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Job-Market Reporting Thread (2025-26)
Job-Market Discussion Thread (2025-26)

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Job-market discussion thread (2021-22 season)

As many readers of the Cocoon may recall, each job season the Cocoon hosts two job-market threads:

  1. A job-market discussion thread (the present thread): to commiserate about the market, discuss particular job ads, the market in general, questions about application materials, interviewing, alt-ac opportunities, and so on.
  2. A job-market reporting thread: to post news about interviews, on-campus visits, offers, rejection notices, etc.

Because someone always asks, "Why two threads?", there are a couple of reasons for it. First, some people may want to discuss the market but not stress over daily news regarding which jobs they still do or don't have a chance for. Conversely, others may not want to discuss the market but just want news about the jobs they've applied for. Second, these threads can get very long already, so I think the best way for people to get the information they want in a well-ordered format is simply to have two threads.

A few final notes:

  • This thread (the post you are reading right now!) will be the home of this year's job-market discussion thread. So, if you want to discuss this year's job-market, just comment below.
  • Please reserve job-market news (i.e. interviews, on-campus visits, hires, etc.) for the job-market reporting thread, which I will open on October 1st.
  • A 'permalink' to this thread will be on the upper right of blog's right sidebar for the rest of the job season. –>
  • Because of Typepad's functionality limitations (which only permits 100 comments before starting a new comment page), readers may elect to bookmark each new page of comments as each new page emerges. I recognize that it can be frustrating to scroll through page after page to get to new comments, and I think this is probably the best solution given Typepad's functionality limitations.

Finally, as always, readers are asked to please bear in mind the Cocoon's safe and supportive mission. I try not to moderate with too heavy of a hand, as I don't like to squelch reasonable discussion and debate. I also realize that the job-market can be an emotional roller-coaster, and that passions can run deep on job-market issues. But the Cocoon has always been intended to be an unique oasis of sorts: as a refuge for early-career philosophers to support each other and discuss issues related to their careers and the profession in productive, supportive way. So, I will moderate carefully to ensure that these threads remain a welcome environment for everyone–and, of course, if anyone has any concerns, please do not hesitate to let me know.

All that being said, discuss away!

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400 responses to “Job-market discussion thread (2021-22 season)”

  1. Anxious job market returnee

    Does anyone have a sense of how common it was last year for search committees to end up not hiring anyone after posting a TT job search? I was on the long list for one of the UT-Scarborough postings last year and I saw they posted a few jobs on philjobs recently, so I went to look on their department website to see (out of curiosity) who had gotten the gig I’d applied for. It looks like they have a number of contractual/teaching adjuncts working there, but no one that seems to have gotten the TT philosophy of science posting they advertised last year. Or, maybe they just haven’t listed the new hire on their website yet (hopefully this is the case.) If this is correct and they opted to not hire a TT person, however, would this be abnormally bad behavior to not commit to hiring a TT person as advertised or is it quite common?

    Reply
  2. Anxious returnee

    hello, OP here, I just realized I’d incorrectly referred to a philosophy of science posting at UT-scarborough when it was actually the ethics/applied ethics posting from last year. As far as I can tell, however, there still does not appear to be a new hire for this posting.

    Reply
  3. humane outlook

    Anxious
    It is not bad behaviour to not hire when you advertise for a TT position … it is possible the funding situation changed dramatically and the administration cancelled the search. I know nothing about the details of this specific job, but this sort of thing was quite common during the financial crisis of 2008.

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  4. postdoc

    Is there any use applying to jobs advertised at the associate professor level from a post-doc, or will they just get annoyed and throw out your application?

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  5. almond milk

    @ ‘anxious’: I’ve definitely seen universities run a search for the same position (same AOS and everything) multiple years in a row (up to 5 years!), even if the previous year’s search got to the finalist stage. There are a lot of different reasons why they might do this, including as ‘humane outlook’ explains, changes in the funding situation, or more commonly at larger research schools, that the search committee could not agree on a candidate.
    I’m not saying this is what happened in your situation, but I do believe that often, if a large department advertises a search for a TT job in a specific AOS and ends up hiring NTT in that AOS, it more likely means that they had teaching needs in that area, didn’t hire any of their finalists (for the reasons above or others) and decided for the time being that the teaching need will be met by hiring a former graduate student of the department or something like that on a NTT contract until they can run a search again. In other words, it’s highly unlikely that they hired one of the finalists for the TT position on a NTT contract unless the position was explicitly advertised as NTT. This kind of thing works for the universities insofar as there is someone who can teach the class, it keeps former grad students employed, and allows the department to try again to hire someone permanently.
    So, it stinks for sure, but I don’t know if the stink is abnormal per se 🙂 Hopefully you (and everyone else returning) will have better luck this year!

    Reply
  6. Marcus Arvan

    postdoc: My sense is that there is probably no use in applying for associate professor position from a postdoc. Associate positions are tenured, and the chances of someone being handed tenure right out of a postdoc presumably approach zero. I also don’t think it is at all likely that the hiring committee could change the hire to an Assistant level position. Getting a new hire approved is a long process that has to go through the dean, provost, and university president–so if they approved an Associate hire, then they presumably need the hire to be at that level (and hence, already tenured somewhere).

    Reply
  7. Euro

    Marcus and post doc
    In some European countries you can apply for an associate professorship after a post doc (usually after six years of post docs). Such positions are tenured, so you have to have a file deserving of tenure. Do not apply if do not – it is waste of everyone’s time.

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  8. Anon

    It certainly seems that there are dramatically fewer jobs this year than even last year, which was already an unbelievably weak year. If I don’t get anything this year, I’m unemployed, and likely to be essentially forced out of the field.
    Is there any reason for optimism at this point?

    Reply
  9. Marcus Arvan

    Anon: I totally empathize with your situation as a job seeker. However, I think your read of the comparison between years is a bit off, and that there may be some reason for optimism.
    Here are the numbers of jobs advertised on PhilJobs between August 1st and today (September 13th) over the last several years:
    This year (2021): 68 ads
    Last year (2020): 38 ads
    2019: 85 ads
    2018: 86 ads
    2017: 63 ads
    2016: 80 ads
    2015: 73 ads
    In short, the job-market isn’t quite back to what it was pre-COVID (about 80 ads by now), but it’s not that far off…and it is vastly better than last year’s numbers. I also know of at least one TT job that thought would have been on PhilJobs by now that isn’t up yet. So, there may be some delays in advertising this year.
    Anyway, the job market isn’t great, but quite a few ads have appeared in just the last week, so that and the total numbers may be some reason for cautious optimism (or at least not immense pessimism).

    Reply
  10. Anon

    Thanks, Marcus.
    While I don’t have the precise numbers from last year, I definitely recall prepping to submit over a dozen applications in my (not at all esoteric) AOS at this point last year. This year there are maybe 4 or 5. (And there are a few that I’m obviously not competitive for—e.g. Harvard TT.)
    So it seems to me comparing the overall numbers does not accurately reflect the real circumstances. Maybe the overall trends are still a source for optimism, though——at least insofar as they suggest that this year is likely to be better overall. I’ll just have to cross my fingers that many more job ads are posted in the coming weeks…

    Reply
  11. Anxious

    In keeping with Anon’s concerns, I thought I’d also point out that several of the “ads” on philjobs are for PhD fellowships, which really shouldn’t be posted on philjobs (in my own opinion) since they skew the profession’s perception of how many actual jobs are listed from year to year for people trying to get a job once they’ve completed their degree. As a question for Marcus, do you filter these out when you compile your lists of year to year comparisons?
    Also, thanks for the helpful info and encouragement, almond milk!

    Reply
  12. Grad student

    @Anxious
    The person who got the job deferred the start date by a year. Seems like a common-ish practice. Probably a good example of why we should remain cautious when inferring things about the job market from what we see on the surface.

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  13. anon

    @Grad student and @Anxious – I was a finalist for the UTSC ethics/bioethics job that was advertised last year. I am certain that the department did not fill that position, and it looks like they are simply re-advertising it this year. I don’t have additional information to share about why the search failed, but it did.

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  14. Anotheranon

    I can confirm what Anon@11:07 is saying — the search failed; it was not a deferred but successful hire.

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  15. Mike Titelbaum

    Responding to Anon about the number of jobs this year: Many universities had hiring freezes last year that only got lifted at some point in the summer. This delayed the normal process of getting jobs approved and preparing job ads, which often have to go through many administrative layers. So jobs may be posted later than usual this year. For instance, my department has already advertised two tenure-track positions, but is probably going to be advertising at least one non-TT position in the coming weeks—once we get them through HR. So keep hanging in there?

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  16. postdoc

    I’m just curious if anyone knows anything about this…philjobs lists Purdue as holding FOUR TT searches this year (plus one postdoc, so five!). Is this really the case?? Or is it just one search where they’re looking for one of several AOS categories and somehow it listed as multiple searches?

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  17. anon

    Yes, there are four distinct tt lines.

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  18. Anon

    Quick question: I have someone who has agreed to write me a letter of rec. I believe that their recommendation will be very helpful, because they are located at a prestigious institution and wouldn’t agree to write the letter unless they planned to include a positive evaluation. But in their response, they indicated that they’re writing a letter of rec for another applicant, too. How should I proceed here? I should mention that this person is an “outside” letter for me.

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  19. another anon

    @Anon (10/06/2021). Your situation is extremely common. Suppose I supervise four graduate students, all of whom are going on the market. I am going to write a letter for each of them. They are likely to all be applying to the same jobs given their similar AOSs. Then notice that my situation is the same as a ton of other advisors at a ton of other universities.
    Am I missing something?

