Academic Job Market Hacks, Part 2

Lukas Szrot

Assistant Professor of Sociology

Bemidji State University

Academic Job Market Hacks, Part II

I wrote the first part of this last August as I began my first year as a tenure-track assistant professor of Sociology. I’m off the job market now, but to date I’ve applied for over 125 jobs, and had some voice in three different job searches (two recently). Academic jobs are often something of a mystery, perhaps even more so to those trying to get one. Some of this is necessary, as confidentiality is the order of the day; and I won’t be discussing where specifically I’ve applied or interviewed for and what that involved, nor will I discuss any specific experiences related to job searches. However, in the years I’ve been doing this, I can offer some (hopefully) useful insights, mostly built around what I think of as the three most significant variables in the academic job landscape: position description, teaching load, and school size. I’ll also talk about some more specific things I didn’t talk about in the last academic job search essay. I’d recommend reading that one first, because it has more general advice on which this one builds.

I can’t guarantee they will always be the most significant factors, or the only ones; I also am speaking as a sociologist who has applied for jobs, broadly speaking, in sociology (and a few neighboring fields in which I am qualified). I also admit these are based mostly (but not only) on US jobs. Finally, as someone who does statistical analysis (among other things), my views of these as the most significant variables are not based on statistical model-building (the data just isn’t available) but on personal experience, and N=1 in any category is always a potential limitation. I’ll proceed, nonetheless.

Variable 1: Position Description

This can be the depressing part, because fewer and fewer academic jobs are traditional, tenure-track positions that come with (potentially lifelong) job security. But it doesn’t have to be. Every type of academic job has pros and cons. To start with, tenure-track assistant professor isn’t even the most prestigious academic job that one can apply for (even setting aside the upper echelons of administrative jobs, where I have yet to venture), and adjunct faculty isn’t necessarily the dismal task it’s sometimes framed to be.

General Advice:

Know what kind of position you’re applying for, what that means, what it will involve; and this will shape how to organize application materials as well as how to interview more effectively. By knowing what they’re looking for, you can get a better sense of how to show you “fit.”

Position Type: Open Research Area/Rank Positions

The most prestigious positions are usually Open-rank positions, searches undertaken typically at the big research universities or Ivy League schools that ask for assistant, associate, and full professor ranks to apply. These positions are aimed at getting “the best of the best” in a particular sub-field or specialization, and often in general (hence “open” area of specialization).

Pros: these positions often come with great pay and perks and a chance to do major groundbreaking research in an in-demand area of specialization. It’s the best of the best—a great job if you can land one.

Cons: Other than the pressure of being expected to be “the best” (you’re competing in an applicant pool with people who’ve been professional academics for years, and sometimes even decades; if you get this job, you’re going to work really hard) the only other con is that even a really strong candidate just isn’t going to get a job like this right out of grad school. Even if you did your PhD at an Ivy League school and published in top journals and brought in huge grant dollars and your students thought you were the best graduate teaching assistant ever. Not even then. I’m not saying never apply for the job (assuming you’re at least minimally qualified and a good fit), but know there are several hundred other applicants and it’s unlikely an early-career scholar fresh out of school is going to make it to the final round.

Position Type: Tenure-Track Assistant Professor

Even tenure-track assistant professorships are more competitive than ever. That doesn’t mean you can’t land one, but the average tenure-track hire is likely to have an established research agenda, having already published several times (peer-reviewed articles and even possibly a book), and brought in grant money (more so at research universities); and is an experienced teacher (who can prove it with strong course evaluations and other preparations). What matters more, or less, depends on the teaching load and school size (more below), but it’s likely to take years of preparation to get such a job, some of which may involve things you didn’t learn in graduate school (being able to formally mentor/advise students, serve as a principal investigator on a research team, and perform faculty governance, committee service work, and community service/outreach, to name a few).

Pros: job security, of course, is the biggest one. A reasonably comfortable income with at least some promise of a job that might last a lifetime. It’s often viewed by academics as a “dream job.” Tenure-track professors expect some chance of permanence and job security, which is the big pro, but it is not guaranteed any longer—in a world of deep budget cuts (retrenchment, becoming ever more common, literally means laying professors off, whether they’re tenured or not) and reputation-ruining faux pas (from which professors are simply not protected like perhaps they once were, not least because of ideological polarization and the erosion of privacy), tenured professors lose their jobs more often than you (or I) would like to think. Far from the lonely scholar poring over texts in an office day after day and discussing big ideas with colleagues, you’re going to be joining an institution, and that institution needs you.

