, where by luck I mean not necessarily sheer randomness (though that doubtless plays some role, too) but also the whole set of factors that you can't control, some of which you know about, some of which you don't. So when people say "the job market is a crap shoot," my own perspective is that this is both true (luck plays an important role) and misleading (since there are, as others have noted, some quasi-objective factors that are also crucial). I guess that's what I was driving at when I wrote that encouraging post earlier this fall: there are a ton of factors at play in every search that you simply aren't aware of and can't influence in any directed and helpful way, and I found the best response to that to be to surround myself with good friends at a range of different removes from academia: at least a couple who could really empathize with the pain and uncertainty and godawfulness of it all, but also at least a couple who were like, "WTF?! They don't want you? Screw them! You're awesome, so let's get drunk and go dancing and flirt with the bartender and laugh at the go-go boys and make fun of how bad your ex looks with his nasty hipster mustache." Or, you know, whatever your own particular non-academia friends are like.
I could go on, but you get the idea. As Oprah says, "surround yourself with only people who are going to lift you higher." Then read The Oatmeal's visual rendition of that sickly-sweet tweet:
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/top_tweets
Also, if the bitching about search/selection criteria is in fact inevitable, as you posit, I don't see why you should care about my post acting as a catalyst for such. According to you, this bitching was going to start right about precisely now, with or without my my prodding.
As I said, I was interested to observe that there was someone who seemed to be eager to be the catalyst. People are interesting!
And the point of my original comment wasn't so much that having the argument was bad in itself as that the argument is had every year, goes the same way, makes a lot of people really angry and depressed, and then is completely forgotten in time for it to be had the next year, when it's all experienced as though it were magical and new (and I realize that, in any given year, it is in fact new to some people).
the idea of thinking for yourself to be a "seriously cute" proposition
Yes, I think if you go back and look, you'll see that that's obviously what I was trying to say, and that I definitely did not mean that I found it amusing that you were patronizing me.
I basically subscribe to "the crapshoot" view of the job market. But I'd tweak it a bit. It's a dice game where you need a high roll in order to advance. But some candidates have more dice (so-called pedigree, sexy diss, publications, especially active letter-writers, conference talks, "fit", etc.) than others, which gives them an advantage in scoring. That doesn't mean, however, that a "weaker" candidate won't occasionally roll a full set of sixes, and thus rise to the top. It happens. But as a candidate you want to start September with as many dice as you can. It's easier to roll a 30 with eight dice than it is with five. There's random luck, and then there's weighted luck. The job market tends more to the latter than the former.
I'd also add that each application constitutes a throw of the dice. The more applications you submit, the better your chances of throwing a high score. The problem is that you don't know how many dice you hold in your hand for each application/throw. Some places won't care about your shiny Stanford degree. Others will double or triple your "fit" roll. Some others will double your publications die. So, it's like a twisted game of midnight Yahtzee without flashlights. That's it.
some candidates have more dice (so-called pedigree, sexy diss, publications, especially active letter-writers, conference talks, "fit", etc.) than others
I do like it that all considerations of merit have been completely figured out of this. Even the "diss" isn't "good" or "interesting" but "sexy."
Hey, I don't writes da rules, I justa plays by dem.
Hey, I don't writes da rules, I justa plays by dem.
Sorry, my point wasn't that you were right and that it's too bad, it's that you were wrong and deluding yourself.
So which considerations of "merit" in this process can you articulate, O Luded One?
I do like it that all considerations of merit have been completely figured out of this. Even the "diss" isn't "good" or "interesting" but "sexy."
I dunno, but I find that the people who are "sexy" are also "good" and "interesting." At least in a sexy way.
"the idea of thinking for yourself to be a "seriously cute" proposition
Yes, I think if you go back and look, you'll see that that's obviously what I was trying to say, and that I definitely did not mean that I found it amusing that you were patronizing me."
C'mon, we both know that you are well out of my price range, mein lieblings! Seriously though, the overlap in meaning between what your awkward wording left open as an interpretative possibility and the lack of any general point to your earlier posts implied created a nice opportunity for rhetorical play. So, thanks for that.
"As I said, I was interested to observe that there was someone who seemed to be eager to be the catalyst. People are interesting!"