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  20. Anon Anon

    I know the overall job numbers are decent compared to past years, but anyone else sense that “core” is doing exceptionally poorly this year? Especially within the United States. Maybe phil mind is doing a bit better than the rest, but… metaphysics seems absolutely clobbered for example. Phil lang and epistemology also hurting.
    Just me?

    Reply
  21. frustrated

    What should you do if your letter writers simply aren’t uploading their letters by the time they said they would, not even after a reminder? Pester them more? Use old letters? Scrape together last-minute writers?

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  22. postdoc10

    I think the year is pretty bad, it only looks “decent” when compared with last year. It is the second worst year of the 6 I’ve been on the market. And it definitely is worse for epistemology than other years.

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  23. another anon

    @frustrated If you in a department where there is a placement director, I would get them involved. In some cases a nudge from a colleague, rather than from an advisee, can be efficacious.
    If you are not at a department with a placement director, I would recommend asking them to upload their letter to Interfolio (or whatever you’re using) in person. Letters are a big deal. If they’ve already told you that they would do it, they should understand.

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  24. anon 3

    If the same department has job ads for more than one tt job and two of the postings are for things that I can reasonably fit my AOS into, is it bad to submit an application for more than one job at the same department? In general I’ve been told to apply for anything that I possibly can, but in this case I’m wondering whether this will work against me and look weird to the hiring committee. In terms of the two postings, one of them fits more naturally with my AOS, but the second one is close enough that I would certainly still apply if it were at a separate institution.

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  25. Marcus Arvan

    anon 3: My sense is that you should definitely apply. The different jobs are likely to have different search committees, and the different committees may or may not communicate with each other. I suspect there’s very little potential downside to applying to them, whereas there’s an obvious and enormous downside to only applying to one (namely, you being not even considered for the others!).

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  26. William Vanderburgh

    anon3: Email the chair of the search to ask if two apps are needed. If you need submit only one, make it clear in the first lines of the cover letter that you want to be considered for both.

    Reply
  27. on the market

    I wish jobs could ask letters to be sent to an email rather than have emails of references keyed into the system separately. It makes a difference on Interfolio, like 1 dossier vs 3-5, which at some point may have monetary implications.

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  28. Lotteryplayern

    35 applications in and counting. I really wish search committees would make a big first cut before requesting anything beyond a pro forma cover letter and cv. Having never gotten a first round interview, specializing endless documents seems like a huge waste of time and not very respectful to people with lives to live.

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  29. on the market

    @Lotteryplayern
    Totally agree. I would imagine that most of the initial screening was done without accessing most of the application material anyway.

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  30. over here

    A note about the market …
    people are raising the complaint – and the suspicion – that many searches probably could be done effectively by only looking at c.v.s and cover letters. Indeed, I suspect a first cut in the pile can be made that way. But applicants should realise that if their application does not make it past that stage, they probably should not have applied for that job. Indeed, when I reviewed files, I was surprised at how many were not a fit at all. We were still required to look at the file, and then register an assessment. It is a really wasteful process. Just apply for the jobs for which you are truly qualified.

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  31. Lotteryplayern

    Sorry, over here. Having not made any long lists with a pretty long CV, filled with good publications and a PhD from a program with a decent pedigree (degree awarded just a short time ago), I just reject that claim. And I think others should too. Eventually I’ll respond to market signals In the way you suggest. But the process is too random and there are too many considerations that are not merit in play for what you say to be true.

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  32. postdoc57

    Over here: I found your comment extremely helpful as a window into the mind of selection committee members. It’s a helpful reminder of just how little empathy and understanding selection committees have for the predicament of applicants. I genuinely think that this is an important thing for job seekers to keep in mind when receiving rejections. It really doesn’t reflect much on us getting rejected in circumstances like these.

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  33. outside and still looking in for some reason

    @postdoc57
    I do not see how over here’s comment involves a lack of empathy or understanding.
    This is because their comment mentions a lack of ‘fit’ on the part of many applications. The charitable interpretation of this comment is that such applications failed to have the relevant AOSs/AOCs, were submitted by people who received their PhD too long ago (some postdocs and other early career positions bar people from applying who are more than, say, 4 years out from their PhD), etc.
    I’m not seeing how expressing frustration at receiving such applications indicates a lack of understanding or empathy. Indeed, the situation seems to be the reverse. It shows a lack of empathy and understanding for the work of search committees to submit an application when you do not meet the basic requirements specified by the advertisement to which you are responding.
    FWIW, I was forced out of philosophy after not getting a job this AY. So I’m the first to lament the state of the market. It’s just that this particular complaint strikes me as mistaken.
    All that said, your last sentence is correct. Because of its outrageous macroeconomics, the job market in philosophy has turned into something of a lottery. No one should feel badly about themselves for failing to win the lottery.

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  34. much todo about nothing

    While I’m sympathetic to over here (and to the plight of search committees inundated with applicants), I find myself understanding the sentiment expressed by lotteryplayer.
    I feel, much like lotteryplayer, my CV is competitive (publications in BJPS, Synthese, Studies, etc.), yet I’ve applied to jobs where the person who eventually got hired appears to me to have been a worse fit than I was for the described position. This leaves me puzzled and feeling like the only way for me to approach the market is by carpet-bombing, applying for any job for which I could possibly justifiably fit the description – because who knows – maybe the dept. wants someone like me but failed to spell it out in the posting.
    I realize this becomes an arms race, but it seems as though the ball is much more in the court of search committees to do what’s possible to prevent us from having take the carpet bomb approach. For example, if a committee will only hire someone who’s coming out of the top five or ten depts., regardless of other factors (like publication record) then just say something to that affect in the posting. Or if you really want someone with an AOS in X (whatever, e.g. underdetermination), be specific about X and I won’t bother applying, wasting your time and mine.

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  35. search committee member

    It’s really not very hard to immediately rule out applicants who are genuinely not qualified for jobs. As someone with a tt job and who has been on multiple search committees, it takes about 60 seconds to scan a cover letter and cv and see if someone doesn’t have the requisite AOS, for example. So I’m not sure we should be so annoyed with people who apply to jobs they aren’t qualified for, especially given the randomness of the process.
    I will say, though, that I think it is extremely weird when people without the advertised AOS apply and say absolutely nothing in a cover letter about why they think they are a fit for a job they don’t have an AOS in. If you can’t put the AOS on your cv, at least explain why we should consider you in the cover letter. We get these weird totally generic, non-targeted cover letters where the person is like “I do aesthetics” and the job is in philosophy of logic. I don’t think that there should be a ton of pressure to target cover letters when one is squarely inside the bounds of the job ad, but if you aren’t, and you want an actual chance at the job, you need to explain why we should consider you in your cover letter.

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  36. postdoc

    I think @much todo about nothing’s point is the nail on the head as to why we’ve all been forced to adopt the “apply for just about everything you can sort of fit into” approach. Seeing people get the job when they were not at all within the stated AOS tells other job seekers that the AOS/AOC descriptions are not always full or honest descriptions of what the department really wants. So, since we don’t have any way of knowing what a given department really wants, we are forced to apply more widely than we’d prefer. Adopting greater honesty and transparency would have to start with the people holding actual power in the job market– i.e., departments would have to be better about hiring within the stated AOS instead of hiring someone else for other, often PGR-related, reasons.

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  37. the reasoner

    postdoc
    But consider … if all the jobs you know about that went to people who did not have the called for AOS are from the Leiter top-10 programmes, then everyone outside of the LT10 should not expect this to happen to them. Hence, they should not apply to jobs outside their AOS.

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  38. postdoc

    @ the reasoner, it is not that simple. I am coming from a PGR 10-20 school and have been long-listed etc. for jobs that were not obviously within my AOS. None of it is clear-cut, and like others have said, no one can reasonably blame applicants for having to play the lottery game they’ve been presented with.

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  39. Andrew

    not at all applying this cycle but stating the debate backwards, every applicant would like to only put their effort into the job they eventually get and every hiring committee would like to only end up putting time into the candidate they hire.
    Since the situation is non-ideal, how do we adjust? Applicants rationally adjust by applying more broadly, because the signals they receive do not help them move towards the job they get.
    Hiring committees do ??? (and that’s the end of what I’ve figured out) Probably hiring committees are forced to used arbitrary cut-offs and other things that probably only amplify the degree to which applicants lack information about where to apply/not apply.

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  40. nate

    I think that part of the problem in this discussion is that there seems to be an assumption that search committees go into a search with a unified
    goal and a clear idea of the kind of applicant that they want to hire. That’s just not true in many cases. The last department I was in held a search, and the process seemed to go something like this.
    1) Department receives approval for a new faculty line.
    2) Department meets to assemble search committee.
    3) Committee includes: 2 political philosophers, one normative ethicist, one metaethicist, one action theorist, one philosopher of mind.
    4) Committee deliberates on how to advertise the position – the political philosophers want to hire a political philosopher, the metaethicist and philosopher of mind want to hire a moral psychologist, the action theorist and normative ethicist want to hire someone doing normative and applied ethics (broadly construed).
    5) Committee members can’t agree so they advertise the position with an AOS of “Value Theory”
    6) Each of the members reviews applications with their own idiosyncratic preferences and finds that very few of the applicants meet their “ideal” criteria but also that they like several applicants with specialties that weren’t even under consideration before the review started.
    7) Each committee member selects their top 10 applicants
    8) The committee members get together to negotiate a short list for first round interviews. Lots of horse-trading goes on as committee members compete to get their preferred applicants on the list
    9) Eventually, after lots of negotiating and compromising, interviews get scheduled.
    10) Ultimately a candidate is hired who may or may not fit any of the initial expectations for the job, but who all agree is very good nonetheless.
    It’s impossible to know, as an applicant, the degree of initial agreement among committee members or the interpersonal dynamics of search committees. So, I think the apply-for-anything-you’re-remotely-qualified-for approach is justified.

