Dr. Shellie

I’m very happy about the results of my job search. Fortunately, I have offers from universities that I would be happy to work at, located in places I would be happy to live. For years I have wondered whether this would be possible. Maybe you think I’m an overly anxious person and should have known I would do fine. But I don’t think so. I feel like it’s kind of a miracle to get an academic job at all. In previous years, I’ve watched people around me go through the job search for tenure track positions at research universities. They ended up with all sorts of different outcomes, for example:

• A few seemingly brilliant individuals with groundbreaking contributions to the field got interviews at Top-5 schools, got one or more offers, and accepted one. I know at least 4 of these people! Lucky them.
• A few people I know chose a very small number of universities that matched their interests, got interviews, and then offers.
• A few people got interviews at semi-random collection of good schools, got a few offers, which may or may not have been in locations they liked, and picked one. In a few cases, they ended up going back to their home countries, where the location options were more to their liking.
• A few people interviewed at a handful of Top-40 schools but got no offers, and then repeated the process a few years in a row without luck, or accepted a job they weren’t thrilled about, or ended up in an uncertain, soft-money position.
• A few people sent out lots and lots of applications but got no interviews at all.

So how are you supposed to know ahead of time which category you fall into? Sure, there are certain factors that increase your success, and you can work on strengthening your background and application in those areas. But I think that if your goal is to get a tenure-track job at a research university in a place you want to live, it’s hard to know your chance of success much in advance. Many smart people with excellent records do not get jobs. Which is too bad, since it can take 5-10 years just to get ready to apply– counting the time you spend in a PhD and a postdoc. And how are you supposed to predict your chances then– when you are starting grad school? Meanwhile, the nature of the training makes it very hard to keep your options open– a PhD plus a postdoc is, in many fields, not the ideal preparation for jobs in industry.

Do you think I am being too negative? What’s your perspective, particularly those of you who are professors and have had students yourselves? How should I think about recruiting graduate students, when I am encouraging them to pursue an uncertain career path?