Cons: This brings me to some of the little-known cons of being on the tenure track—the job security is nice but must be earned. You’re on a tenure clock from the day you walk in; and have to perform satisfactorily across not one or two, but several, areas, which may mean being held accountable on a regular basis to Chairs, Deans, and upper administration. If you’re going to stay at a university, it is generally expected that you will consistently “put your best foot forward” in all you do and conduct yourself in accord with the institutional expectations and goals. It is expected that you will be willing to serve the university, department, program, and students; in administrative tasks, committee work, faculty governance, and the broader community. And yes, you still have to carry forward a research plan and be consistently stellar in the classroom to get tenure, and to later make it to full professor.

Position Type: Postdoctoral Fellow

These are increasingly common, especially among recent graduates who have positioned themselves as more research-oriented scholars. Postdocs can open doors for ambitious scholars who are “climbing” toward a research university position later in life. At the very least, they can give you an extra year, and sometimes several years, to build up research experience and keep at it on the job market.

Pros: these positions are easier to secure for recent graduates, and (perhaps especially) ABDs—departments that might not take a risk on an ABD for a tenure-track position might be happy to consider an ABD for a postdoc, because they have less to lose. If you’re hired into a tenure-track position and then don’t finish your PhD before the start of employment this can create systemic, expensive, and time-consuming nightmares for your colleagues, program, and the university as a whole; postdocs make a nice transition for everyone. I know many faculty who speak highly of their postdoc position and time spent working in that position, though what happens can be extremely flexible. Be aware of what kind of postdoc it is—are you working with a research team on a narrowly defined project, or is there a lot of flexibility to carve out your own niche? There are pros and cons to each—I’ll start with pros. Having an assigned research project to cooperate with a team, and senior scholar, on, can be really useful if you want to define yourself as a more research-oriented scholar and don’t feel you have a strong enough research agenda to set your own path yet. Having a more flexible postdoc can be great if you have a promising research agenda but need more time to finish that book or get some more publications out the door and can be self-motivated and work at your own pace.

Cons: of course, it would be ideal to be sure about your employment year after year, but this is increasingly a privilege few occupations share, so you’re not alone. This might involve getting hired for a year and spending a good chunk of that year still on the job market looking for the next gig, while also being expected to perform your duties as a postdoc. That can be difficult and tiring, causing no shortage of anxiety. A postdoc position that has a strictly delimited research agenda might be stifling and frustrating for a scholar who is more of a self-starter and has more general interests and goals; a postdoc that is too flexible might lead a scholar who does not have a strong research agenda and/or is not self-motivated enough to “crash and burn.”

Position Type: Teaching Professorships

These are a kind of ambiguous position that is becoming more and more common at universities, but comes with assumptions that community colleges, liberal arts colleges, and many teaching-focused state universities have long held true. Some come with tenure, but many do not; instead, teaching professorships may be fixed-term, meaning you are hired for one, two, or three years, or contractual, meaning a (potentially renewable) contract ranging over the same period, or they may come with a great degree of job security. Some positions that are really what I’m calling “teaching professorships” are called “visiting professorships” (that come with many tenure-track responsibilities but a fixed-term contract) or even “fixed-term or visiting assistant professorships” (you start at the rank of assistant professor but are not tenure-track).

Pros: this can be a good deal for everyone involved—but I recommend these more for teaching-focused scholars than research-focused scholars. At the same time, these positions can turn into longer-term and even tenure-track positions in some cases. Think about it: they hired you for a reason, and that reason is because they needed someone who can teach the things you can, or do, teach. There’s a not insignificant chance that if you like working there, and those responsible for hiring and rehiring like you working there, you might have a longer-term options available.

Cons: In addition to the relative lack of job security issue, you’re not going to have a lot of time to do research in this kind of position. A research-focused scholar who teaches on contract for a few years would do well to have a few papers and projects well underway and under review in order to move forward with them in such a position—conducting brand-new original research while teaching 3, 4, or even more classes per semester is going to be hard, even if you’re a workaholic. Between teaching and service, you may work a full-time job each week before reading or writing a single word.

