The Great Academic Job Application Scavenger Hunt

I have been on a job search (on-and-off) more or less since the beginning of the Millennium. The fact that I was only able to actually get a full time job in the conventional sense once in all that time may say something about me. It also may say something about the job expectations, opportunities, and processes for those unfortunates who choose to go through the PhD Experience.

It is the character of most Doctoral programs in Ecology that they prepare you only for a career in academia (federal and state jobs are usually populated by people with PhDs from Fish and Wildlife departments, the arch-nemeses of True Ecologists). That means that, from the time that you see the light at the end of the PhD tunnel, you start your academic job search.

I never landed that Crowning Achievement of a tenure track position, though I worked in a series of non-tenure positions over the first decade or so of the 21^st century. It seems that, as an applicant, I was the type that Universities wanted as a friend, not as a serious relationship. The reasons are not entirely clear to me, but then again, they’re never clear to anybody who gets the “I like you, but I don't LIKE like you” comment. In any case, copies of my application packet took up residence in trash folders of computers around the country. Considering the number of applications I sent out, I would say that electrons from my applications are still inhabiting old computers in solid waste dumps across the USA.

I became, however, well educated in the process of the Academic Job Search, and therefore I feel qualified to opine on the topic. Of course, I have never shied away from opining on topics about which I know nothing, but in this case, the opinion has not entirely originated in my nether regions. I will limit myself, more or less, to the Job Application Game.

The academic job application is like a super-unpleasant scavenger hunt, during which you have to produce or find a number of items, which you then present to a search committee, who will judge whether your items fulfill the rules of the game. Every school has its own variation of the rules, so every job application feels like you are playing a whole new game. While this is fun when you’re visiting a casino resort, it loses whatever appeal it has by the time you are sending your fifteenth job application, and trying to remember what you need to mention in this or that document.

All of the items collected or produced in the Hunt are collected in an “application packet”, which is only rarely an actual, physical, packet. Those places which still request an actual physical packet also prefer that it be delivered by Pony Express.

Rules of the Game: the Job Ad.

This gives the basic rules of the Hunt, and supposedly spells out the items required. All job ads are confusing, puzzling, and inexplicable at best. However, academic job ads are a category in and of themselves. This is because, to begin with, they have been written by the half-dozen members of the Search Committee, revised by every administrator in the university, and then re-revised by half a dozen HR people. By the end it is not only incomprehensible, but also contradictory. Imagine a job ad written by Salvador Dali. This adds to the excitement of the game, since you can never be sure whether your "targeted" application is aimed at the correct target.

Items to be Collected:  the Application Packet

Item Number 1: the Academic CV. This is an item that one must create. The best minds of the nation have determined the format of this document, with the purpose of making job applicants feel bad about themselves. You have just spent 10-15 years learning the trade of an academic researcher and teacher. You have gained a myriad skills, and have performed remarkable mental feats. All of these would amaze most human being on the planet. That is, if they would ever know about them. Unfortunately, academic CV manage to avoid mentioning any of these. Instead, a Good CV only mention those accomplishments that have the narrowest appeal. The academic CV manages boil a decade of toil and labor to a few articles that have a readership that could fit into an airport shuttle. So the CV includes:

Education: where and when you received each academic degree. This should NOT include your High School, for obvious reasons. You should also NOT include GPAs, mostly because they would be embarrassing. This information will allow the committee to rank you based on how many friends they have working at each of those universities
Employment: It should be concise, since no department gives a rodent's posterior about your other relationships. Be careful not to include too many, since, like 19th century men, departments are uncomfortable with experienced candidates, and prefer to be your "first".
Publications: This is where you list all of your peer-reviewed publication. The most important parts are the count and the prestigiousness of the journals. Topics and titles are irrelevant, since nobody reads them anyway.
Grants and Awards: Since academia is all about Life Of The Mind, this is the most important part. This is where you write how many grants you have received and the dollar amounts. That is the only section in you do not need to be concise.

Other: You may add entries like Memberships in Professional Societies, Hobbies, and whether you have won a non-academic, and thus unimportant, award like Volunteer Firefighter of the Year, Congressional Medal of Honor, or Nobel Peace Prize. They don’t matter and nobody reads these parts.  

This is the most important item on the list, since most decisions for winners are based on the prestige of your graduate program, the number of publications, and the amount of grant money and award money you have received, all which you must display prominently on your CV.

Items # 2 and 3: Teaching Philosophy and Research Statement. More items that you need to create. Let’s describe them in detail

Teaching Philosophy: It often comes as a shock to graduates that they need to have a philosophy of teaching, other than “let’s get it done with, so I can get back to important things” for a research university, or “I love students, and they will love me because I am an awesome teacher”, for everywhere else. Well, truth be told, that is exactly what goes into a Teaching Philosophy, just wordier and with more bombastic phrases. If you can manage that, you’re good to go.

