I recently came across Jeremy Davis’s writing on his five years of job market experience. I especially enjoyed his candid storytelling style. Reading it has made me want to write down my own job market journey. I have already written about my grad school journey here, which includes my first two years on the market, but my emphasis there was more on my life, holistically. Below I will focus on job market in particular and will try to be as objective and candid as Davis is. Like Davis cautions in his piece, please don’t take me as offering advice, either. I will also steal his structure.
Preamble
I was on the market for three seasons: 19-20, 20-21, 21-22, the first two as ABD. My research is in how social scientists (mostly psychologists) use statistical methods. I had a lot of trouble labeling what I do, because “philosophy of psychology” gets you philosophy of mind, which I don’t do, and “philosophy of statistics” gets you foundation of stats, which I also don’t do. I ended up settling on “philosophy of social science” and “philosophy of statistics”, the latter because I like the crowd and because it’s something I am able to do, if that’s what they really want.
As mentioned in the other post, I changed my AOS pretty late into my grad school career. I have a pretty solid background in logic, and will be able to put together a job package that’s on logic and phil machine learning. But 1) I don’t want to work in this area anymore, and 2) it’s a small area too, so it’s not like it can serve as a safe backup.
What this means is that I am on a smaller market than people who do core areas like metaphysics or ethics. Keep this in mind when you look at my numbers. Another relevant piece of information is that I am a Chinese national who obtained a green card through marriage right around the time I was on the market. Many people don’t know what this means so here is a glimpse:
I studied in Canada from 2005 to 2015, and then I was in the US. If I didn’t marry my spouse, I would have to either find an immigration-eligible job (I was fortunate enough to not have to research what these are, but I imagine 1-year VAPs are not them) or go “back” to China (in quote marks because I have spent more of my life out of it than I did in it). I was going to marry my spouse anyway, but we were married at that particular time because I had to think two years ahead of time. (Marriage green cards take 1-2 years to be approved, which is the fastest form of green card, as far as I know.) Because of how precious green cards are, I did not consider non-US jobs in my first two years. I only considered permanent jobs in Canada in the third round after consulting with a Canadian immigration expert.
Contrary to popular belief, green cards are rescinded if the holder engages in any activity that can be interpreted as “taking residence elsewhere”, such as taking up a job in a foreign country, even if you have not been physically away from the US for more than 6 months. I was threatened to have my green card taken away after being in Canada for less than a week at the border, and they only didn’t do it because land borders are nicer and I promised then I would surrender my green card very soon. I did surrender it after I returned to Canada.
Two points I’d like to draw from this: 1) my application number is unusually small not because I was exceptionally picky; 2) be nicer to your foreigner colleagues! When they say things like “I can’t apply to this European post-doc that looks like it’s designed for me”, they probably mean it. I had to very awkwardly explain my situation to several well-meaning, personalized invitations to apply to something temporary in Europe. And it always feel like I’m disclosing something too personal in a professional setting, to people I barely know.
2019-2020
I went on the market as a 5th year ABD. Several of us were doing “soft entries” in our 5th year. I could’ve finished if I had to, and in any case it was good for me to experience the whole thing before I was desperate.
My dossier
I had letters from my committee members. I had a teaching letter from someone who supervised me TA once but I don’t remember if I ever used it. I had taught one 5-week summer course as instructor of record. I had okay evals but low response rate.
I had no publication. I had one paper on statistical learning theory that I had presented a couple of times and gotten positive feedback for. It was R&R somewhere but I never revised it, partly because of the difficulty I had with dealing with critical comments and partly because I wanted to move away from this area. In any case, I had no evidence of expertise in the new (social science & stats) area, so I used the SLT paper as my writing sample and wrote a very conflicted research statement about how I’m interested in doing both social science and SLT. I was also having a lot of trouble coming up with a coherent narrative of my dissertation.
Applications & outcomes
I applied to 9 TT and 3 post-doc jobs before I got my first interview. This was relevant because I did mean to apply to more, but found that I couldn’t psychologically do it at the same time as I prepare for an interview, especially since everything about preparing for interviews was new to me.