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  41. Much todo about nothing

    Thanks Nate. That’s one of the better accounts I’ve seen of what actually happens, start to finish, during the hiring process.
    From such a perspective, it makes sense that a search committee could want a wide pool of applicants, barring those who are unqualified or who have a completely unconnected AOS, and it does seem like a weird sort of alchemy that leads to the final choice.
    In light of your account (again, thanks), let me try to re-articulate what, at least for me, would be extremely helpful to see in job postings.
    While much of what leads a committee to ultimately hire whoever is a sort of alchemy that no one could predict, it does seem there are other factors a committee could clearly state in an ad that would help candidates. For example, things to the affect of: “pedigree of program trumps all else”, or “a publication record with at least one pub. from a top ten journal is required”, or “experience teaching that one particular class we need taught is necessary”, etc. Those are the kinds of things I’d love to know before applying. If a committee won’t hire me because I’m not coming out of a top 10 program, that’s fine – and knowing that saves me wasted effort (and a possible an emotional rollercoaster ride). Similarly, if I know they’ll only hire someone with a publication record of X, again – great! Then I’ll know whether my record qualifies me or not. Same for teaching, etc.
    What I’m asking requires committees to be far more honest about the kinds of prestige biases that play a big part in the market. It seems to me many job posts are written so as to leave room for many applicants to apply who, in reality, have almost no chance of getting the job even though they easliy fit the stated qualifications. I’d appreciate greater honesty on this front because: First, I could target energy into the jobs that would give me a real chance. Second, it would help prevent misconceptions in grad students and those thinking about going into philosophy about what they’re facing. And, third, I think it would be a step in the right direction of forcing the discipline to confront some the inequities that it perpetuates.
    With regard to point three, I think, for many applicants, it feels as though postings are written in bad faith – appearing to be more inclusive than they really are. I’m not Polly-annish enough to think that they could actually be more inclusive (the market is flooded after all). Rather, it does seem reasonable to ask folks, who are in the positions to do so, to end to facade of inclusiveness because it would make a measurable difference for many applicants.
    Again, thanks to Nate (and others in this post and on this site), who help make the process a bit more transparent.

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  42. Bill Vanderburgh

    Incompetence is often a better explanation that conspiracy or ill intent.
    Anecdotes are not evidence. (I’d love to see statistics on the fit between the AOS in the ad and the AOS of the hire.)
    When I see people saying that applicants should “carpet bomb” to increase their chances of finding some job (any job!), that people who don’t fit the ad get hired, etc., it makes me think of this: “So you’re telling me there’s a chance!”
    https://youtu.be/KX5jNnDMfxA
    When overhere (and I, elsewhere on this site) encourage applicants not to apply for jobs they don’t fit, it is because there are SO MANY applicants who apply to jobs they have absolutely no connection to. It is a waste of their time and ours. E.g., if you only do Marxism, why are you applying to a job in ancient Greek Philosophy? If the job requires a PhD in Philosophy and yours is in English Lit, you cannot be hired–HR screens out applicants who don’t meet minimum qualifications. If you can make a reasonable case for why you meet the department’s stated needs, then do that in your letter and apply.

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  43. R1 faculty

    HR doesn’t screen our applicants, we do (R1 here–I think this is pretty normal at private R1s). You shouldn’t carpet bomb, but Nate’s description of things rings true to me, and for that reason I think it’s in candidates’ interests to apply as broadly as they can without carpet bombing. If you have zero connection to anything about the job ad, then yeah, don’t apply, but if you can make a case for yourself that you have a close enough connection to one of the areas advertised in a cover letter without lying, then I would advise candidates to apply fairly widely. Compromising on something that isn’t squarely within the bounds of a job ad is fairly common. Also, just to report something that has happened with my department: we might end up with 4 finalists, 3 of whom are very squarely in the advertised parameters, 1 of whom is not, but whom really is a good fit for other reasons, is pretty close, can teach the relevant courses, etc. That person will probably be slightly disfavored going into fly outs. But suppose one of the other people is terrible on the fly out, and then we decide: finalist who doesn’t fit the job ad is ranked #3, others ranked #1 and #2, and then #1 and #2 turn us down. Now we are choosing between a failed search and hiring #3, and the only strike against #3 is that he doesn’t fit perfectly into the advertised AOS. We are going to hire #3. I’ve seen this sort of thing (I changed the description slightly so identifying details are removed) happen in my department. I really, really doubt it is uncommon in R1 hiring.

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  44. Much todo about nothing

    Hi Bill – as stated in my post, I agree with what you say (see above: “barring those who are unqualified or who have a completely unconnected AOS”).
    Let me be specific (though without giving so many details that anonymity is compromised): As I’ve stated, I think I’m competitive enough (hold a good postdoc, publications in good places like BJPS, Synthese, etc., solid teaching record, though I’m not coming out of thing near a top tier dept.) Many seem to be in my shoes. Yet, on several occasions I’ve applied to jobs with AOSs that were very squarely my AOS, was longlisted and then heard nothing. Applying to such jobs is not (I hope…) going, “so you’re telling me there’s a chance!” I fit the job descriptions well. In the end, on more than one occasion, the person who was hired had an AOS in some adjacent area to the advertised AOS, fewer publications than I did (in “worse” places), and no teaching record… but were coming out of a top tier dept.
    So, I’m not frustrated when I don’t hear back from jobs with open AOSs or ones where I don’t fit well (though I’ve never applied to something for which I couldn’t say my research covers in some way). Being charitable, I can chalk it up to the alchemy that Nate describes. Being uncharitable, it does not irrational to wish the search committee had just said in their job posting they’d give preferred consideration to applicants from X-tier departments. Perhaps I’m wrong, but from the outside it seems there can be unspoken preferences about who gets hired that often outweigh what is stated in ads.

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  45. Very little fun

    Much todo about nothing: you are absolutely right. I’m in a similar situation you are, and had similar experiences. But if you think about it, there is nothing strange: in times like these,even small schools have the opportunity of hiring people from top tier departments. And we know how important is prestige in our field. I don’t know if this is unjust or not, but I don’t see why we should be surprised about this. However, we should be more honest with students who want to do a phd in philosophy: if you cannot get into a decent school, just do something else (I’m talking about research – in reading this blog, I realized that for teaching jobs rules are different). Is it a bit paternalistic? Yes, and I wish someone told me this years ago rather than saying “you’re smart, you’ll make it”

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  46. Bill Vanderburgh

    Hi Much Todo. From what you describe, you are not in the, “So you are saying there’s a chance!” category. It sounds like you are applying to the right things with the right qualifications.
    From your places of publication it sounds like you are in philosophy of science. That’s also my field and we won’t be searching in that area for the foreseeable future, so if you want me to give your materials a quick look to see if I can suggest anything helpful, send me an email.

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  47. Search Committee Member

    My department is currently conducting an open AOS search, with a very specific AOC. We are a large public university without a graduate program in Philosophy; that’s the reason the AOS is open: because we don’t need advanced specialization in any particular area. We are genuinely open to all specializations and have no secret behind-the-scenes desires for one area or another (indeed, our hiring process is designed to prevent that sort of thing). However, the AOC represents an immediate teaching need; we have classes in the major that we cannot staff. For this reason, it’s been frustrating to see so many applications come in (at this point perhaps 25-30% of them) that not only don’t fit the AOC, but don’t even pretend to (e.g., the courses or areas listed in our ad are not even included among the candidate’s “courses I can teach” in a cover letter or teaching portfolio, the candidate has never taken a grad course in the highly specialized area(s), etc.). Those applications will not advance to a close-read stage, much less to the interview stage, no matter how excellent they are otherwise.
    I’ll also add here, since I’ve seen the requirement for “diversity statements” so often scoffed at or dismissed as meaningless, that they (whether they are separate documents or comprise part of a teaching dossier) turn out to be very important in our search. We have a unique undergraduate population, and if we don’t see evidence that a candidate, e.g., has experience in similar institutions or has mentored or interacted with student-populations like ours (or thought seriously about how to do so), they are unlikely to get far in our process, regardless of the rest of their dossier. Indeed, this is a benchmark for advancing to a “close read” in our process. Some candidates clear this benchmark by showing active reflection on their own experience (e.g., as a first-generation college student), and others demonstrate it through evidence of mentoring and outreach, but we look for some demonstrated commitment to the success of students like ours in every application and only closely consider applicants that include it.

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  48. different search committee member

    Search Committee Member: it’s not always obvious whether AOCs are required or suggested; maybe one way to avoid this is to put strong language in the ad to ward off would-be applicants? I think often when people advertise with both an AOS and an AOC, the AOC is a bit more flexible than the AOS. (I can see reasoning that would suggest that doesn’t translate to a case with an open AOS, but I don’t think that reasoning is obvious and I think reasoning that it does translate also makes sense.) I don’t think it’s the fault of job applicants if they wanted to be on the safe side by applying, just in case you would take them seriously without it! In any case, as a current and past search committee member, I don’t really get why people are frustrated about this. It’s extremely easy to just toss someone’s application in the “no” pile after a quick check of their cv and cover letter, if it is a genuine requirement of the position that they have the relevant AOS. (I think it’s worth trying not to get frustrated with job applicants in general–many people still have bad mentoring; many people have no mentoring; they are desperate and we are in a secure and relatively quite powerful position, one which I think naturally lends itself to not empathizing with job applicants (they create more work for us! our time is precious!)–so I think we owe it to them to try to overcome that impulse when it shows up for us and not fault people for doing things even when they create more work for us and aren’t qualified for our jobs. (In this case, though, I have to say I think it was probably the rational thing to do for people without the AOC to apply for your job, unless you had all the detail you put in your comment in the ad itself with strong language about only considering people with that AOC.)

