Hi Everyone,
My name is Michael Walschots and I’m a postdoc in philosophy currently at the University of Würzburg, Germany, working primarily in ethics and the history of philosophy (eighteenth-century philosophy, Kant). I’m participating in this year’s installment of the Cocoon mentoring program (which I’ve found to be extremely helpful) and Marcus has kindly invited me to share some information about my experience on the job market that has arisen from my chats with my mentor. One of the reasons I signed up for the mentoring program was to get an outside perspective on my profile as a job candidate to see if there are things I might do to improve my chances on the market and also to get general advice on whether there are things about my profile/my application documents that might be contributing to the relatively low success I’ve had so far. Something my mentor encouraged me to do right away was to take stock of my job application statistics (where I applied each year, what kind of jobs they were, whether I was successful or not, etc.) to get a sense of where I was having success and where I wasn’t, and thereby help me get a more realistic picture of the jobs that are within my reach, and which are not. It’s these statistics that I’d like to share with you in this guest post.
A few notes before I list the numbers:
1) My main purpose is not to complain or despair about the state of the market (despite my temptation to do so). Nor am I trying to throw a pity party. My main purpose is to provide a window into what the job market has been like for me so that: a) others with similar, or indeed different, profiles have a point of comparison, b) people who are earlier in their careers than I am can get a sense of what they might expect in the years to come, and c) so that those who are not currently on the market can see exactly what things are like for job candidates.
2) On the one hand, these numbers are really only relevant to me personally because they concern jobs that are relevant to my AOSs/AOCs (I’ve mainly applied for ethics/history jobs). And my relative success (or lack thereof) presumably has to do with my particular profile, at least in part (if you’d like to get a sense of my academic record, you’re welcome to visit my website: https://mhwalschots.wordpress.com/).* Someone at the same career stage with a more prestigious PhD, more publications in better places, etc. would of course have different results. On the other hand, I think there are a number of general lessons to be drawn from my experience and I hope that this can be helpful for others, if only it encourages them to take stock of their own application statistics themselves so that they, too, might get a realistic picture of their experience.
*I should also say that I have put in a considerable amount of effort to make sure that my application documents themselves are in the best possible shape. I’ve consulted with numerous colleagues and mentors to get feedback on my CV, cover letters, teaching dossier documents etc. I’m sure there is still room for improvement, but at this point it would shock me if these things alone have been a main contributing factor to my relatively low success.
Some things to note about how I’ve compiled the data:
1) Although this is probably self-explanatory, a job cycle approximately ranges from the fall of one year to late spring of the next year, for jobs starting the following fall. My Ph.D. was granted in Feb. 2016 and I first officially went on the market the fall before defending, so the first job cycle of my statistics is 2015-16.
2) I have classified the kinds of jobs I applied for somewhat artificially into 3 categories: TT (tenure-track) is any permanent job, so includes UK lecturerships; LTA (limited term appointment) are all contractually limited (often primary teaching) jobs; and Postdocs (which can range in number of years and teaching requirements, which I haven’t specified).
3) Sometimes postdocs are offered without interviews, in case you’re wondering why numbers in those categories don’t add up.
4) My application patterns change pretty drastically (as you might expect). Years when I have a secure position the following year, I rarely, if ever, apply for temporary positions for that following year and only apply for permanent jobs or longer-term postdocs.
5) It’s possible that I applied for even more positions than the ones documented here. I tend to keep good records, though, and these numbers represent the jobs I still have records for.
With this out of the way, here are the statistics from my experience on the job market over the last 6 job cycles (including this cycle).