Like Davis mentioned in his post, I found the psychological exercise of imagining myself living a life at the target school before receiving an actual offer exhausting, especially because the interview I got was from a school matching my dream life in pretty much every way. I was also very certain that I wouldn’t go far, because I had no publication and everything I’ve ever read on the job market is that you need at least 2 publications and preferably more to be remotely competitive.
I ended up getting a flyout, which shocked me. After much debate, I decided to give my job talk on a phil of social science topic. Recall- this is an area I had no evidenced expertise in. I hadn’t even gone to any conference related to this or know anyone who works in this. But I decided that I don’t want to spend my TT years feeling like I need to hide what I’m interested in.
The talk went over well (I think). They did a great job advertising the talk and so it was well attended. A lot of people seemed to find it interesting. The paper was accepted for publication (minor r&r, which was cleared up within the week) shortly after I received the email letting me know that I wasn’t their top choice and that they expected their top choice to accept (which they did).
Overall, I didn’t feel too bad about this season. I didn’t think I’d get anything at all, and having a flyout was a huge boost to my self-esteem. Having my first publication helped too, and I thought that this meant I would be a lot more competitive when I came back to it the next year. But of course…
2020-2021
…the pandemic happened. Everyday I was reading something about a rescinded offer, a hiring freeze, a departmental closure. Think piece after think piece came out about how this was the end of higher ed as we knew it.
My dossier
I had a publication in the area I wanted to work in at this point, and I taught an upper level philosophy of science class in a nearby school (it was virtual) where someone observed my teaching and wrote me a letter. I stayed another year as ABD. My dissertation was essentially finished but it probably didn’t matter to search committees.
Applications & outcomes
As much as I wanted to do what I was truly interested in, there was no job in that. Most of the jobs I could possibly apply this season were in data ethics. I felt like I had to lean in to data ethics, and edited my statements accordingly. It was probably not convincing. I applied to 11 TT jobs, 3 post-docs, and 2 VAPs, and got 0 interview.
2021-2022
It was never clear that the job market would bounce back at all (because of all the closures) until it actually did. The pandemic was difficult in a variety of ways. Most of my friends had moved away for post-docs the year before, which made it really hard for me to feel connected, since I derive most of my philosophical passion in conversation.
All of these are reasons why my job market experience felt a lot more like a failure than it probably is objectively. I genuinely believed that I had enough evidence to suggest that I wouldn’t be successful at all, and was seriously looking into alt-ac options.
My dossier
The biggest dossier change from previous years was probably that I had graduated. There was no reason for me to stay on another year, so I graduated in the summer. I also had an external letter writer which I didn’t before. I taught the same upper level philosophy of science class, this time in person. I doubt it made much difference to my file from the previous year. I still had the same teaching letter and the same publication.
Leaning in to data ethics didn’t help me in the previous year, so I reverted back to philosophy of social science and of statistics, which I now at least have one publication to support. I had a second project that was finished enough to be presentable as a job talk. This means that I could go full in as a candidate in phil of social science and not having to pivot like I did in my first year. I also finally developed a coherent narrative of my dissertation, which seemed to work.
Applications & outcomes
I applied to 15 TT jobs, 1 post-doc, and 1 alt-ac. I received 3 first-round interviews. In January, I received an oral offer for the alt-ac, but have not heard from two of the three first-round interviews that had already happened.
The third interview I had was with a SLAC. I had never visited, attended, let alone worked at a SLAC. A lot of my grad school friends are from SLACs and I’ve always found their undergrad stories completely alien to my own (where a “small” class is 50 people). I genuinely don’t know if I’ll be happy at a SLAC because I have no idea what it is. I was going to give it a try, but after receiving the alt-ac offer, I declined the interview. I don’t think I’ll be able to make a strong case for why I would want to go there, and I feel it’s better that they can devote their resources bringing in people who would definitely want to go.
One of the 2 first-round interviews I attended did not lead to a flyout. The other one led to a virtual flyout and eventually an offer, which I accepted.
Observations & lessons
My job market journey isn’t long or elaborate by any measure, but here are some observations.
Perhaps the most surprising thing to me was the fact that every source of job advice I ever came across (online or from people I know) seemed to indicate that you just wouldn’t be considered at all if you didn’t have X number of good publications. And this just wasn’t the case for myself or quite a few others I know. I don’t really know what is making a difference instead, though, so I’m calling it an “observation” and not a “lesson” for now.