Position Type: Part-time/adjunct position

These come with a “bad rap.” Granted, some adjuncts and part-time faculty make so little money they’re eligible for government assistance. About a quarter of adjunct, part-time, and contingent faculty use one or more public service programs, and over half make less than $50,000 a year. However, many faculty in this designation are retired teachers or emeritus faculty (sometimes with PhDs in other disciplines) who love what they do; many others are graduate students and junior academics earning their “chops” in terms of teaching (while working and/or pursuing a degree, perhaps with a fellowship, which is best thought of as a paid internship with an opportunity to “break into” academe), and still others are full-time working professionals or successful entrepreneurs who teach “on the side.”

Pros: because of the fears surrounding this category it may seem cynical to even suggest there are pros. But there really are. There is a lot more flexibility, for those who are retired or have another career and want to teach part-time, and often these positions do not involve the many hours of service responsibilities that are expected of full-time faculty (and often even more expected of tenure-track faculty). This is a chance to earn teaching experience, even in that specialization you’ve always wanted to teach in before getting the “dream job” (and that will help you get that dream job later). Adjunct positions are also a way to stay in academe (with access to library databases and other essentials) if you returned from year one of the job market empty-handed (it happens a lot; don’t get discouraged), perhaps while also working another job (maybe in the university). It’s also a way to carve a niche that keeps you in the university if you find that you’re just not geographically mobile at job market time (for most people, a full-time academic career will mean a “big move” at least twice).

Cons: it can be exhausting and debilitating to work with little to no job security and low pay, year after year, and there are plenty of horror stories about part-time academics. It can be hard to piece together a decent living if you’re expecting to do that through adjunct/part-time employment alone. The question is whether, to what extent, and for how long, one is willing to endure this situation before finding a supplemental job or leaving academe altogether, and that’s going to depend on you. The first thing to note is that graduate school and a PhD are an opportunity for, not a guarantee of, academic employment, and with increasing demand for skilled advanced degree holders in multiple non-academic fields (which may, and often do, pay better, and may come with lower workload and comparable benefits), never think of leaving academe, temporarily or indefinitely, as failure. I did it for almost ten years and I learned a lot.

Variable 2: Teaching Load

Teaching load would seem straightforward: 3-2 means three courses in the fall semester and two in the spring. However, it’s not always that simple—some colleges and some programs have trimesters, and it’s not easy to think of 3-3-3 as the same as 3-3 because there’s going to be a lot more course prep if you’re teaching nine courses, instead of six even if they’re shorter semesters. I’ve heard of, and seen, programs that use quarters: how does teaching two classes per quarter look compared to teaching 3 or 4 per semester? I’ve even heard of octomesters, with eight separate one-month courses over a year. Some schools have intensive December, January, May, and September semesters; and many programs offer courses in the summer too (which can be divided and subdivided in a lot of different ways, even at the same school).

When applying for jobs, don’t get too bogged down in the particulars; instead, think about what the teaching load is going to mean in terms of how you spend your time. Teaching load isn’t just about teaching, because time is “zero-sum”—you only have so much of it in a day, week, semester, lifetime—teaching load, plus other expectations/obligations also determines how much time you have for research, for service, and for life outside work (yes, you need that too even if you love what you do, and if you’re reading this I suspect you do). Perhaps more so than anything else, teaching load alone can open some doors, and close others. If you get a job at a teaching-focused school that isn’t tenure-track, you have to have time to both apply for jobs and build up you CV in potentially non-teaching focused ways to get from where you are to where you want to be.

General Advice:

What really matters, and maybe the most important piece of information I can offer in this entire read, is that applying for jobs looks different depending on the teaching load. Your CV and cover letter should be tailored to reflect how much the school prioritizes teaching, but you should also know what kind of job you’re applying for, and how to prepare differently for the interview when you get one.

For example, a hiring committee at a teaching-focused school is more likely to pass your application materials up in relative silence if the first mention of teaching is on Page 6 of your CV, even if that’s after a vast array of impressive research, grants, presentations, and awards. A first-round interview candidate who spends too much of the interview talking about their research when interviewing for a teaching-heavy position isn’t likely to get to the second round, and vice versa (a research university wants you to be a good teacher, but focus on research).

You must not only prioritize what the position is looking for (in terms of balancing teaching and research), but also think long-term and strategically about what you are looking for as a scholar and as a human being who works in academe. In practical terms, what does your CV tell you when you give it a good hard look? Play to your strengths. In more intangible, but no less important, terms, what inspires or engages you? Do you feel invigorated or drained after teaching a class? Is writing a paper for publication a joy or a chore? How do you feel about working on a research team or writing grants? Do you see yourself as a specialist who does one thing really well or a generalist whose attention is captured by many things?