2015-16 Job Cycle
Total Applications: 17
TT: 6
LTA: 5
Postdoc: 6
Interviews: 1 LTA
Offers: 1 Postdoc (2 years) – accepted
2016-17 Job Cycle
Total Applications: 7
TT: 7
LTA: 0
Postdoc: 0
Interviews: 0
Offers: 0
2017-18 Job Cycle
Total Applications: 70
TT: 53
LTA: 10
Postdoc: 7
Interviews: 6 (TT: 2; LTA: 3; Postdoc: 1)
Offers: 1 (LTA (one year) – accepted)
2018-19 Job Cycle
Total Applications: 45
TT: 30
LTA: 8
Postdoc: 7
Interviews: 5 (TT: 2; LTA: 2; Postdoc: 1)
Offers: 2 (1 LTA (1 year); 1 Postdoc (2.5 years) – accepted)
2019-20 Job Cycle
Total Applications: 17
TT: 15
LTA: 0
Postdoc: 1
Non-Academic: 1
Interviews: 1 (non-academic)
Offers: 1 (postdoc (2 years) – accepted)
2020-21 Job Cycle (so far)
Total Applications: 12
TT: 12
LTA: 0
Postdoc: 0
Interviews: 0
Offers: 0
Cumulative Totals (6 Job Cycles)
Total Applications: 168
TT: 123
LTA: 23
Postdoc: 21
Non-academic: 1
Interviews: 13 (4 TT; 6 LTA; 2 Postdoc; 1 Non-academic)
Offers: 5 (2 LTA; 3 Postdoc)
The Results:
Although you don’t have the raw data in front of you which would make some of the following conclusions obvious (I’m not sure it would be all that helpful to post all that, too), there are some really valuable pieces of information I gathered from doing this:
1) I have never been interviewed for (let alone offered) any kind of position in the US. (but see note under the following point)
2) The only times I was interviewed for a position in the UK was when I was already in a postdoc position there, and the interviews were for jobs at the same institution I was presently working at.
* I am both a Canadian and an EU (Dutch) citizen. This is relevant because I at least thought it would make it easier for me to land interviews in the EU and the UK (pre-Brexit), so I applied for lots of UK jobs in particular. Although Brexit might have ruined things for me, having dual citizenship seems to have made no difference whatsoever, even when I applied for jobs in the Netherlands. My citizenship status might also have contributed to my complete lack of success on the US job market.
3) The majority of success I’ve had for both TTs and LTAs is in Canada. As some readers may know, Canadian institutions are supposed to give preference to citizens and permanent residents, so this might have contributed to my ‘success’ on that market. Anecdotally, however, I hear that it varies considerably how seriously institutions take this regulation.
3) My success landing interviews increased over time, and applying for more jobs increased the number of interviews I landed (unsurprisingly).
4) I’ve only ever been interviewed for 4 TT jobs, and I’ve only ever had one on-campus interview for a TT job.
5) I’ve only ever applied for one non-academic job, but I landed an interview for that job (though it was not, in the end, offered to me). Although a small sample size, the success rate in comparison to academic jobs is striking and encouraging.
My ‘take-home’ conclusion:
I have had very little success on the job market (sorry, I guess I couldn’t resist despairing a bit). Especially given it is unclear how Corona will change the market (though I think it’s safe to say it will only get worse or at least change in significant ways), I do not expect my success-rate to increase. Even if I were to land some great publications in the coming few years (which is one of the only things I have any ‘control’ over (lol) when it comes to improving my chances of landing a job), it’s not clear my chances will improve enough for me to land a job. If I had not already decided to explore my options with non-/alt-academic positions, compiling these statistics would have made it apparent that this is something I simply must do.
Given the numbers above, I would be very interested to hear what readers have to say about a number of things. I’d be curious, for example, if people think I should have thrown in the towel a few years ago given my low success. I would also be interested to know if my experience is an outlier or a norm – have I really had little success compared to others or is this a common experience for job candidates? This would be good to know not only for me personally, but for the profession at large so that we collectively have a better sense of what the market it like.
A final note: My aim here is not to solicit advice from others on how to improve my chances, what I could have/should have done to improve my chances, or whether I should give up the dream of an academic job (these are the things I can discuss with my mentor). At the same time, if people have general advice for the community at large (i.e. not just me) about these things, I would be happy to hear what people have to say (and I imagine others would too).
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