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  49. Madeline

    Has anyone started hearing from hiring committees yet? I have submitted about twenty apps since September and am wondering if hearing nothing at this point is normal.

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  50. postdoc hopeful

    @ Madeline, I’ve also submitted about 20 apps since Septmeber, and I’ve only hear from one department. Granted, for 13 of those searches either the deadline hasn’t passed or only just passed. So I don’t think it’s unusual to not have heard anything.
    In my experience from last year, If I didn’t get an interview I received a PFO roughly 6 weeks after the deadline.

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  51. Mike Titelbaum

    At our public institution, a job ad is a highly-regulated document with all sorts of legal implications. So there’s just no way we could ever include the kinds of explanations of what we’re “really looking for” that some of the folks above have suggested. If you know someone in a particular department (even just a grad student), you can usually get some backchannel info about what the department is really after. But I realize most folks don’t have that kind of access. So for that reason, and the strategic considerations everybody has been discussing, I personally never get annoyed at someone who applies for a job they’re entirely unsuited for. It does create a bit more work for everyone on my end, but the inconvenience to us pales in comparison to the stresses and difficulties of being on the job market.

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  52. Search Committee Member

    I’m the Search Committee Member from above, and I should clarify that “frustrated” was entirely the wrong word choice. I’m not annoyed by it, and don’t at all hold it against candidates when they apply from outside the advertised area. It does create work for us; we can’t just throw an application in the trash without documenting why it was rejected, which means we do have to go hunting around the file to see if there’s evidence of the advertised area in there somewhere. But what I did mean to convey was some bewilderment that candidates in those cases don’t even try to make a case for themselves and a bit of surprise at how many of such candidates there are!
    Let me put it this way. I hear a lot of reasonable frustration from candidates about tailoring materials, but in our case, the truth is that if a candidate can make even a minimal case for competence in the area we need, we will consider them, and if they don’t, we (legally) can’t! My frustration is, in that sense, directed at the whole process, which seems quite ill-suited for getting a good sense of what each candidate is or is not capable of in the classroom, and–at least at an institution like ours–does not leave any room for us to interpret files beyond whatever specific evidence of fit candidates include and can point us toward.

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  53. postdoc10

    @Madeline: it’s really pretty early to hear back from places. And some of them take much longer than others. Source: me, having been on the market for roughly 6 (million) years.

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  54. Different Search Committee Member

    I am on a search committee for the first time and would like to ask how others evaluate, or think we should evaluate, candidates’ contributions to diversity. We all know (or at least should know) that it’s illegal to treat an applicant’s race, gender, or other protected status as a reason for or against hiring them. But our university is telling us that, along with research and teaching ability, we are supposed to give very strong weight to diversity. How are we supposed to assess this, legally? Do people just look at candidates’ record of organizing activities like MAP what they say about inclusive teaching in their teaching statements, or what? I’d be very curious to know what others do or think we should do.

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  55. Overly Anxious First-Timer

    @seqrch committee member: you mention applicants explicitly listing “courses I can teach” in cover letters or teaching statements. Is this something that is commonly done? I’m in my first go-round of the job market, and my home department (which puts a decent amount of work into prepping us for the job market) has never mentioned such a thing. If an ad lists specific courses they want taught, I’ve been including a sentence in my cover letter saying which of them I can teach. But otherwise I just sort of assumed people would infer it from a combination of the listed AoS’s/AoC’s on my CV and the syllabi I include in my teaching portfolio. Is this something that could hurt my application?

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  56. salt

    @overly anxious first-timer
    I’ve never hired anyone in philosophy so take this with a grain of salt:
    If you claim and AOS in an area, it will be assumed that you can teach courses in that area from intro to grad seminar. If you claim an AOC in an area, one popular norm is that you will be expected to be able to teach intro to advanced undergrad courses in that area.
    So if you are applying for a job that wants you to teach outside of your AOS, or expects you to offer occasional grad seminars in one of your claimed AOCs, it would be good to address that in a cover letter. If you have sample syllabi in a teaching portfolio, your discussion of these courses in the cover letter can be fairly brief (you might use this space to do something that adds to what is described on the syllabi). But if you don’t have sample syllabi for the courses in your teaching portfolio, then you’ll want to be more substantial in your description of the course(s) in the cover letter.

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  57. pforgetful

    Sorry to be incredibly dumb, but what does PFO mean in the reporting thread?

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  58. Conrad

    PFO =df please fuck off (dear applicant,)

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  59. pforgetful

    @Conrad Haha makes sense, thank you!

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  60. NAFT

    Thank you, @salt, that makes sense!

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  61. anxious PhD

    how long after job applications are due do candidates typically hear back about first round interviews? about a month?

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  62. Michel

    Anxious: typically? Never.
    But for the lucky few who win an interview, I’d say that December and January are when most hear back (for jobs usually closing in mid-October or early November).
    If you can, it’s easier to just forget you ever applied, rather than obsess over it. Just keep applying to new jobs, and focus your mental energy on those applications instead.

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  63. anon

    Fully agreed with Michel. A month or two of waiting is very normal, longer certainly possible.
    To add on to this, I will also say: be patient and take with a grain of salt anything they tell you about timelines, if they do distribute information like this.
    Last year a place that eventually flew me out was very open about when they expected to make decisions for first-round and final-round interviews, but with both sets of decisions they were way behind schedule.

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  64. ABD

    Does anyone have a sense as to how much having the PhD in hand versus applying to jobs as ABD matters to search committees? All else equal, is having the degree in hand preferred?

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  65. Michel

    ABD: definitely.
    ABDs get jobs all the time, but I think there’s a clear preference nevertheless.

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  66. East Coast R2

    ABD,
    When my department hired, we did not (as far as I can tell) distinguish between ABD and non-ABD.
    We did, however, distinguish between lots of courses as instructor of record and one or none. And between publication record and not.
    So, as it turned out, ABDs did not have as much primary teaching or publication, and that mattered.

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  67. JobSeeker2021

    Does anyone know how search committees typically sift through applications? Does the search committee look at applications before the deadline? Does every member of the search committee look at every application, or do they divide up applications before making a first cut?

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  68. Marcus Arvan

    JobSeeker2021: excellent question. I’ll run a thread on that tomorrow where search committee members can weigh in to disclose how they read apps!

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  69. new to this

    Should we count job talks on our CV under invited presentations?

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  70. see there

    @new to this, see https://philosopherscocoon.typepad.com/blog/2021/11/listing-job-talks-on-a-cv.html for discussion of that issue.

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  71. anonymous yak

    This is different from the tone of the current discussion, but does anyone know if the CSU Bakersfield Epistemology position from 2019-2020 hired anyone? They appear to be running the same search again this year. (I was interviewed for the last one in the first round but never heard from the committee again; weighing whether to apply to this one.)

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  72. Anonanon

    Anonymous yak: they did (I also unsuccessfully interviewed with them the same year, though that’s not why I know). The person who took the job in 2020 is moving to a different job.

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  73. East Coaster

    I know this is pointless complaining, but I miss the structure the APA Eastern put on the schedule for these things. I don’t want to go back to first-round in-person, but the calendar now is frustrating!
    Applications stretching out forever is draining. But worse than that (if you are allowed to complain about such things) is having to play the terrible poker game of progressing through stages at one school while another school is still accepting applications. Some TT jobs are just now getting posted, while other schools are scheduling fly-outs!
    Not much to be done about it, I suppose. There are costs to each way of doing things. And getting rid of in-person first-round interviews is worth it. Still—a pain!

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  74. phdead

    I realize this is just screaming incoherently into the void, but if I don’t hear something from SOMEONE soon, I am going to light myself on fire. This profession is a mess.

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  75. anon

    re phdead: I don’t know if this will be helpful or just more frustrating re: timelines, but I’ve been on the market for a few years in temporary positions, and I’ve have often had first round interviews and contracts signed later than May.
    Lots of people still think of these few months at the start of the academic year as like, “job season”, but it’s just not. Even for TT jobs, those can have deadlines after December. Anyways, back when I got started at this, I emphasized this span of time too much in my own thinking, and was worse off for it.

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  76. phdead

    Thanks, anon — that really does make me feel better. This is my first time on the market and I am not handling it gracefully, so the reality check about the timeline is much appreciated!

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  77. Waiting, probably in vain

    Do search committees always send out all of their first round interview requests at the same time? I imagine this is usually the case, but are there ever exceptions? I am currently in limbo with a couple of searches that have expressed early interest in me by asking for letters and not sending me the PFO that they sent others, but now I see on the reporting thread that others have gotten interview requests. I realize it’s 99% certain this means I’m out, but I’m wondering in general if there are ever factors that may lead a committee to send out requests over the span of a couple of days (as opposed to all at once).

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  78. Michel-Antoine Alexandre Xhignesse

    Waiting: no, staggering across a couple of weeks is not unusual, in my experience.

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  79. Anxiety Guy

    @Waiting: I am in the same position with respect to at least one search. My advisor said that in some cases, people keep a back-up shortlist that they might turn to in certain situations (e.g. in case a sufficient number of the initial zoom interviews go poorly, or people withdraw, or flyouts go poorly and there aren’t enough candidates from the first round of zoom interviews who they want to fly out for a second round, etc.). I interpret this as understanding it’s not terribly likely I’ll get that position (or even an interview), but that I’m not out of the running yet: they already sent PFO’s to people whose applications they knew weren’t going to move forward.

