What red flags should you watch for as you navigate the job-market fun house?
If you’ve set your sights on landing a tenure-track position and endured (or expect to endure) all the uncertainty, angst, and serendipity of the academic marketplace, surely your worst fear is that you won’t receive any offers. You worry that you’ll have to rely on Plan B for another year as you recover from the job-search roller coaster and bolster your teaching and research in preparation for another go-round on the academic tilt-a-whirl.
What could be worse?
How about receiving a job offer and realizing that something about the opportunity isn’t quite right? Should you accept and make the best of the situation? Or is the problem distressing enough that taking the job might derail your academic career or severely affect your personal life?
Being aware of red flags to watch out for can help you navigate the job market without losing your way.
Approaching the midway. The position announcements beckon: “Step right up! Try your hand!” But in most fields, the academic market has been tight for years, and you don’t get much choice about where you might end up. So it’s important to recognize your own priorities in case you have to make some sacrifices for your long-term career success.
I’ve heard a professor at Harvard University counsel his graduate students to apply widely and visit every place that invites them for an interview. Why? Because even if you dislike the geographic location, or if the job doesn’t fit some other important criteria on your list, you need to experience the place firsthand to find out whether or not you would like to be there.
Considering opportunities outside your comfort zone can reveal some exciting new challenges, or at least provide a place to land before launching your job search again. The only time you should decline to apply or interview for a position in your area of expertise is if you know you wouldn’t accept an offer there, even if it were your only offer.
Nearly everyone has some nonnegotiables, however, and honoring them in your decision making is an important part of the search process. A recent discussion on The Chronicle’s forum on job-seeking experiences posed this question: “Do you have a deal breaker?”
The two most common factors that posters in that forum said would prevent them from taking a job were money (an inadequate salary with respect to living and housing expenses) and time constraints (for example, a heavy teaching load — four courses a semester or more — or unmanageable tenure expectations).
Only you can decide whether the salary meets your needs. And only you know how much teaching, writing, advising, grant writing, and committee work you can reasonably manage, but most departments will expect more work than you imagine is humanly possible. Still, you should recognize that the first few years of a tenure-track job are the hardest.
Location is another potential pitfall for academics on the market. Yes, it’s frustrating to find that the job openings that best fit your expertise and needs are in institutions far from your preferred part of the country or type of environment (e.g., rural versus urban). Very often, the lack of potential opportunities for a spouse or partner in a particular location is the strongest limiting factor in a search.
But the reality of the academic marketplace is if you are geographically inflexible (“I’ll consider jobs only in big cities on the East Coast”), you must be willing to compromise on other aspects of the profession. And you should also anticipate that your search will be more difficult than if you had cast your net wider.
As you embark on the job search and imagine where you might end up, it’s important to consider your personal identity and which types of communities you would feel comfortable in — or not.
A job candidate I know who is gay and belongs to an ethnic minority group accepted a position at a department in the rural Midwest. He knew at the outset that he wasn’t likely to find a supportive community in that place, but the job was a good fit. Leaving his laboratory late one night, he realized just how uncomfortable he felt there. He has been seeking to relocate ever since.
Similarly, single academics who move to isolated locations where everyone seems married have expressed disappointment and loneliness. Some have left otherwise great jobs in the hope of finding a partner elsewhere.
A college’s religious orientation can be a deal breaker, especially if you belatedly discover that you will be required to sign a statement of faith or agree to a restrictive code of conduct that is at odds with your personal values or beliefs.
Do your homework as you consider your options. Ask questions. Explore the resources and services on the campus and in the local town that are important to you. Talk to friends and colleagues who are familiar with places you are applying to; they can shed light on whether the prevailing attitudes there will be a match for your own.
Remember that none of those considerations are absolute. Different people have different priorities and are willing to tolerate or sacrifice different things. Refusing an offer this year with the hope that you’ll be a hot property on the market next year can backfire. So try not to constrain yourself too much with your deal breakers. Ask yourself, “Is the sacrifice bearable in the short term?” and “What can I do in this less-than-ideal position to improve my chances of landing a more suitable one?”
Riding the roller coaster. Now it’s time to buckle up for a thrilling but terrifying ride on the interview circuit. Keep your eyes open for perilous turns and prepare for some steep drops.
In most campus interviews, you will have to deliver a job talk about your research or do a teaching demonstration, or both. Are you informed about the faculty’s research programs and the department’s teaching needs? Have you developed some compelling questions for the dean? If so, then what’s left is the mutual evaluation of “fit” — the elusive chemistry that can be evaluated only through in-person interactions.
By this time, the members of the search committee are sufficiently impressed with your credentials. What they really want to know is whether you’ll be a good colleague for many years to come. And you want to know the same thing about them. It’s your job to look for signs of the internal politics and contemplate how they might affect you should you join the department.
Stories abound of faculty hosts’ behaving badly during campus interviews — arguing with one another, acting rudely, ignoring the candidate. Consider the candidate who was invited to dinner by the head of the search committee and a departmental administrator, only to discover that the two were secretly having an affair. Or imagine waiting with your suitcase while two faculty members argue over who should drive you to the airport. It’s happened.
Personal feuds, resentments, slights, and misunderstandings can become amplified when warring parties are forced to play nice during a candidate’s visit. Keep alert for hostile glances, uncomfortable silences, and downright nastiness. No one wants to work in a toxic environment. Investigate further to determine how bad the situation really is — but do so cautiously.
Sometimes you may find yourself wondering, “What were they thinking?” One candidate arrived on a campus only to be left alone for 24 hours before the interview began. Another candidate, interviewing for a one-year replacement position, repeatedly asked to meet with students and was refused — at an elite liberal-arts college, no less. Yet another candidate asked for the day’s schedule and was informed that it was all in the search-committee chair’s head.
What if someone warns you against taking a position because of unstable personalities in the department, intractable internal feuds, institutional fiscal problems, or some other, equally distressing situation? No doubt you will consult your mentors and peers, search your soul, and post your situation (anonymously) on the Careers forums, seeking advice.
In my many years as a career counselor for Ph.D.'s, I’ve encountered very few who have actually turned down an academic offer. Most are just happy to have found something. Those who have declined a tenure-track offer struggled greatly over the decision and finally decided based on one of their nonnegotiables.
You may feel you have no choice but to accept a position in spite of your misgivings. If so, go into it with your eyes open and with a positive attitude. Try to stay above the fray. It may take a few years for you to find a good professional home, but when you do, you’ll know it because the view from the top of the Ferris wheel will be spectacular.
Laura S. Malisheski is assistant director of graduate-student and Ph.D. advising in the career-services office of Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
http://chronicle.com Section: The Academic Workplace Volume 54, Issue 45, Page B32