Allow me to point out, for your convenience, that your assumption that my original post would prove to be a catalyst for that sort of whining thus far lacks substantiation of any sort---unless you count your own preemptive strike against it as evidence for it. I might also further remind you that my intent was not to do so; that is, if we are still believing in the fallacy of authorial intent, or even better reasserting it, around these parts. I'll leave it to you to fill me in on this point of famae mores as well.
I thought "sexy" was synonymous with interesting in academia and has been for decades. So I think you're overreacting.
C'mon, we both know that you are well out of my price range, mein lieblings! Seriously though, the overlap in meaning between what your awkward wording left open as an interpretative possibility and the lack of any general point to your earlier posts implied created a nice opportunity for rhetorical play.
Tell your engineers that they need to keep working on your software, HumorTron 5000. Humans can still tell you're not one of them.
I do like it that all considerations of merit have been completely figured out of this.
Seriously confused. Surely (blind reviewed) pubs and conf talks are merit-based?
Peer-reviewed pubs, absolutely. But conference talks just show that you sent in an abstract (unless we're talking about the APA).
I'm working on a theory that the APA Placement web lackeys are filling in interview slots for those who have very small stated windows of availability before those who have been very generous with their time. Anyone else get this feeling?
“I do like it that all considerations of merit have been completely figured out of this.Seriously confused. Surely (blind reviewed) pubs and conf talks are merit-based?”
Tobias, you blowhard!
In the context of the comment, it's clear that the commenter means that publications are numerical factors that get you more throws of the die: a publication is a number, and one publication is the same as another. That's as non-merited-based a way as possible of looking at publications. Likewise with "sexy": it's the term you use of research when you mean "speciously appealing" or "faddish."
For what it's worth, the commenter immediately agreed that s/he had meant that merit didn't factor into it in any way: "I don't writes da rules, I just plays by dem." And that's consistent with the person's view that the whole process is totally aleatory.
I did indeed use "sexy" in that widely recognized manner: interesting, cutting edge, good. I'm sorry to be the one to introduce you to this unfortunate, conventional locution. Welcome to the world, young thing.
As for your imputation that my aleatory schema is so crude as to confuse numbers of publications with quality: I merely sought to imply that a SC will look at a candidate's publication record as a whole and assign them n dice. One publication in Classical Antiquity for some SCs will result in a higher n than six articles in, for example, Classical Bulletin. Conversely, other SCs may assign n dice in some other, equally unpredictable, manner with respect to publication record. For some positions a substantial record of publications in high-tier journals will be detrimental (low, even negative n dice): the SC may worry that you will seek to jump ship at first chance. For others it is a baseline qualification.
Surely all of this is non-controversial, and surely you should have considered these facts before mis-reading and responding to my finely-tuned and well-considered aleatory theory of job allocation, yes? Fret not, dearie, the wetness behind your ears will dissipate with time.
I did indeed use "sexy" in that widely recognized manner: interesting, cutting edge, good. I'm sorry to be the one to introduce you to this unfortunate, conventional locution.
So if you agree that there is better and worse research, why did you ask me "So which considerations of 'merit' in this process can you articulate, O Luded One?"? That sounds like a pretty skeptical question to me. Or would you say that quality of research shouldn't be thought to have anything to do with "merit"? In which case, what would merit be?
And when I observed that your comment had cut merit out of consideration, why did you respond "I don't writes da rules, I justa plays by dem" and not "no it didn't"?
Fret not, dearie, the wetness behind your ears will dissipate with time.
Welcome to the world, young thing.
A possible thing to keep in mind would be that middle-aged and even old people are also permitted to use the web, if we can figure out how to open a browser.
OK, Gramps,
I think I made it clear that merit, sensu lato, serves to increase your odds.
Publications are one measure of merit. But even there I think we'd all agree that luck plays a not-insignificant role in publication. Did the editor send your piece to friendly readers? Did they act expeditiously in reviewing it? Does your piece fit in with the direction the current editor wants the journal to take. And so on. There are too many variables at work even in the peer-reviewed world to think that publication record is a straight-up meritocracy.
Fit, to take another factor, is even trickier. I don't think it has much relationship to merit as we conceive it, but we'd also agree that it can play a large part in a SC's decision.
So, too, pedigree. Some think it is a proxy for merit, so much so that they will equate the two (Stanford/Harvard = Excellence!). I disagree, but I do recognize that pedigree can act to increase one's odds. But it can also decrease them, as I showed.