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  80. rejected again, naturally

    I’m almost positive that this has been talked about elsewhere on the blog before, but I can’t seem to find it, so I’ll just ask again:
    Do interviewees usually ask for feedback on their performance from search committee members after they’ve been ultimately rejected? And if so, what is the best way to do this?

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  81. anon

    I’m not sure about “usually”, you’re allowed to though.
    I did it once after I didn’t get a TT after the flyout. It didn’t feel too useful. The chair of the search just said their top choice had more papers. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

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  82. Andy

    It can be helpful to ask for feedback. What you get can vary a lot. I have had one line of just “it was a strong field” all the way to the chair of the search committee organising a 30 minute zoom meeting with me to give feedback. I know others who have had similar experiences. I think it is usually worth asking (unless you just got a really bad vibe at the interview).

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  83. shortontradition

    Question:
    I’ve had a few interviews at nominally-Catholic schools where the final question was something like “how does your work intersect with the Catholic intellectual tradition?” This is an awkward question, because the answer is: not really at all! And the job ads have been for totally unrelated areas of research. So I’m wondering: how much weight do questions like these carry in the decisions? And why ask this if it has nothing to do with the position description, especially if faculty do not need to be Catholic?

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  84. not a catholic

    @shortontradition: my guess is that the purpose of that question is to see whether you have some understanding of Catholic thought, and whether you are able to make what you do sound relevant to someone who works in that tradition. In other word, they might just want to make sure you are able to talk to the Aquinas nerd that they almost certainly have on their faculty. At least that is my suspicion for “nominally-Catholic” places… at some of the more Catholic places, they might prefer it if you were at least partly working within that tradition (or, if you were a Catholic yourself?).
    On a related note, I’ve been using this list for figuring out whether to apply to Catholic places: https://www.newwaysministry.org/resources/lgbt-friendly-colleges/ Even for straight people, this might be a useful proxy for figuring out what type of Catholic the university is.

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  85. lapsed Catholic

    @not a catholic thank you so much for sharing this resource!! I will be sending this along to my other job seeking friends as well. It can be really hard to suss out what “type” of Catholic school a place is from the website or the job ad.

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  86. curious anott

    Regarding the University of California system: Anyone knows what fraction of apps do not get past the diversity statement cut? (Do we even know for sure which UCs vet apps at this stage before even sending them to SCs?)

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  87. postdoc

    What is the average number of applicants that search committees typically select for first-round interviews, or at least a general range? I wish more committees would be forthcoming about how many applicants they are interviewing at a given stage so that we as applicants can adjust our level of hope accordingly.

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  88. Reply to Postdoc

    Postdoc, my placement advisor explained that our department has three people each pick their ten favorites, leading to a list of 10-30 people, depending on overlap, and then the three committee members look at all 30 of those and narrow the list down to 10 together. Those 10 then get Zoom interviews and 3-5 get flown out.

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  89. SLAC Associate

    postdoc: It’s fairly typical to interview about a dozen candidates in the first-round, and then to invite two or three candidates for on-campus interviews.

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  90. postdoc

    Thanks, SLAC Associate and “Reply” for your answers! I had previously heard estimates from different people that ranged from 10-30 applicants being interviewed, so it’s helpful to know that the average is likely toward the lower end of the various guesses I’d been hearing.

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  91. SLAC assistant

    We interview six on skype, bring in two or three. I’d like to do 10-12 on skype, but the older members of the department don’t seem to have the energy/will for that.

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  92. Anon SLAC

    We have interviewed anywhere between 6 or 10 people, depending on the search. We are only allowed to fly two people out to campus.

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  93. Postdoc hopeful

    What happens if everyone on your long list takes a “better” offer elsewhere? Do you make a new list of the “second tier” candidates and start the interview process again with them?
    I see @Anxiety Guy asked a similar question about how short list/flyouts get managed. I would expect that a decent number of long lists have a lot of overlap, which would seem to imply that at least some of the time schools won’t get any of their “top” choices. What happens then?
    Perhaps my question is actually about what a long list represents. Is it “everyone we think could do this job”, or is it “everyone we think we would be willing to hire”, or is it “the best set of candidates we have time to interview right now”? If it’s the latter in particular, is that part of why it can take a long time to get a “no”?

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  94. anonymous R1 faculty

    Hi Postdoc Hopeful–my experience is that that doesn’t ever come close to happening (in part because, at least on the R1 market, there are a few “hotshots” on the market each year, but other than that there isn’t always that much overlap between people’s lists; if the jobs aren’t open AOS, there might not even be that much overlap in hotshot selection). At least for us, it has happened that we have dipped back into our first round interview list after things have gone wrong with the three candidates brought to campus (e.g.: one or two take a different offer, and we don’t like the third), but I’ve never heard of anyone exhausting their interview list. (When searches fail my understanding is that it is typically not because a department has gone back and brought zoom interviewed candidates to campus–one issue is that no administration would fund more than 1-2 “back up” candidates from the first round interview list, and many wouldn’t even do that, so the option you describe about exhausting the long list doesn’t even arise.)

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  95. and so it goes

    @rejected again, naturally: echoing @Andy, you should ask for feedback if you want feedback.
    A brief story…. The last time I was on the job market, I was a finalist for two positions that I didn’t get. I asked both for feedback. In one case (a job I had strong reservations about), the search chair forwarded my email to HR and I got a weird response about privacy.
    In the other case (a job I really wanted, especially after meeting the committee), the search chair sent me a really warming response letting me know that my interview was great and that she made a strong push to admin to make two hires because the committee really wanted to hire both the person that got the job and me. She even got approval from HR to hire from that year’s pool if a new position came up in the next two years, so that she’d have the option to bring me in if a position materialized.
    (She didn’t tell me this, but I think that maybe what differentiated the person who got the job was that he had experience–that I didn’t have–in an area that the job ad didn’t require but preferred.)
    I was so, so disappointed when I didn’t get the job and reading her reply stopped me from wasting time over-analyzing how things had gone to look for mistakes or possible explanations.
    I’m sharing all this to say that sometimes asking for feedback won’t go anywhere. In other cases you may get a response that will help you improve for the next time. Or you may, just as importantly, get confirmation that your great feeling about an interview wasn’t off-base, that you weren’t imagining the connection you thought you forged with the committee, and that you did the good work you thought you did.
    Maybe it’s little consolation when you don’t get the job, but sometimes there was nothing you could or should have done better or different, and it can be a small relief to know that.
    Being on the job market often feels like stumbling around in the dark. Anything that lets in more cracks of light is worth seeking out, not just to help you get a job but also as a form of self-care.
    Sending you good vibes….

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  96. postdoc less hopeful

    I’ve seen on other forums (not limited to philosophy) that search committee members have noticed a trend this year that there are fewer overall applicants but this smaller pool is much more competitive. In particular, they have noticed more advanced assistant professors applying, willing to restart their tenure clock. I’m wondering if search committee members in philosophy are noticing a similar trend.

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  97. Non-TT applicant

    In response to postdoc less hopeful’s question, I have a related question: How do committees approach comparing people who have yet to have an assistant professorship against people who are already assistant profs and are looking to move laterally? As someone who lost out on certain jobs last year as an ABD to people who already had TT jobs elsewhere, it’s hard not to feel discouraged and like there’s no hope in terms of competing against those applicants. All things considered, do committees typically opt to hire those who are already assistant profs, or are there sometimes reasons to hire the new PhDs over assistant profs? When I think about it from the perspective of a search committee member it seems like a good deal to just hire the person who is already seasoned and can hit the ground running, but this obviously really sucks for brand new people just trying to find a job in this awful job market.

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  98. SC member

    Though there are no doubt advantages to hiring someone who’s already on the TT somewhere else, there are also some ways in which the applications of TT people are at a disadvantage. These include:
    1. The aura of ‘potential’ is mostly gone. You basically know what you’re getting, especially if they’re advanced assistant professors.
    2. Some admin might want them to start over completely on the tenure clock, making any offer less attractive.
    3. Some SC members might be suspicious of them if they don’t give a good reason for why they want to move (are they just a constant jumper? are they combative? are they just looking for a counteroffer?)
    4. There’s some worry about a potential bait-and-switch: they say they’re willing to start over or lose a couple years on the tenure clock, but then at negotiation time they take it back.
    All these are basically non-issues for people not yet on the TT.

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  99. anon

    This is an issue, but it really depends on the search committee, what they value, what they don’t. And at some places, search committee members differ drastically from year to year, and so you don’t know fore sure that there’s a pattern they will follow.
    You can take a look at this in job postings on PhilJobs – e.g. you can see some places hired ABDs/new graduates last year where surely there were also very experienced candidates in the pool, as well as some places that did the opposite.
    I’m not sure about the overall numbers, whether there’s a profession-wide preference in either direction. My vague, non-statistically backed up hunch is that fancier places are more excited to hire people without substantial track records.

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  100. drop off

    @postdoc less hopeful, that’s an interesting obvervation, if true. If it is true, one potential contributing factor could be people leaving the academic job market in philosophy after the abysmal 20-21AY job season.
    I would love to see data about how many former job seekers move on from academic philosophy each year and whether the drop off after 20-21AY was larger than normal.

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  101. Just wondering…

    Pitt just canceled their search, claiming “ Our open rank search in Ethics and Practical Philosophy broadly construed has regrettably been canceled this year due to logistical obstacles that have rendered a timely completion of that search infeasible. We apologize for any inconvenience this causes, and remain grateful for your expression of interest in the position.”
    Is there a reading of this that isn’t “we couldn’t be bothered to do the work required to hire someone”?

