I know my post yesterday probably looked a touch pessimistic. It was, in a way, because the job market for PhDs IS pessimistic. We create more PhDs every year than we can employ in the academy, and at the same time the academic model is leaning toward needing people with experience in industry. It’s a scary mix.
But I wanted to do a positive-ish spin, too. So here, for anyone looking for a job, are my ten unsolicited pieces of advice:
- Any time you communicate with anyone from a hiring committee it’s an interview moment, but don’t treat it that way at the core. Don’t be stupid, obviously, but don’t act like you’re constantly selling yourself. It’s the advice you’ll get from most people, but it’s straight-up refreshing when someone will just chat about something during a ride or at a dinner. I personally ask questions just to get to know people (like “What’s your favorite game?”). It tells me things about the person, sure, but I’m not holding a notebook to record every nuance of the response.
- Dress comfortably. There’s this whole thing about dressing professional, and really, don’t dress like a slob, but don’t dress wildly like you wouldn’t on a normal day. I, for example, have serious heel issues. I wore not-sporty-but-casual sneakers (brown and black) to most of my interviews. Guess what? No one ever rejected me for it, and unlike the days when I wore dress shoes and then had to spend two days in intense pain because of my heel/ankle, I was actually comfortable and more capable of engaging with the interview in my sneakers. No one is going to knock you off a list over footwear, or over wearing your tie a little loose so you can breathe, etc. You need to show respect in your dress, but you don’t need to be buttoned up Hugo Boss with spit-shined shoes to get a job. You’re going to be a professor. Look at how most of the professors in that program dress and make sure you’re above that mark by a notch and you’ll be fine. One of the people who interviewed me at Miami wore a kilt to my job talk. And he’s absolutely amazing. I love that guy. I’d name drop him here but I have a strict no-naming-names policy. If you know me, you know who I mean. He’s the friggin’ best.
- Do NOT, I repeat in all caps DON’T YOU EVER pretend to be something you aren’t because that’s the job ad. It’s hard to learn this lesson in some fields, where we’re taught to be dynamic and to cover multiple duties, but don’t go for a job interview where they want a specialist in something you aren’t a specialist in. They’ll figure it out, and you just wasted their time and sullied your reputation.
- Related, don’t customize your behavior for a visit so much that you act out-of-your-nature. If you get hired acting like someone you aren’t, you now have to act that way for as long as you work there or act like yourself and become known as the one who deceived everyone. Just be you. There’s nothing wrong with who you are.
- This one is risky, but if someone asks a question you can’t answer, be bold. Tell them you don’t know, then offer a different piece of information related to show that you care, or ask questions back. I’ve had this go both ways for me, but I am a proponent of it because you create a chance– whether the interviewers meant for you to or not– where your potential colleagues can see how you’d handle it when you weren’t on top of things. Once you get an academic job, you’ll spend lots of time explaining things you know and asking people to expand on things you don’t, so you might as well give the committee a snapshot of what that looks like. Plus if you get caught in a case of bullshitting an answer you’re done.
- Ask every question you have. Seriously. Many people– myself at first included– let interviews happen to them. Be active and engaged. On one interview– which went really well for me– I asked someone about an office we passed on the tour (it was a research center) and spent the rest of the 45 minute tour pitching a student-aided project I would have been interested in doing. Had that university not lost that position to a budget cut, I’d probably be there now doing that project. It lit the entire committee up. And I’d have never suggested it had I not asked about a facility they weren’t going to talk much about and then followed up.
- Use your friends. Particularly if you’re in a cohort with others looking for jobs it might feel weird, but when you’re prepping for interviews or looking at jobs, you need feedback. Talk to your friends who have gone through it. Talk to your friends who are going through it. If you know people who are at a university you plan to apply to (but not on the job search committee– it’s illegal for them to talk to y0u) ask them questions.
- This is another controversial one, but if you need a minute during a long campus interview, just ask for it. At first, I was terrified to say “can I just have a few moments alone?” because I thought it looked weird. I have social anxiety. I handle it really well, actually, but when I’m the center of attention around people I don’t know, I start to lose energy after several hours. I started asking if people could build in a half hour for me to just recharge, to have a drink of water, to do my physical therapy stretches (most of the time I was on the job market I was also rehabbing a knee and a heel that were pretty seriously injured), etc. It turns out that most schools are as worried about how your schedule is going as you are. No one will mind if you ask for a break between lunch and your next thing to just decompress. In fact, *I* think of it as a plus, because it shows me that the candidate is thinking of his/her well being and not just robot-ing through a schedule I made for them. Of course I also put slack time in the schedule because I know people need it.
- Talk to students at the places where you’re applying. You need to know the culture, and while most people on hiring committees will be honest with you, you might be surprised how different their view of the program is from the view held by the students who are taking the classes.
- At some point in any campus interview, or lengthy interview process, ask yourself realistically if — not because you have to make money, not because you’re scared there won’t be offers, not because of what people will say, but for you– you can see/feel yourself working with the people you’re interviewing with in their program on their campus in their city. You might meet the coolest people ever in a small program that’s part of a larger college that you disagree with on policy in a city/state that wouldn’t be a place you could actually live. If that’s the case, you need to let that drive the discussion. You need to be honest.
Good luck out there, newly minted PhDs. Get ’em!