All of these things are bundled up together, and the SC judges on that bundle. I likened the bundle to a handful of dice, in order to take into account the response that a SC will have to that bundle. Each SC is different, and the judgments of the individuals and the groups are necessarily subjective. From the outside this seems (and I, quite frankly, believe that it is, largely) aleatory.
Now, when I posed the following: "So which considerations of 'merit' in this process can you articulate, O Luded One?" I sought to encourage you to offer a different explanation for the selection process. Preferably that would be one that hangs little weight on the notion of luck, and more on merit, however you choose to define that.
I, along with the rest of the peanut gallery here, am still waiting for that articulation. Can you hammer it out? C'mon, be an author, not a critic.
Now, when I posed the following: "So which considerations of 'merit' in this process can you articulate, O Luded One?" I sought to encourage you to offer a different explanation for the selection process.
Uh-huh. I think I'll just post that again and let people decide for themselves whether that explanation makes sense.
As for the other question, I don't see an answer, but I'll assume that if you gave us one it'd be equally good.
It was looking as though you started out by talking out of your ass, then changed your mind when you decided you didn't actually think what you'd said, and then for some reason felt compelled to pretend that you hadn't been talking out of your ass earlier. It is a relief to know that that wasn't the case.
Ah, well, I suppose you are just a tenured oldster who really, truly believes that your hire, and subsequent career, came about all due to the steady hand of virtue. Congrats on that. The times they have a changed, and those of us on the market now understand the differences between our circumstance and yours.
OK, this witty repartee is fascinating, to be sure, and there are some nice nuggets of wisdom from a number of sides, but perhaps we can try to sum up objectively for the inexperienced and the ignorant what really matters, in order of importance (I lack some of these things and am consequently getting mostly dogged in this market, but I've been around the block a few of times):
1) "Fit" (yes, there is definitely luck involved here; do you fill a need? do sparks fly at the interview? I put this first because it can clearly torpedo an applicant who has everything else on the list.)
2) Refereed publications in reputable, established journals (and there is luck involved here too, as you know if you've ever gotten back a report from an ignorant reader)
3) Teaching experience (some luck involved here too, as you know if you ever were assigned to the same class over and over again in grad school)
4) Where you got your PhD (this can help you or hurt you, or do neither)
5) That you have at least defended (but this is definitely not a deal-breaker for some committees)
6) A paper at the APA
7) That you didn't take ten years to finish, or haven't held six different VAP positions (this of course is very unfair, but it does seem to be a factor)
7) Other stuff (papers at CAMWS vel sim., at brown-bag seminars, at grad student colloquia, encyclopedia articles, book reviews, service, awards, kai ta loipa)
What do you think, famosi? Is this a fair summary?
Thank you, Silenus.
I am confused about number 6, though. It seems that this can do as much harm as good. What is the value of the APA (as opposed to CAMWS, etc.) in particular? What's your thinking in singling the APA out?
I would make one addition to Silenus's excellent list:
Good writing, in the sense of an engaging and clear prose style, the written equivalent of being easy on the eyes. Something that can draw in SC members who may be bored, jaded, distracted, and/or sleepy, and then make your insights and qualifications alike stick in those same SC members' minds for when the meeting comes round to pick interviewees. We all know that lots of academic prose is dry or convoluted; if yours isn't, it can really help.
Pretty much everyone who submits an abstract presents at CAMWS. This is not at all true of the APA.
Also, an APA talk gives the search committee an additional way to evaluate you, if they choose to have someone attend. If your talk is good and goes over well, that's definitely to your advantage.
Have you College Park wiki reporters still not heard anything from the SC directly? That's just weird.
None of my interviews are showing up yet; the suspense re: College Park is killing me.
Yes, I was thinking of the fact that the APA accepts 16-20% of submissions, whereas CAMWS, even when submissions are at a record high (as they were apparently this year) still accepts 75%. But, on the other hand, the APA has gotten to the point where it accepts basically no papers in certain fields, so giving a paper there, while it looks good on a CV, is hardly sine qua non. And giving a CAMWS paper is a good idea for other reasons: to interact with people working on the same thing, to move your research along, to impress future SC members who might be among the ten people in the audience etc.