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  102. It’s the pitts

    @Just wondering…, yes: at least two.
    There’s also the “we’re too internally dysfunctional to hire in a normal timeframe” reading and the “our administration is trying to sabotage us” reading.

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  103. anon

    Just be gonna be blunt with this question: if one looks at the composition of a department who has a TT-opening and the department currently consists of 3 white men, as a white man, need I even bother to apply?

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  104. postdoc with hiring committee experience

    @anon Probably depends on the job.
    Philosophy is still mostly white and male, which can make it logistically hard to hire someone who isn’t white or male. (A lot of departments trying to hire in philosophy of race this year are finding that out.) If you think you’re a good candidate for the job and it isn’t that much more work to apply, seems like it’s worth you time about as much as any other job.

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  105. anon m&e

    How likely is it that people get feedback on their interviews from the search committee? I’ve asked a number of people the past two years for feedback on Zoom interviews and have yet to hear from anyone.

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  106. anon m&e

    How likely is it that people get feedback on their interviews from the search committee? I’ve asked a number of people the past two years for feedback on Zoom interviews and have yet to hear from anyone.

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  107. anon m&e

    How likely is it that people get feedback on their interviews from the search committee? I’ve asked a number of people the past two years for feedback on Zoom interviews and have yet to hear from anyone.

    Reply
  108. Oh well

    @anon, I think you’re wildly overestimating people’s motivation to diversify their departments. As someone in a department with an awful gender ratio, it has been very interesting to observe what kind of mental gymnastics colleagues engage in to justify leaving things as they are.

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  109. I love the market

    There’s something especially poignant about that period of time between the zoom/fly out and getting the pfo that is really sweetened if you get the update that they’ve already hired on here / social media.

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  110. Mildly annoyed

    How common is it to not receive a PFO when interviews have been scheduled with other applicants? It seems unfair to applicants not to let them know they haven’t been successful in the application.

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  111. SLAC TT

    @Mildly annoyed, search committees at some universities are not allowed by HR to send a PFO until a hire is made. Also, if the search committee isn’t happy with any of their top applicants after interviews or on campus visits (which sometimes happens), they may choose to go back to the applicant pool later to see if there are any more people they want to interview.

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  112. Too Emotionally Invested

    Is there any point at which searches, especially those that haven’t given out first round interview requests, go on a pause for the holidays, or am I still going to “need” to keep checking every day for the next two weeks?

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  113. Post-Hope, Pre-Doc

    @Too Emotionally Invested – I find the thread from last year helpful for these issues and for generally trying to predict when clusters of movement will happen. https://philosopherscocoon.typepad.com/blog/2020/09/job-market-reporting-thread-2020-21-season/comments/page/2/#comments
    Looking back at last year, 3 schools seem to have made moves between the 20th and 23rd. Then there were no posts between the 23rd and 27th, and then 4 schools made moves from the 27th through the 31st. Nothing on New Year’s and then back to action on the 2nd.
    So, in short, some light activity sprinkled around the holidays and no movement on the 24th, 25th, 26th or 1st.

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  114. Unmotivated

    Is it time for me to throw in the towel? I’m LEMM. I have no interest in, nor the capacity to, develop an AOS / AOC in race, gender, or social justice related philosophy. I’m not from a top 5 program. I’m a cis white man. I’m not religious. Also, I don’t want to live in the developing world. With these constraints, is it a pipe dream at this point? My sense is that you need to check one of these 5 boxes to have a chance in this market: worship Jesus, be fairly woke, be diverse, come from a top 5, or be willing to move to places considerably poorer than the US. Am I wrong?

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  115. postdoc10

    Unmotivated: I feel like it depends on your willingness to take risks and to take on more years of suffering on the market. I’ve been on the market for 6 years, 4 of them post PhD. I’m like you except I do come from a top 5 program. I’ve seen plenty of people like you and me get jobs (including not from top 5 programs), often in ways that leave me scratching my head about why they were selected over me. I think things get very random when you have this many people, most of whom have great work and excellent credentials. So, it’s not like you can’t find a job. It’s just that the numbers are against you. It’s a lottery for everyone, but for LEMM folks especially.
    I am out after this year. I think I would have chosen differently and quit sooner if I had known I would try for 6 years and still fail. So, if you are like me, you might be happier quitting sooner. But I think that depends on how much you hate the uncertainty and rejection of the market.
    I don’t think it has anything to do with “being woke”, by the way. I’m a lefty politically, hasn’t helped me a bit.

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  116. Timmy J

    The strictly negative interpretation of your claim is correct: if you do not check one of those boxes, you have no reasonable chance at a job. The following stronger claim is also correct: whether you check those boxes or not, you have no reasonable shot at a job. Nobody has a shot. Stop trying to blame your own personal lack of a shot on not having those features. Most of the woke Jesus worshipping women who work on race that I know are also not getting jobs. It’s hard. Just super duper hard.

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  117. East Coaster

    Unmotivated,
    I don’t check any of your five boxes. (I’m irreligious, I consider myself relatively moderate, at least for academia, I’m not anyone’s diversity hire, I came from a department I loved but which is not top 5, and while I might be willing to move to places considerably poorer than the US, I haven’t yet had the chance to really confront that possibility.) And yet I’ve had some moderate success on the job market.
    What’s the lesson from that? First, that there is some hope. I am saying there is a chance.
    Second, as Timmy J writes, it’s hard, just super duper hard. Lots of great people are not getting jobs. We should all recognize the huge dose of luck involved. I doubt there are many false positives (i.e., people getting jobs who should not be teaching or researching philosophy). But I am sure you could stock several new departments with sterling false negatives. There are so many great people striking out!
    Third, everyone on the job market or getting near it should spend a lot of time introspecting to figure out what makes them special. For nearly all of us, it won’t be the particulars of our research. For nearly all of us, we won’t be hired into a department with more than at most a colleague who does work similar to us. So, for nearly all of us, being broadly competent at research and being able to clear a tenure hurdle is the main research check. So then: what is the particular way you would make a department’s life richer? If you aren’t going to check one of those boxes you listed, what are you going to check?
    I think about our co-host here, Marcus. Let us suppose for a moment that I wasn’t particularly interested in or impressed by his work. (It looks like it might be time for a second paperback run of Rightness as Fairness!) Still, I would love to have him as a colleague. Look at this site, at the conference he runs, at what he does with his students, https://www.marcusarvan.net/students etc., etc. It is clear how much energy, creativity, and enthusiasm Marcus brings! I don’t mean that we all need to be (or could be!) Marcus Arvans. But I think it is probably good for all of us to think about what would be particularly tempting to a hiring committee about us.
    (Of course, that won’t solve the problem that there are more great people than there are jobs. But the individual job candidate cannot solve that one.)

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  118. Unmotivated

    East Coaster: are you LEMM, though? My question is really only oriented toward that group, since I think the market is especially narrow in LEMM. In particular, very few SLACs seem interested in core analytic.
    Postdoc10: yeah, I hear you. (I don’t think being woke itself helps, but I think only fairly woke people would feel comfortable teaching in areas that seem heavily represented in desired AOCs this year.)

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  119. Postdoc10

    East Coaster: I don’t think this is helpful advice. I don’t buy for a second that the people getting jobs are the ones bootstrapping their way to success by figuring out a side hustle that will make them stand out. In any case, you aren’t going to know ahead of time what “extracurriculars” are going to appeal to the departments that actually have job openings. Will they be happy with you running a website, or feel you should spend the time on research/teaching instead? Depends on the place. I don’t think it’s healthy or compassionate to tell people to just hustle harder, it’s their own fault for not running a successful website or whatever.

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  120. East Coaster

    Postdoc10:
    My advice was not to hustle harder, to run a successful website, etc. I am not suggesting that people change who they are. We cannot all be our kind host! The extra things are great, but I think you are right that you cannot know ahead of time what extracurriculars will help you stand out. (I am worried a bit about the scare-quotes, but ymmv.) And I think that you are right that it is not compassionate to tell people to just hustle harder. I don’t think I was doing that—but if I was, consider this an amendment.
    I also was pretty clear (I think) both that there are huge degrees of luck involved and that lots of great, great people don’t get jobs. It thus seems strained to suggest that I’m telling people it is their own fault for not running a successful website.
    Instead, my advice was to “spend a lot of time introspecting to figure out what makes [the applicant] special.” There are going to be lots of applications, and lots of qualified applications. If the applicant cannot figure out what will make them stand out, neither will the committee. Having a publication or two or five will not stand out anymore. (Set aside whether this is a good thing; it surely is increasingly a thing.) So, if I’m working on my own dossier, or if I’m giving a friend feedback on their dossier, I’m going to try to figure out: what in particular would be memorable and tempting about this dossier? If I’m not Marcus as a colleague, who am I? I need to figure that out to be able to pass the word along.
    And, to go back to unmotivated, I agree that there are fewer LEMM jobs than, say, history jobs. And so, yes, I think you are right that the odds are very, very harsh. Still, there are at least two LEMM TT jobs which are still open. And I suppose my point was that the factors you listed are ways of standing out. I don’t think they are the only ways of standing out. But in any case, if you want motivation, I think it will come from thinking about why you would be a particularly valuable member of a department (and I am not saying start a website, I am saying introspect!) and then focusing your attention on that. (Including being proud of yourself for being the sort of person who would be a valuable member of a department!)

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  121. East Coaster

    As a coda, to Unmotivated:
    If you are saying that you are only interested in a TT job in LEMM at a wealthy SLAC, that is a very narrow target!