There are three big school types, but there are lots of “in-between” cases where the teaching load will involve “splitting the difference,” but these are some major ideal-types of faculty jobs, what you’ll need, and how to position yourself if working at this kind of institution is your goal.

Ideal Type 1: Research Universities

These are big universities (more on school size below); they typically have lots of specialized faculty in a dedicated department. That is, the department will be sociology, not a sociology program housed in a department with multiple programs (more below). Research universities will probably have a PhD program in your field or at least a master’s degree offering. Typically, the teaching load in the social sciences may average 2-2, or two courses in the fall and two in the spring. Ideally, that gives faculty at these universities more time to pursue research specifically.

You Need: To get a tenure-track job at a research university, you will need a clear, focused research agenda that lines up with the job ad specialization, multiple publications in mainstream peer-review journals in your field or subfield, and increasingly, a demonstrated history of successful grant writing. A successfully applying for a postdoc at a research university will likely mean publications, as well as a clear plan of what you bring to the department or research team or project; and a reasonably good idea of what you’d do during the year(s) of the postdoc.

If This is Your Goal: you will need to build a research program carefully and tenaciously within, or across, established disciplinary specializations and must be able to demonstrate that you’ve done so when applying. Tenure-track jobs at research universities are extremely competitive, and search committees receive hundreds of applications, perhaps even a thousand in some cases. They’re busy people and will be screening quickly, so make sure your CV and cover letter both clearly accent that you are a research-focused scholar (put research first, other stuff later) who has clear areas of specialization and scholarly identity. They aren’t looking for someone who’s dabbling in ten different sub-fields—think three, and maybe four areas of specialization that “hang together,” but no more, and be able to demonstrate with evidence those are areas in which you’re actually an expert. A well-rounded scholar will be a demonstrably excellent teacher too, who has collaborated with scholars in other sub-fields and maybe even other disciplines, but research universities want to know you can do research first and foremost.

Realistically, even as you finish up your PhD at a research university, the trip to a tenure-track position at a research university is unlikely to be the result of a first-year job search while an ABD. You’ll likely want to build toward such a position by taking on a postdoc first, and maybe multiple postdocs, to strengthen your record and be competitive for these highly selective jobs.

If you want to be a research-focused scholar, then be one, and actively seek out those opportunities that are going to build you up toward the kind of research profile you want when you finally do get that tenure-track position.

Ideal Type 2: State Universities

This is a broad categorization, but these are the schools that are teaching- rather than research-focused. They are usually smaller than the research universities and might be satellite campuses to the big research universities, or part of a state school system. More commonly, disciplines such as sociology might be housed as a program with a few faculty who occupy a shared department with one or more other disciplines (perhaps anthropology, criminology, history, psychology, political science, geography, communication studies, or another disciplinary “neighbor” in my experience as a sociologist). Some of the bigger liberal arts schools might look more like this ideal type; some of the smaller ones, more like ideal type 3 (more in a moment). Teaching load at these schools is likely to be 4-4 or close to it; you will be a full-time teacher at these schools, with varying service responsibilities (more in a moment). Reading, writing, and research may well take place largely during “off hours”—that is, after you’re already worked a full-time job, and this poses obvious challenges if you’re on the job market too, and/or if you’re trying to cultivate a research-focused profile as a scholar.

You Need: To know the difference between departments and programs can help you to know what you’re applying for, who your colleagues are going to be, and what questions to potentially ask. If I share space with multiple programs I need to know what kind of relationship they have to my own program—do we collaborate, and to what extent, or are we separate and autonomous? These can be questions to raise during an interview, but first you have to get one. In order to do that, it has to be clear that you are a teacher first (and not a researcher who also teaches). These schools’ hiring committees aren’t looking for a Nobel laureate (I’m exaggerating, but only a little)—they want to know if you can walk in the door on the first day and teach a broad range of classes well. That means having strong teaching evaluations, a record of working with and mentoring students, and, most importantly, a CV and cover letter that, first and foremost, tell the hiring committee that you are a teacher, and that you want to be a teacher.