I find CAMWS talks to be, generally, superior to those at the APA. People are at CAMWS, mostly, for the talks. The audiences are much larger, and better engaged. I realize that it is easier, statistically speaking, to get a talk at CAMWS, but I think one has a better chance of making a good impression there than at the APA. I get the sense that a candidate is more likely to hurt themselves when delivering an APA talk than help themselves, assuming that the SC sends somebody to listen. Lastly, I think the stress of dealing with an APA talk detracts from one's ability to cope with the stress of interviews at the APA. Better to tackle one thing at a time.
One more addition to Silenus's list: Proofread your cover letter.
That shouldn't need to be said, but alas, it does. I've been on four SCs in recent years (three VAPs in a couple of different departments, one TT in classics) and every time there have been at least two or three candidates whose cover letters included spelling errors, faulty punctuation, or typos. One letter writer included a sentence saying "This position at X College would be perfect for me" and -- you guessed it -- s/he gave the wrong name; we're not X College, we're Y College.
Of course we all know that you're sending out multiple letters and applying multiple places, and that you're pressed for time, harried, worried, and flustered. But precision matters; accuracy matters; the ability to concentrate on small details matters (especially in teaching, and grading student work in, ancient languages). And we have to eliminate the majority of applications we get somehow, to reduce the 100-plus stack to a workable APA interview list. Evidence of sloppiness and imprecision in the cover letter gives us an easy and quick way to sort you right out of consideration.
So: proofread your cover letter.
To Anon 9:30, if the suspense is killing you, why don't you just write the contact at College Park and ask for an update?
Whenever I am on a SC, I deduct points for an APA paper... to me this means the person is well connected with a certain "in-group" and therefore doesn't need my help to get a job. Haha JK. sort of.
RE: College Park- I got an email from the search chair asking for an interview on 12/12. It does not, however, show up on my placement service page yet.
weird - so some interviewees got a personal email from the SC chair and others didn't?
I guess this isn't on everyone's list of helpful characteristics, but for archaeologists, running or being involved in a field project can shoot you up the list.
Those of you who insist on adding your interviews to the wiki's interview counters without adding to the number of interviews listed for each particular position should at least be reminded that you are not helping the wiki reflect the market situation accurately. Many of us would like to know how many people have received interviews for a given position, or whether the candidates all receive interview notifications on the same day. If you'd like to contribute to making the wiki more useful for all of us, add to the number of interviews listed for particular positions as well as to the general counters.
How would it help you at all to know how many people are being interviewed? Does that change how much you prepare or how you prepare? All that is is you wanting to give yourself a percentage "chance" which really is meaningless. I personally hate the "x2" etc - not everyone uses the wiki, so to attempt to get such information is futile.
Not the OP, but here's how it would help me: if the person changes the counter and also adds information on which place is interviewing that person, then I have a better sense of whether that place is interviewing "desirables" vs. "undesirables" like me. So if they change the counter from 5 to 6 interviews, that's very different from changing the thing from 0 to 1 or 1 to 2. And knowing where they're interviewing is of more than just passing interest. That's my view, anyway. Since this is all largely anonymous, I'm not sure why we're not all more forthright about things like this. Oh, maybe it's because we all hate each other.
But why would that matter to you? Would it make you apply differently? Prepare differently? What practical information does that give?
The useful information conveyed by the multiplier numbers is that if everyone uses them we can gauge the approximate percentage of job seekers who actually use the wiki. Of course this is irrelevant information for things like confirmation and rejection letters where we don't know the size of the pool, but I would posit most committees do between ten and twelve interviews, so it provides real information if five of those people note their interviews on the wiki.
"but I would posit most committees do between ten and twelve interviews"
Really? In my (limited) experience as a grad student rep on a search committee and as a candidate on the market for the second time, it seems like most SCs interview between 15 and 20 candidates at the APA.
I'm curious if anyone else has thoughts on the general average.
Ten to twelve is standard for MIT, and we are interviewing twelve at APA.
@Scaevola (December 11), re Davidson College:
No, actually, we aren't. We are looking for exactly what the job advertisement said (and I realize that makes us a very narrowly defined job): a Romanist who is a strong Latinist whose interests lie in material culture and who can contribute to our archaeology concentration. So philologists who 'once went on a dig' were as out of the running as archaeologists without strong skills in Latin. It's what we, as a small department, need.