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  122. Unmotivated

    By SLAC I meant to include both wealthy SLACs and generic LACs. Should have been more precise.
    I do see phil mind pop up at LACs. I think I’ve only seen 1 or 2 LAC language jobs, same for analytic metaphysics.* I haven’t kept close count.
    (*Thomist metaphysicians may have more options, looking at various Catholic ads. It’d be kind of weird to call Thomists “core” LEMM types, though.)
    FWIW I never thought I’d have a chance at R1 places or wealthy SLACs, even before the diversity push. But I thought I’d have a chance at a LAC, and the LACs just don’t seem to be into core anymore, excepting mind. Certainly not in significant numbers. Even when they have an open or core AOS, often it comes with diversity considerations vis a vis the AOC. (I mean wanting someone who can teach race, gender, or non-western: diversify the curriculum.) Plus sometimes when they advertise for a core AOS, the things they will count as falling within that AOS are so numerous that it makes me really doubt they want to hire someone doing core at all!

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  123. Unmotivated

    To tie it all together: my thought is that once you exclude the institutions that have strong preferences for AOCs of the sort I mentioned, the remaining job pools are so small that people who fit either the religious or diversity (in themselves, I mean) criteria are in sufficient supply to fill them. Maybe it’s possible to stand out in that background — “I know I don’t love Jesus, but I do this”; “I know the other person will diversify your faculty pool, but I do that” — but it sure seems like an uphill battle.

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  124. lewis_david

    I just got a PFO from Brandeis. There were nearly 600 applications for one position. Like most of the applicants, I put a lot of time into that application. But it is unclear why we are wasting all of this time and work when there is such a small chance of the committee even glancing at the application. I’m not at all confident that a committee can review that many applications in such a short period of time. So, here is my question: why don’t committees just ask for the piece of an application that they’re using to make major cuts (e.g., a CV) and then ask for more materials from a subset of those applicants? Or why don’t they do a narrower search?

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  125. curious

    Are search committees this year at all taking into account the mental health impact of the pandemic on the applicant pool?
    As a job candidate who has gotten flyouts in previous years, I know that my productivity has been seriously impacted by just trying to cope for the past couple of years. This shows on my CV and will, I assume, greatly reduce my viability this year. Based on what I’m hearing in other posts about the kinds of publication records search committees are looking at this year, it definitely seems this isn’t true for everyone. And maybe departments only want to hire people who can place an article in a top 5 journal while under duress. I know, however, that I’m not the only person for whom this is true, and it just seems like yet another hurdle on an already almost impossible to navigate path.
    Maybe it’s silly to even ask this question, since I’m pretty sure the answer is no–but, I wanted to throw it out there.

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  126. Early career

    I am wondering if we can have a discussion where search committees share the AOS they seek and the number of applications they received in this job cycle. I think that a post like that will be especially valuable for early careers. We know that for most open searches, a typical number is around 600, but what about areas like M&E, history, ethics, non-western, gender, race, etc,.?

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  127. Marcus Arvan

    Early career: That’s a super idea – I’ll run an open thread on it first thing tomorrow!

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  128. Just a thought

    Since no one else commented on this, I guess I will…
    @unmotivated – In light of your last comment (and initial one), it’s worth reminding you that no job ad is advertising for “divers[e] (in themselves)” candidates (nor would hiring someone on that basis be legal or good for this discipline).
    We don’t really have data to track the hiring behavior of philosophy departments on this measure; so, we don’t know whether hiring based on the candidate’s own diversity is a trend (much less a criterion). But, the psychological literature on implicit bias suggests diverse candidates (who can be identified by their name alone despite white-washing their CV in other ways) still are at a disadvantage for getting interviewed or hired because of their diversity in general. So, the suggestion that diverse people are getting jobs over other qualified candidates on that basis as a criterion of any kind is (likely) inaccurate and (certainly) unhelpful.
    Even implicitly framing one’s lack of success in a terrible job market in this way is unjustified and bad for the discipline. Instead, it’s much better to focus on what one can do to succeed, and @East Coaster had excellent suggestions for that. Like any other job market, what you uniquely bring to the table is what’s worth selling and buying.

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  129. Post-Hope, Pre-Grad

    Does anybody have a handle on how long, on average, it takes to hear back after a round 1 interview? And how long does it usually take before round 2 is held?

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  130. anonymous faculty

    @Post-Hope: I think there’s so much variation that one shouldn’t try to make predictions. I think reasonable depts will tell you at the end of a first round interview (or in a follow up email) when you should expect to hear from them. But sometimes that isn’t possible if timing is weird. (Most departments, for example, need to get official approval from their administration before scheduling fly outs, and sometimes it is hard to predict how long that will take, especially if it is over holidays or the administration is stressed for other reasons.) In my department, once a committee could not decide what to do after first round interviews and that prolonged the process (they ended up consulting with the rest of the department, which is normally something committees don’t do in my department until the fly out stage). That delayed things significantly. A decent search chair will keep you updated, though, I think, if it takes longer than two weeks.

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  131. Diversity hiring

    @Just a thought: At my R1, the demographic features of candidates (their race and gender) are very much used as a criterion in hiring, at every stage of the process. This is true even though it is known to violate our university’s nondiscrimination policies and promises to applicants and is illegal. Everyone I have talked to who has served on a hiring committee elsewhere has said the same thing. (Though you may of course be right that it is not useful to focus on this.)

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  132. anon postdoc

    I don’t know if this is a productive conversation to have, but I’m wondering how many interviews other candidates who are active on this site are getting. Is this year just as bad as last year, or am I just not as competitive as other candidates?
    My AOS is in ethics and social epistemology, with AOCs in applied ethics, metaethics, and feminist philosophy. This is my second year on the market (last year I was ABD), and so far both times I have only had one first-round interview, with no campus visits.

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  133. Shay Logan

    @anon postdoc: I’ve got a TT job that I really like. I was on the market for five years. I never got more than one first-round interview for a TT job in a season and in two of those years I had zero interviews for TT jobs. So it can pan out from the sort of data you’re working with.
    Independent of that, your performance is no indication whatsoever that you’re not a good philosopher or that you don’t deserve a job. The market is just bad.

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  134. Post-Hope, Pre-Grad

    @anon postdoc I’m an ABD in my first year on the market with AOSs in social/political and immigration and AOCs in climate, Econ justice, and law. I’ve gotten 1 interview request (which hasn’t yet been held).

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  135. pre-post-hope grad

    I feel like this might be a healthy discussion to have (in that it’s good to hear that other people are having similar experiences), so I’ll continue: I’m also ABD, first year on the market, with an AOS in epistemology. I’ve gotten 3 interview requests, although one is for a (non-fancy) postdoc. It’s clear that the first interview has not led to a campus visit, the other two interviews are still to happen. I’ve written about 70 applications so far.

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  136. Scisci

    I’m phil sci. This is the third time I’m on the market. Last two years I was ABD. First year I got one interview which led to an on-campus but no job. Second year I got nothing. Third year (this year) I got 3 zoom interviews that haven’t happened yet.

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  137. sisyphus

    I’m phil bio/phil sci. Second year on the market, first time not ABD. First year: one interview which landed me a postdoc, but nothing else (not complaining!) This year: two interviews – one postdoc, one TT. Haven’t done either interview yet. Still hoping to hear back from a couple places.

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  138. meh

    First year on the market, ABD. AOS mind/metaphysics/[psychology/science]. No interviews so far, but I haven’t applied broadly. I applied to 20 TT jobs and 3 postdocs (2 more TT apps, plus a postdoc and VAP app in the pipeline, plus whatever I like that posts in the New Year). 0/13 in TT interviews (though I did get my letters pulled from a school that said it meant I advanced a round) and 0/1 in postdocs awarded.

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  139. aesthetician with a temporary job

    Fourth year on the market. My AOS is aesthetics and I have some niche teaching experience. My publication record is just about okay.
    First year, ABD. I don’t remember how many first round interviews. 3? No fly-outs or offers.
    Second year, ABD. Don’t remember how many interviews. 1 fly out (no offer); 2 offers for temporary positions.
    Third year, PhD in hand. Maybe 4 first-round interviews. No fly-outs. Got 2 last minute offers: one VAP and one longer-term teaching position. (I took the stable one.)
    Skipped the next two cycles. I have applied to many fewer jobs this year than in previous years, mostly because I only decided to apply at all mid-October. I am only applying to TT positions. I have one first-round interview.

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  140. for your job talk, you should present blah blah blah.

    So this is one of those “good problems to have” problems, but I am trying to figure out what do give as a job talk and my head is absolutely spinning from all the conflicting advice out there. A case in point: you need to send in your best work as a writing sample. You also need to give a job talk on your best work. Your job talk cannot be the same as your writing sample. Or there’s the advice about presenting new work: new work is good, you want to show you’ve got stuff in the pipeline; no wait, you should present your most polished piece of work that you’ve presented many times in the past (but not your writing sample!). I feel like I’ve seen good arguments made for each of these pieces of advice on this blog, but I don’t really have a good way of evaluating which ones to care about. I guess it might be good to get a poll ranking different principles in terms of how many people agree with them, but even that advice could easily be trumped by some kind of local consideration about the department itself. Maybe it’s just a reflection of the broader state of job market advice: it’s all over the place and not really that helpful.

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  141. jobtalkadvice

    re job talk, I have consistently heard that you should present your best, most polished work. In addition to not being your writing sample, it also shouldn’t already be published — so in that sense, you should still show that you have work in progress. You can show you have work in the pipeline by presenting unpublished but still polished stuff. and you can say at the beginning and/or end how your project relates to other projects.
    (Also, I think the best way to think about and justify the “don’t present things that are published norm” is this: it is ceteris paribus bad form to present something that your audience cannot influence. Of course, there are exceptions to this, like if you submit a paper to a CFP and the paper gets accepted at a journal in the interim. The job talk analogue of this would probably be getting a paper accepted just shortly before your talk. It’s also fine, I think, to present work that is ‘forthcoming’ in the sense that it is promised to a journal/volume, as long as you can still change it, etc.)

