The Philosophers' Cocoon

1. Prospective mentors and mentees are invited to sign up on our survey [enrollment for this year's job-market will begin on June 1st and end on August 1st, 2017]
2. Since this is a job market mentoring project, mentees need to be ABDs or PhDs in philosophy. The scheme will be open to all job candidates in philosophy, from every background, regardless of geographic location, gender, age, etc.
3. Although the program is open to job-candidates of any gender, we encourage women candidates to approach The Job Candidate Mentoring Program for Women in Philosophy first, as our program is intended to complement rather than compete with that program.
4. Although we will do our best to accommodate all candidates in need, the program will prioritize candidates with special job-market challenges, for example, bi, gay, and trans* candidates, candidates with disabilities, non-white (non-female) candidates, and candidates with inadequate access to job-market mentoring (e.g., candidates out of graduate school lacking access to their grad program’s placement director/mentoring, etc.).
5. Provided we can find a suitable match, we will match mentees with mentors who are either tenure-track or tenured professors.
6. What happens then is up to the mentor and mentee.
7. However, in order not to overburden mentors and to follow best practices, people who enroll in this program would commit to the following:

• Mentees are encouraged to clearly discuss with their mentor at the beginning of the mentoring relationship a clear picture (and perhaps rough time-table) of the kind(s) of mentoring they are looking for. On the same note, mentees should also not be afraid to clarify precisely what kind of mentoring help they are looking for!
• The mentoring is focused on the job market, including such things like looking at CV, cover letter and other materials, strategizing which jobs to apply to, thinking about which writing sample to send, considering what would work best for a teaching demonstration. The aim is not to help improve/comment on papers of the mentee.
• Standardly, the mentor commits to the mentoring for one job season only (i.e., until next summer) (this can be extended by mutual agreement, but the mentor should not feel pressure to do so).
• Everything that mentors and mentees discuss is strictly confidential, will not be discussed with anybody outside the mentoring agreemen
• If there is any potential conflict of interest (see Mentor-Mentee Guidelines below), it is in the best interest of mentor and mentee to let the organizers (Helen & Marcus) know at the earliest possible date, to discuss an appropriate resolution.
• Mentors may not serve if they are on a search committee during the current job-season.

Crucially, in order for the program to work–and to help as many candidates in need as we can–we need mentors with tenure stream (i.e. tenure-track or tenured) jobs to sign up. Both years we have run the program thus far, we have had significantly more mentees in need sign up than we could match with mentors. Accordingly, Helen and I would like to encourage readers to reach out to any tenure-stream faculty you know and share the details of our program, as well as the feedback we received from this year's mentors and mentees. We want to help as many candidates in need as we can!