Best,
Jeanne Neumann
Chair and head of SC, Davidson
Whenever I am on a SC, I deduct points for an APA paper... to me this means the person is well connected with a certain "in-group" and therefore doesn't need my help to get a job. Haha JK. sort of.
Have I been naive to believe the APA that their abstract selection process really is anonymous? Or are you suggesting that members of an in-group just know each other's work well enough to pick it out from an anonymous line up?(Incidentally, I'm ABD at a middle tier school, no "in-group" ties, and have gotten 3 of the 4 abstracts I've submitted accepted. So your suggestion that it's about connections comes as a surprise to me.)
Twelve is a number that has quoted to me by SCs in the past, and it seems a very sensible number, since I've also heard SC members complain that after interviewing twenty applicants, one starts to get them confused. I think doing twenty interviews can also be (not that always is, of course!) a sign of a committee that can't decide what they want; i.e. instead of agreeing that "we really need X more than Y right now", they come to an impasse and say "OK, we'll just interview 10 people that do X and 10 people that do Y and just pick the best." And that can be disastrous.
Whenever I am on a SC, I deduct points for an APA paper... to me this means the person is well connected with a certain "in-group" and therefore doesn't need my help to get a job. Haha JK. sort of.
This is the weirdest opinion I have ever heard expressed about the APA. It's even weirder than the one implied by the annual exclamations that the APA should exert its tremendous might to ensure that there are more jobs for classicists.
@Jeanne Neumann, I'm impressed that you chose to address my immature posting written in utter frustration over this year's job market. I respect the needs you are addressing, however, I do wonder on what basis your committee evaluated what constitutes a "strong Latinist". Those of us who work with material culture are by definition not focused upon Latin, however, many of us with PhDs in "Classics" should fit the bill in that regards, no? Especially when it comes to the ability to teach undergraduates Latin. I've dedicated plenty of effort to mastering the languages, and I don't know how else to convey this to search committees since my research does not address philological issues.
Regardless, I hope you find what you are looking for.
I'm sure that especially in this saturated market there are people who can wear the Latinist and the archaeologist hats equally well and equally strongly, but as a (recent) SC member at a SLAC, I admit that ad struck me as a bit off-kilter too. What exactly does one mean, anyway, by "strong Latinist"? The old bar for undergrad institutions was the archaeologist should be able to teach intro and intermediate levels, but probably wouldn't be doing advanced. Some places, facing budget cuts, want each position to be covering as many things as possible, as if multa was better than multum (especially when they tell themselves each of the multa will be held to multum standards of excellence).
Wow, Hamilton, 130 applicants for a VAP? It wasn't that long ago that a T-T job might draw fewer than a hundred. It's a tough, tough market out there.
And no, don't worry, I won't apply to your bullshit yearly recurring always temporary position again. You've made yourself abundantly clear.
My suspicion, O rejected one, is that you didn't suffer much of a loss.
Whenever I am on a SC, I deduct points for an APA paper... to me this means the person is well connected with a certain "in-group" and therefore doesn't need my help to get a job. Haha JK. sort of.
This was plainly meant as a joke, the "sort of" notwithstanding.
As for APA interviews, we go all the way up to eleven. That's one louder!
This was plainly meant as a joke, the "sort of" notwithstanding.
The "JK. sort of." seems to apply to the poster's the claim that s/he holds APA talks against a candidate. But that joke only makes sense if the poster is serious about the claim that APA talks are actually selected based on "in-group" connections.
This was plainly meant as a joke, the "sort of" notwithstanding.
Lots of statements can mean something different if you arbitrarily ignore some of the words in them.
@Scaevola:
Thanks. I hesitate to say this, given the flack the person from MIT took, but I understand that you are exasperated. I know it sounds hollow from someone in my position to talk about the frustration of people just getting started, but for what it’s worth, I get that it’s a wildly bleak and infuriating market and you have a lot to be anxious and angry about. The only thing I can do is be as supportive of applicants as I can be—it doesn’t get everyone a job, but it does personalize the system. If I take your message right, it seems you were someone who was not the right fit. I am (genuinely) sorry. I read every application as they came in. It is an amazing pool of bright, talented, committed scholars. And a much smaller pool of people who fit the admittedly very narrow criteria we asked for.