There is a related thing that a lot of grad students don’t like to hear, that I didn’t believe, and that I’m glad for — it matters whether one is “doing good philosophy”. Now, I don’t think a lot of people are half-assing their philosophy and I generally don’t trust my gut instinct on whether someone else’s philosophy counts as “good”. But I have heard remarks such as “so-and-so has an impressive publication record but the quality of the work just isn’t that great” or “I know this area is super hot right now but I don’t understand it; I don’t believe in it”. As a grad student, I have heard advice such as “I know this work isn’t perfect but pubs don’t need to be perfect and you need the pubs” and “this area is hot right now so you should work in it”. If it wasn’t the fact that I, quite irrationally, did not heed to these advice, I would’ve felt a lot more cheated than I do already.
An unrelated lesson was that people have very different opinions as to how a good interview should be like — and they don’t realize that their opinions are different. My PhD department had done a few searches in recent years and I had some faculty members help me prep for interview. So, these people had recently been interviewers and were telling me what they considered as good responses. Yet, there were a few specific instructions they gave me about how to answer certain questions which just did not fly elsewhere — I’d answer the same way and the person would look visibly disinterested, or I’d be re-asked a question and told to answer it in a different way.
Extra-curriculars
Like Davis, I did a lot of extra curriculars — conference organizing, climate committee chairing, podcast. I don’t think they helped. In fact, my application package for the job I did get contained nothing on extra-curriculars because they didn’t ask for a diversity statement. I’m also not saying “don’t do them”, and I think doing them gave me a better understanding of how academia works which, if nothing else, helped me decide whether I wanted to remain in it.
Networking
Another thing that a lot of job advice points to is networking. I’m pretty bad at it, and having spent most of my job market journey in a pandemic didn’t help. It so happens that I do know my current department before I got the job — I completed my MA here. But I was a pretty meh MA student (wasn’t well mentored in undergrad and wasn’t planning to do a PhD in philosophy). I don’t know if it played a role at all, positive or negative.
The interview-flyout I had in 2019-2020 was a job where I was invited to apply. But I think the invitation was sent out to quite a lot of people and not just me. I did know people on the search committee but not very well, and I didn’t communicate with them at all outside the interviews. None of the other applications I sent (including the job I currently have) had people contacting me to provide information on stuff like what they were looking for.
I did have a few invitations-to-apply from temporary posts in Europe, which I had to decline for immigration reasons. One post-doc position was worded essentially like an offer. There was another temporary lectureship (which would be quite competitive, I think) that would probably help my future search. So, I think networking helps in general, but I didn’t quite take advantage of it.
The alt-ac
As mentioned above, I did apply to one alt-ac position and received an offer. It was a governmental position, had a long and involved multi-stage assessment, and came with a lot of perks. I learned a lot just by going through the process.
Receiving the offer meant a lot to me. As someone who had never really worked (because I had always been on some sort of visa that prohibits working), this was rare evidence that others thought I was capable of doing important work. It allowed me to approach academia as an option rather than a necessity. I was finally able to definitively say that my wish to become an academic was not because I wasn’t able to do anything else.
Concluding thoughts
There was a huge mental block for me. For years I had thought my academic career was especially unsuccessful. Part of it may be that almost everyone I knew was in temporary employment after graduation and I was basically unemployed. This was a combined result of 1) my inability to be in temporary employment outside the US, and 2) my privilege of being able to be unemployed and not starve. Nevertheless, it felt like everyone else had stuff to do except for me.
Coincidentally, Chris recently wrote a post on being in survival mode for too long such as to lose the ability to live the survived life. While I wouldn’t exactly say that I was in survival mode, it remains true that I don’t usually allow myself to think about what success is like such that, when it does happen, I feel ill-equipped.
I am now one term in, and a lot of these thoughts had faded away. I was recently chatting with a colleague who thought the last job season was my first job season, because I never held another post. Her remark reminded me of the dissonance I’ve felt throughout the season. On paper, I am a model scholar who finished a PhD on time (6 years) and went straight to a good TT position. In my mind, I was surely not good enough for academia and was this much close to quitting. The reality is almost certainly somewhere in between.
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