The Philosophers' Cocoon

One of the most common things one hears about the academic job market is that it is a "crapshoot." It can often be very puzzling which jobs one gets interviewed for, and which jobs one doesn't–and of course, it can be frustrating to see people get hired who seem to be a "worse fit" for a job (viz. fewer publications, less teaching experience, etc.) that you do. What gives? Well, one of the other most common things one hears about the job-market is just how important "fit" is–but how very difficult it is to quantify or predict. What is "fit" exactly, and how do search committees go about determining whether a candidate is a "good fit" for a job?

Here, I think, is the basic problem with the issue of fit: there is no good way to adequately define, enumerate, or predict its various forms. "Fit", quite frankly, is whatever search committee members treat it as. Whether you "fit" a position, in a given search committee member's mind, can involve everything ranging from whether they like your personality, to whether they like the brand of philosophy you do, to whether you have experience teaching some random course the department could really use a teacher in, to whether they think you'll stay (rather than jump ship for another school) if they hire you. This is, in essence–in my experience on both sides of the market–one of the biggest reasons the market is such a "crapshoot." You never really know what a given search committee member's picadillos might be. Maybe they had a bad experience with Continental philosophy in their past–so they don't want to hire anyone who even so much as dabbles in Contintental. Maybe they had a bad experience with a difficult colleague in the past–so they want to hire someone who is friendly and cooperative. Or maybe they have strong political views and want to hire a potential "ally." You never know how you may or may not "fit" a given search-committee member's hiring preferences.

Is this a good thing, or a bad thing? In my view, "fit" does have a legitimate place in hiring–we just don't go about determining it the right way. As readers may know from previous posts I've written, the science of hiring (which my spouse specializes in within a top-5 PhD program in her field) has systematically demonstrated over the past several decades that basing hiring decisions on "clinical judgment" (i.e. whether you like someone) predicts job success worse than hiring people on the basis of quantifiable factors (i.e. achievements, such as publication-rates, etc.). At the same time, the science of hiring also indicates that person-job fit is crucial–both for employee success, but also employer satisfaction with who they hire. So, "fit" is important–but, in academia at least, we go about determining "fit" in a completely haphazard way that doesn't control for personal or collective bias.

In any case, I think anyone who has been at all involved in academic hiring knows that–in our current system–fit often plays a very large role in decisions. Hiring committees are comprised by human beings–people with their own unique hopes, desires, professional ideals, and so on. Consequently, whereas one search committee member may think you are a "perfect fit" for a given job, another might think the opposite. How, then, can you go about trying to make yourself a good fit for jobs as a candidate? I think there is only so much you can do, but think the following strategies are probably generally advantageous:

Teaching breadth: As I explained here, many teaching-oriented schools have very small departments, with only a few full-time, tenure-stream faculty members. Often enough, these departments have particular courses–say, modern philosophy, or ancient, or business ethics)–that they could really use their new hire to teach. Consequently, if you have a background teaching in that area, you might have a distinct advantage over other candidates. Unfortunately, you never quite know what that class (or classes) might be! But this, I think, just means that the more diverse your teaching experience is, the more likely you are to be that person who can teach the class(es) the departments needs someone to teach, making you a particularly good "fit" for their job.

Research: In my experience on both sides of the market, one of the biggest things a hiring committee wants to feel comfortable with heading into a hire is knowing that the person they hire will publish enough to probably get tenure. For R1 jobs, this means publishing as many articles in top-ranked journals you can–and, in my experience, for teaching schools it is a matter of having as many legitimate peer-reviewed publications as you can (subject to the caveat below). As I have written many times here before, I don't think publishing as many top-ranked articles as you can makes you a particularly good fit for teaching schools (who may regard you as a flight risk if your publication record is "too good"). I have heard many stories of committees at teaching schools worry about flight risks–and have even personally known a few departments who were burned by a person they hired who jumped ship as soon as they could (losing the department the tenure track position!). It's an unfortunate fact–but nevertheless, I think, a fact–that job-marketeers face a "fit" trilemma: whatever makes you a better "fit" for one type of job (research jobs) might make you a worse "fit" for other types (teaching jobs), and vice versa. Pick your poison. When I was on the market, I found that the more decent publications I had, the more interviews I got at teaching schools–so, I think, if you want to be competitive for research schools, publish high; but if you want to be competitive at teaching schools, publish a lot of decent stuff and burnish up the rest of your file (viz. teaching, service, etc.).

Personality: My experience is that people often favor people they "like", whatever that means (including all of the biases it may involve). It's also well-known that people favor extroverts. As an introvert, this has always bugged me–and I suspect it worked against me on the market (I had one person who interviewed me say I came off as "low energy"). Whatever may be the case, I suspect philosophy job-candidates may underestimate the importance of what my spouse calls "impression-managing." As scholars, we want to be evaluated on our work–on our capacities as researchers, teachers, and so on. Or at least I do. Nevertheless, the people who are considering whether they should hire you are human, and as a human beings I expect many of them want to know, "Is this a person I would want to work with for the next 30 years, should they get tenure?" Because I have heard many people on the hiring side of things say things to exactly this effect, I think it behooves candidates to work on how they come across in interviews, in person, and online. It's an unfortunate business, "impression managing"–but, in the real world, with real live human beings, I suspect it's necessary–as you never know whether someone's really "liking you", or your rubbing them the wrong way, might make the difference in their and/or the committee's deliberations.

Cover letters and flight-risks: Finally, two things that I know matters for teaching schools are cover letters and whether you may be a flight risk. First, on cover letters: I have heard more than a few people at teaching schools say that cover letters really matter to them–that they want to see whether a candidate has any actual familiarity with their school. When it comes to teaching schools, the people doing the hiring want some idea that you actually want to be there, at their school, rather than somewhere else. Which brings me to the flight-risk issue. As I mentioned before, I have heard from many people at small schools that this is a big issue–that they may be afraid of hiring people from Top Schools with Top Publications because those candidates look like they are on trajectory to Harvard, not a small teaching school. While I suspect there is only so much a candidate can do to assuage these kinds of concerns, cover letters, interviews, and personal discussions are the places to try. They are the places to make a case that you are a good "fit" for the school.

Anyway, "fit" once again is a very elusive and hard to predict things. I suspect there is only so much one can do to make oneself a "good fit" for a given job–but the above are, I think, some decent ways to do one's best. What about you all–particularly search committee members out there? What plays into candidates "fitting" a position to you?