If This is Your Goal: Another aspect of this kind of job that often gets overlooked is that schools with smaller programs can’t afford to hire someone who is extremely specialized. They want generalists—people who can show, through their scholarly activities, not only that they’re able to teach multiple different classes, but also that they want to engage across multiple sub-fields and areas of specialization. Don’t tell them you are a specialist in eleven different sub-fields, because they won’t believe you. Be strategic—if you’re interested in religion and the job ad wants someone who can teach gender, be ready if you get an interview to explain how your interest in religion connects to an ability to teach gender and be able to show the connection (through teaching experience, publications, graduate course work, theoretical/conceptual explanation, or other scholarly activities).

If you want to be a teaching-focused scholar, then be one, cultivating a more generalist scholar profile and actively seek out opportunities to teach, starting as a graduate student. You’ll need ample teaching experience to be competitive for these kinds of jobs.

Ideal Type 3: 2-year colleges and smaller liberal arts colleges

These colleges are, well, smaller; some don’t have bachelor’s degree programs. They’re a different animal but share a lot in common with Ideal Type 2.

You Need: Be ready to be even more generalist, to demonstrate interest in and ability to teach a lot of different things (including even graduate work in more than one discipline). I have met teachers at these schools who have enough graduate course work in three or four disciplines, not sub-fields, but disciplines, and this makes them more marketable, especially being on the “liberal arts” side of things. Small liberal arts colleges must be selective in terms of who they hire, and want teaching- and student-focused scholars who can cover a broad range, and can show they are interdisciplinary. Community colleges and vocational schools are focused on getting students jobs, and they may not have a large budget for liberal arts, so being able to cover a lot of different areas is going to make you more marketable in these schools.

If This is Your Goal: your CV and cover letter are going to look more like Ideal type 2 than 1, overall. This is where I segue into the next section, and discuss the size of the school, to better illuminate some differences.

Variable 3: School Size

Basically, bigger schools are going to have more money, and that means more horsepower for research, and with more faculty and staff, they can divide the tasks of maintaining the institution between many more people. These tasks are often called service, and are not limited to the institution itself, but also include service to the program or department, as well as service to the community or the discipline itself. Service means mentoring students, serving on committees, participating in faculty governance, chairing a department or directing a program, and more. Smaller school equals more service, generally speaking, and that means less time for research and teaching. The smallest schools, in ideal type 3, may be entirely focused on teaching and service, leaving little time for research. Even in ideal type 2 schools, service is going to take on at least several hours each week, and probably more.

You will need service to get tenure, but how much will depend on the school (and how big, or small, it is). It isn’t that people at any of these three institutions work harder, or less hard—they probably work equally hard, on average, their time is simply divided up differently.

At Big Schools with, say, 15,000 or more students enrolled, that have graduate programs, lots of dedicated departments, few programs that share departments, a larger bureaucratic hierarchy with more staff, service will tend to be lighter and less varied. That service may be more oriented toward one’s own program, discipline, or department in general, because tasks that involve university-level service can be spread out more. Program assessment, student mentorship, and other tasks may be things that only tenure-track faculty are expected to perform (which is yet another reason to be sure you’re well positioned in terms of research and/or teaching before getting into such a position to give yourself optimal chances for actually getting tenure). In many cases, senior faculty may take on more service roles; on the other hand, it may be junior faculty who are doing the bulk of the service—this varies at the department and program level, and with more people on average in each discipline, program, or department, there’s going to be more variation in terms of how the service responsibilities are divided up.

At Medium-Sized and Small Schools, service is going to be broader, and likely more time-consuming. The great thing about this is that you will have more chances to work with and get to know students, as well as step back from the “Ivory Tower” model of academic life and into community engagement and service. These are often things that are expected in smaller schools, and are necessary to keep them functioning. These are also, once again, things that are going to impact research agendas and goals, so know that if you take a job at a smaller school and have a research-focused long-term agenda, it’s going to be difficult and maybe even frustrating to do what you really want to be doing. At the same time, if you like teaching and mentoring, want to be active in university politics (through union organizing or faculty governance, for example), and have a desire to serve your community, then you might find this environment more rewarding than a postdoc or even a tenure-track job big research university.

During your Q&A at an interview, ask about service opportunities (not responsibilities or expectations)—this will let the hiring committee know you are someone who wants to step up and help, and also that you know that the school you’re applying for needs people who are willing to do so.

These descriptions of what the institutions look like should shape what to apply for, how to apply, and how to think strategically about your long-term interests and goals. This will keep you from getting “stuck” where the job(s) you’ve taken don’t align with these interests or goals; and I hope to have offered some simple (if verbose) guidance to help your application materials have a better chance of catching the eyes of a hiring committee.-L.