Research Statement: description of your research in which you tell them exactly what you’ve done, are doing, and will be doing for the next decade or so. Basically a history and a prophesy combined into a single document. Because you need to show extensive background and detailed future plans, make sure that it is no longer than one page.

Neither of these documents are all that important, since the decision to invite you for an interview will be made based on your CV. However, they may be used as evidence against you by members of the search committee who have do not want to hire you because you remind them of their least favorite sibling, their ex, or of that student who beat them out for class president in 5^th grade.

Item number 4: the Cover Letter. Not always needed. In the letter, you need to tell the committee why their school is the absolute best place for you. You are not supposed to say too much about yourself, for that would be Bragging, a Cardinal Sin for SuApplicants. The requirement is “tell us how wonderful we are, and why we are your Dream Job”. By the time you finish that damn letter, you really do want that job, even if you were lukewarm about it at the beginning.

Basically, you need to flatter the school outrageously, and pledge your everlasting devotion to them, while, at the same time, demonstrating that you understand their aspirations and needs. Sort of like contestants on The Bachelor.

Item # 5: Letters of Recommendation. This are to be collected from the most famous people you know who are willing to take the risk of telling the world that you are the best thing since the Cambrian Explosion. These must describe you in words appropriate for a mix of Einstein and Aristotle, otherwise, it will be considered faint praise and will damn you. Make sure that there are three of them.

The Judges

The judges for our Scavenger Hunt are The Search Committee. The members of this committee are not being paid extra for the extra work demanded by the committee. Despite not getting paid, they are being asked to spend a shitload of time doing a job usually performed by dysfunctional Human Resources personnel. Theoretically, academics welcome the opportunity, since they are, by nature, control freaks, and don’t trust any non-academic to do a good job hiring faculty. True, they do not really trust any other academics either, but do not really want to do the work by themselves. As a result, search committee members are either more controlling than busy, or have been dragooned into being on the committee. Since they are academics, and have some of the larger egos of humankind, their judging style tends towards being hyper-critical of anybody, especially young whippersnapper job applicants. A typical search committee is, therefore, comprised of a half a dozen super-critical people who are either control freaks or consistently annoyed. That, of course, explains why cover letters need to be so flattering…

When the Game is Played

This Scavenger hunt is played during the Job Season. For some unknown reason, search committees cannot function from June until September, so, applicants need to find other ways to occupy themselves for the rest of the year. Hopefully these occupations will provide funding for things like food and shelter.

Further Information

Actually, after the Scavenger Hunt, you haven’t yet won the Big Prize. The prize for the Hunt is an Interview. The Interview is sort of like an intellectual version of American Gladiator, and deserves a post all to itself, which I may or may not write sometime in the future. The Big Prize is the Tenure Track Position which is won by Winning The Interview. Of course, even the Tenure Track Position is nothing more than an invitation to the Great Game Of Tenure-Track, for which the prize is TENURE.

“What is the point of this game?”, you may ask. Or you may not, I have no idea. Just to be sure, I’ll answer the question. In all honesty, an academic career really isn’t all that great. Despite a slew of articles by people whose knowledge of academia is from other articles, also written by people without a clue, a faculty position is about the farthest thing from a cushy job that doesn’t require working in sewage up to your waist. Actually, when we’re speaking of ecologists, it actually does sometimes require work in waist-deep sewage.

An average beginning tenure-track faculty member has trained for more than a decade, works 20+ hours overtime for no extra pay, is a teacher, researcher, counselor, and committee member, rolled into one person, who also does their own office administration work. For that, they are compensated with a median salary is lower than that of people who left school years earlier, they have terrible healthcare and benefits, and are subject the whims and whimsies of clueless administrators. The one advantage of academia, the vaunted “Tenure”, gives all the protection of a Time Out during a game of tag.

So, after much thought and reflection, it occurred to me that the point of the Academic Job Search games are to create an aura around academic jobs by making a Tenure Track Position a prize that one must struggle to win. If you are offered a Tenure Track Position, it means you have Brought Down your Quarry, Run the Gauntlet, Climbed the Mountain, Slain the Dragon, and have been crowned with the glorious Tenure Track Crown. You are officially A Success. You have proven to all and sundry that you are indeed, a Winner. In all that excitement, you don’t really notice that the crown is only painted with gold color and is mass-produced.

Surprisingly, millions of highly intelligent people continue playing this game every year. Despite a shrinking chance of winning, increasingly difficult rules, and a prize which is diminishing in value, players seem ever more determined to play, and play for a long time.

I guess that playing the academic job search game is sort of like playing blackjack or roulette. You are always going to Score Big in the next game. The academic Job Search is one of the largest games of chance played in the USA, and it’s totally legal everywhere. Search Committee Chairs should wear dealer visors whenever the search committee meets.

I really think that somebody should create an Academic Job Search board game.