@Anonymous, December 15, 2011 2:13 AM:
I’m not so interested in ‘old bars.’ We have a very strong language program. We attract strong language students. We want a someone with significant training in Latin. I guess had we gotten no good applicants, I’d agree that our job was ‘off-kilter.’ But we got (in addition to a lot of good, strong applicants whose credentials just did not fit) a lot of candidates who, in fact, have the kind of qualifications we need for our department. We are not cutting back—this is a new fifth line, an expansion. We evaluated what we and the college needed, asked for it, and got a great response.
Jeanne Neumann
Davidson College
I really hate to say this, but I'm impressed by how this blog has matured over the last few years that I've been paying attention. When I started, it was all name calling and bitter rants. Now, it seems to be ironic rants generously interspersed with constructive sincerity. I like it.
I agree. On the other hand there is more venting and snark on the wiki, which should really be free of those things. "PFO." "Pleasant rejection letter, but without personal salutation." Do we really need that over there too?
That's true. The wiki does feel somewhat crowded with useless information (do we really have to leave up information on department meetings for posterity?); but even that is probably the result of increased use.
@ Scaevola
I can confirm everything Jeanne Neumann has said here. Although I did not get an interview with them, I know at least one person they are interviewing, and that person truly does have amazing Latin pedagogy as well as a committed research focus in Roman archaeology (and has been a leading member of many digs for years now). And as for being as supportive of applicants as she can be, I can also confirm that. I had an interview at the APA for a Davidson job some years ago. I did not get the job (or even a fly-out), but it was and still is the best interview I have ever had, simply because of the respect and support given me by the search committee, including Jeanne Neumann. It remains the only interview (out of many now) I have had where I truly felt I was being treated as a human being, a colleague and an equal, and not as a commodity to be traded on some faceless "market."
@Jeanne Neumann & Anonymous, Dec. 15 2:34 PM
Yes, it is some consolation, in fact. I've been on the market for a couple of years now and it is usually a horribly dehumanizing experience. Out of the handful of jobs that I feel I can apply to, there are usually only one or two that I feel confident are "me". These are where I really hope to at least get an interview. Davidson was one of those - so it's at those times when even my greatly diminished hopes are smashed that I want to scream at the wall. Turns out the wall talked back this time. I may not understand still how a pool of archaeologically trained candidates can have better Latin chops than the rest of us, but I do appreciate the effort you've made to inject some humanity into the process. Class act. Seems like the person who gets the job will be lucky.
I may not understand still how a pool of archaeologically trained candidates can have better Latin chops than the rest of us
I don't understand what process of reasoning has led you to conclude that they do. What I'm hearing is "we want someone who's credible as a teacher of both of these subjects." Nothing about having Latin that is absolutely better than that of everyone else who is seeking a job.
I don't understand what process of reasoning has led you to conclude that they do. What I'm hearing is "we want someone who's credible as a teacher of both of these subjects."
If that's what I was hearing I would wholeheartedly agree. But it's not. Prof. Neumann has specifically said in this forum they were looking for "a strong Latinist" with "significant training in Latin". If they specified they were looking for somebody with proven pedagogical chops and lots of experience in the Latin classroom, I could see how candidates could be weeded out. Maybe I'm hanging on semantics here, but I feel slightly insulted by the insinuation that my training in the language of my main research area was not as credible or significant as the next guy with a Classics PhD. Nonetheless, I am still impressed with the sincerity with which she approached the subject, and wish more searches were run with the same openness.
Prof. Neumann has specifically said in this forum they were looking for "a strong Latinist" with "significant training in Latin".
Yes, I think that the thing here is that you're understanding that to mean "scholar of Latin literature who has a better sense of Latin as a language than your average scholar of Latin literature." The trick is that sometimes when people say "Latinist" they just mean "reader of Latin," not "expert in Latin literature." I think that here by "strong Latinist" they mean "person with Latin strong enough to teach competently at the undergraduate level" and by "significant training in Latin" they mean "possessing a Ph.D. that required passing a non-laughable translation exam" (so, I'd reckon this could be a history Ph.D. or an archaeology Ph.D., for example, so long as it involved demonstrating actual competence in Latin). That's a much different bar from the one you're thinking of, and lots and lots of people clear it.
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