Are you ready for the academic job market?
Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash
On its surface, the academic job seems relatively straightforward: jobs are announced, you update your CV, write research and teaching statements, and send it all off to the search committee. You convince yourself this is going to be an easy task. After all, you know what you’ve been up to over the past few years, and you’re confident you can describe your recent work in a few pages, maybe less. But, once you get into it, reality starts to settle in, and you realize that pulling together an academic job application is much more time-consuming, requiring a lot more effort than you had thought. This is because job applications are not simply a summary of what you have previously done; search committees are looking for a vision of the kind of superstar you will become and how you can help elevate their institutions in the future. That’s a different kind of writing from anything you’ve done before.
How do you get started? Before writing anything, first do some reflection. Here are a few questions to ask yourself:
What big picture questions are you trying to answer and why should we care? Your job materials aren’t just about the newest result in your latest paper. Your statements should outline the broader problems you are trying to solve and also communicate to the reader why these are important and interesting problems that we, as a society, should want to see addressed.
What will you have achieved in 10 years? It’s important to know where you are headed with your career, not just what your next experiment will be. How will you contribute to science or change society? Much like how scouts evaluate draft prospects in sports, the committee will be evaluating you on your potential, not just on what you have already achieved. Could you be the next Kawhi Leonard of your field?
What is your leadership and teaching style, and how do you know that it’s effective? You should be able to clearly articulate your leadership and teaching styles, including any pedagogical or theoretical foundations they are based on. It is also important to articulate how you regularly evaluate whether your style works and what the outcomes have been for your teams and your students.
And, here’s a few tips to get you on your way:
Start early and edit often. Just like writing a manuscript or a grant, preparing your job materials will take longer than you think, and the first draft won’t be perfect. Don’t add to your stress by trying to cram everything in at the last minute. Start early, put it away for a moment to get some distance, and then return to your materials and edit with a clear head.
Ask your peers and mentors to review your materials. Search committees will be comprised of people with varying expertise and perspectives. Some terms you use in your writing or ways of describing your work may be intuitive for people directly in your field, but less so for others in adjacent fields. Having a variety of peers and mentors read your materials can ensure your statements sound impactful to a broader audience.
Seek coaching. Within your university or institution, there may be programs or supports to help you get your application ready; ask your mentors what may be available and seek out these resources. There are also lots of coaches who specialize in preparing graduate students and postdoctoral fellows for the job market (myself included!). You can find them on LinkedIn or ask your peers if they have worked with anyone they would recommend.
Putting together an academic job application isn’t easy and it does take some time. But, with reflection and support from your peers, mentors, and coaches, you can shine in a competitive market. If you are on the job market this year, I offer coaching for postdoctoral fellows that will guide you through each step of the process, and even prepare you for the job talk when you get selected for an interview. For more details and to fill out an application, visit here. Or you can book a call with me here to chat more.
Next week: What jobs should you apply for?
