On the Job Market?

  1. Practice your talk, make sure it is shorter than the allowed time, even 45 mins for a one hour talk. If you have issues in projecting your voice, or your English is not so strong, use a microphone, talk slowly, and make clear in the first three minutes the nature of your contribution. Have a handout, maybe one page,both sides, with an outline of your talk, and crucial information, that you can give to all the attendees. Be sure it has your name, email, etc.
  2. You will want to be flexible about what you might teach, but what is crucial is that you have time to continue your research and writing. Whatever you have produced in your dissertation research should be going out to journals by the first 6 months or so of your new job, at least some of it. And as you polish off your dissertation, write yourself a memo about what you would really want to do next. And do it!
  3. In all departments, there will be faculty who are difficult. Be gracious, respond to their concerns, treat their obstreperousness as a sign of their interest. Be Teflon.
  4. Make sure your CV has been reviewed by your advisor for good form. Make sure that you have one chapter of your dissertation ready to be shared with interested departments. Make sure you know what is most important in your work, and also how your work is vulnerable to criticism. (ALL work is vulnerable to some extent. How you respond to that is what counts.}
  5. Keep in mind that departments are as anxious as you are. They may have the job, and you may be a job-seeker. But you represent their potential future, and insofar as you present yourself appropriately you offer the possibility of improving their department. 
  6. Most people get their first positions at departments and universities that are less prestigious than the department that awarded them their PhD. This is simply a matter of the pigeonhole-principle.  What you offer is the chance to up their game. They know this. (Some departments are afraid of appointing people that are "too good." Less said the better.) There are studies that suggest that the strongest students at lower ranked departments (albeit not too much lower) end up publishing more that the bottom half of the students who graduate from the top department or two.

If you decide you do not like to teach, or do not want to spend your time around late adolescents, etc. find a position that fits your interests. Prestige matters, but a poor fit is likely disastrous.

A few other bits of advice:

  1. Dress professionally. Males: If you do not have a suit, buy one. It need not be fancy, but be sure you can have it altered so that it fits. Your clothes should be comfortable, not too tight. Get a white shirt that fits, and a tie that is simple. Iron the shirt. No sneakers, and polish your shoes, and wear socks. Of course, shower ahead of time, comb your hair, deodorant. Women: something simple. Again, you can get a quite lovely dress or whatever for not much money. 
  2. Get your sleep in the days before your visit and presentation.
  3. Always have copies of your CV, your dissertation description, your sample chapter, published articles.
  4. Make sure your slides, if you use slides, are easy to read, are not too complicated, and feature your main points. I, for one, find awful talks that seem to follow slides, or slides that seem to go with talks, there being many slides. 
  5. You need to be open to questions from the floor. At some point you might ask for ten minutes (not more!) to make your main points, if the questions have taken over. 
  6. Your goal is to engage the audience, not necessarily to finish your talk--as long as you have made clear early on the main points and evidence and argument.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Robert Caro as a Model

Micro and Macro

Plagiarism