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  142. Sammy

    I asked this in the reporting thread but perhaps should have put it here. I sometimes see jobs that ask for both a letter of motivation and a cover letter. (The latest example: This Utrecht job ad (https://philjobs.org/job/show/19201). Does anyone know the difference? Thanks guys

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  143. Bubbles

    I’ve seen a few posts on this blog and on the Daily Nous reporting lower-than-normal (i.e. not quite as insane) application numbers this year. I have an explanation that I haven’t seen come up in the discussions, which have mostly focused on applicants being more selective for various reasons. It’s totally based on anecdotal evidence, but whatever:
    Last year, the market was so bad that part of the applicant backlog got cleared out as people left the market entirely. Lots of applicants without fallback positions for 2021-2022 came up empty in 2020-21 and had to leave academia. Still others who have hung around as postdocs and vaps and adjuncts just decided their chances weren’t going to improve anytime soon and left of their own accord. Maybe some ABDs also saw the writing on the wall and decided not to bother with the market at all. So the swollen, overgrown bubble that was the philosophy job market since the recession finally burst – or at least deflated somewhat.
    Maybe all this was made easier by accumulated savings or extra government assistance due to covid, and maybe people also had a chance to rethink their lifestyles, and all the other general explanations we’ve seen for the “great resignation. But I can think of several real cases for each of the quitting academic scenarios I’ve described, from people I know personally. This is what’s happening to my friends, and what pretty easily could have happened to me last year if I hadn’t had an extra year in my current position.
    I’m curious if this rings true with other people’s anecdotal experiences.

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  144. EmbracingTheVoid

    First year on the market. ABD. Phil Science/Phil Bio (plus some niche stuff like philosophy of history).
    So far… lemme count: ah yes, zero of all the things one wants to have. Lots of apps still out, and will continue to apply to anything I can plausibly qualify for. But confidence is certainly waning.

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  145. postdoc less hopeful

    Hey Bubbles. I think that’s definitely a factor. There were five students in my graduating class. One never went on the market and got a job in the tech industry. Three of us are on short-term academic contracts. The last I have no idea what they are doing. Last year one person got a TT job, two are on international postdocs, and one left for high school teaching.
    Ironically, the only reason I am still in academia is that I failed to find a job outside academia. 50 applications and only one first-round interview. The postdoc I’m on was advertised very last minute. With my academic options drying up this cycle I am applying outside again, and I will only renew my postdoc if I cannot find any other work (which is a real possibility).

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  146. woop, woop

    @bubbles
    I was forced out of the job market after failing to get academic employment for AY 21-22.
    Last cycle I had five interviews (one TT, two postdocs and two VAPs/lecturer/adjunct) and none of them resulted in an offer. Nothing much changed on my CV from the last job cycle (a bit more teaching experience but all of my papers out at journals were still under review) and I figured departments would have their pick of people who managed to get a job for AY 21-22, so no reason to take a risk on someone like me who had to work outside philosophy for a year. Overall, after being on the market for 6 years, it became clear that I was not going to get a permanent job (fwiw, I got a phd at a top 10 leiter place, decent pubs but nothing tippy top), so now I’ve moved on to other things. I’m very unhappy about that outcome but that’s the way it goes.

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  147. Bubbles

    woop, sorry to hear that. Last year was absolutely brutal, and it pushed out a lot of good people. I hope you’re finding some rewarding non-academic opportunities now. The good news is that all my friends who left last year seem much better off these days.
    postdoc less hopeful, thanks for the data point. I hope things work out in your favor this time around.

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  148. Pandemic-impact Q

    I have a question for any search committee members who may see this and are willing to offer any intel (anonymously or otherwise):
    Is the current COVID-19 surge impacting (delaying or changing) your committee’s hiring timeline or the decision to have fly-outs versus online teaching demonstrations/job talks?
    Also, I wonder how a committee might respond to a candidate who expresses reservations about traveling for a second-round interview under the circumstances?
    P.S. I recognize how challenging this question is as things continue to evolve, and things may vary considerably based on the university’s location.

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  149. Anon1

    Pandemic-Impact Q:
    My department did a search at the beginning of the Covid era. Of our four finalists, two were from abroad and were unable to visit in person. We arranged for them to do their visits virtually. However, while we did not consciously hold it against them, and did everything we could to ensure that thy had the opportunities to display themselves in the best light possible, neither one got the position. One was just a dud, but the other one should have been more viable than they were. It is just impossible to make the same impression over video as in person. So, if some candidates do visit in person and you do not, I think that you will be at a significant disadvantage, even if the department is open to you doing your visit virtually.

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  150. Pandemic-impact Q

    @Anon1 – Thanks for your helpful reply! I figured as much! Zoom certainly has its limits. Also, I’d find it difficult to accept an offer without visiting anyway. It’s a big decision on both ends!

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  151. Anon

    Does anybody have any insight on how many candidates are usually included at each stage? For example:
    – SLAC 1st round interview (small department)
    – SLAC in-person interview (small department)
    – R1 1st round interview (large department)
    – Postdoc longlist
    I know that these will vary quite a bit, but I was wondering whether there are general rules of thumb here.

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  152. Anon1

    In my experience, 10-20 for first round interviews, and 2-4 (usually 3) for fly-outs, irrespective of whether R1 or SLAC.

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  153. GRIT

    Just in case anyone needs to read this (myself included):
    YOU’VE GOT THIS! No matter how any of this turns out, you pushed through with all that you could in an incredibly tough market (and pandemic!). And, that perseverance is always worthwhile. (You found what next level you looks like!)
    Also, ONE DAY AT A TIME! Remember to self-care, sleep, take breaks from the Cocoon, call grandma, and just see where it all leads. Let it all go—even if just for a moment. You’ve done all that you can for now. At worst, you learned a whole lot in this pursuit—certainly a whole lot about yourself!
    Wishing all my job market comrades well as we power through January!

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  154. Strike Out

    Hey all,
    It looks like I struck out this season for TT jobs but I’m trying to remain hopeful for a VAP/Post-Doc/Lecturer Position. Does anybody know when these are typically posted? I’m not seeing a lot now, so I’m getting nervous, but I’d feel better if the majority of them are typically posted later on in the Spring Semester.
    Thanks!

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  155. postdoc hopeless

    @ Strike Out, I am in the same position. This is only my second time on the market, so I don’t have much depth of experience, but from my recollection short-term positions just sort of trickle out over the course of the spring and into the summer. I was still applying to newly posted positions in May and June. This could be an idiosyncrasy of last year’s pandemic market, though.

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  156. Strike Out

    Thanks, postdoc! That’s good to hear. (I’ll pretend I didn’t see the last sentence.)

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  157. phew

    @ GRIT, I desperately needed to hear that! Thank you for shouting out! Best wishes to you!

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  158. non-TT market

    @ GRIT, yes, the inspiration is much appreciated.
    @Strike Out, I would keep an eye on PhilJobs and HigherEdJobs between now and May, or even June. Visiting, non-TT jobs, and postdocs tend to start getting posted around the start of the Spring semester, but continue throughout. Based on this year’s TT market, I’m guessing that there will be plenty, and it’s still a bit early.
    Anecdotally and for what it’s worth, I’ve now taken three non-TT jobs, all pretty decent, and all three offers came (roughly) from job ads posted in April, interviews in May, and offers in June.

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  159. Experienced NTT

    Yes, it is very common for “good” (= salaried, 3/3 or less, large department) NTT jobs to be posted in March, April, and May. Such searches move quickly, and usually do not require on-campus visits, in my experience.

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  160. Failed searches

    Apparently MIT isn’t hiring anyone for their TT job, which got me wondering how often this happens, and what the reasons for this (not just in the MIT case, but in general) may be? Apparently they invited someone for a flyout who declined, but surely there were plenty of other great candidates they could’ve invited for an interview? I didn’t apply to that job and it isn’t my AOS, so this isn’t self-serving. It just got me wondering why this sometimes happens. I know it’s sometimes the fault of budgetary issues or administrative hang-ups, but at a school like MIT I doubt it’s due to lack of funds…

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  161. Confused

    @Failed searches, which MIT TT job are you talking about? The epistemology one?

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  162. one explanation

    hi failed searches: I’m not affiliated with MIT, but here’s my guess about what is going on there: they probably have special money with which they can hire in phil tech (by the way, they had multiple TT jobs, and I don’t think that the other search has failed). I suspect that basically it’s a “free” line for the department because the university is very invested in ethics of tech/phil tech, or, at the least, the university is willing to just keep giving them the search year after year and encouraging but not requiring them to fill it. But they are not super excited about a lot of the people working on phil tech, so they are being extremely selective/going after particular people, knowing that they will just keep being able to do the search year after year if they want, and waiting for someone who meets their standards. (I’m not defending their standards, and who knows if this story is even remotely true, but this story would correspond to some things I know about some other departments and their administrations.)

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  163. Another explanation

    My university only allows us to fly 2 candidates out to campus. If after the fly-outs the hiring committee cannot agree to extend an offer to either of those candidates, then the search is over. We cannot invite additional candidates to campus or extend an offer to anyone else.

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  164. second one explanation

    MIT can probably do 10 or more fly-outs if they wanted. My guess is they just didn’t like who they interviewed and don’t think going back to the applicant pool is going to yield different results.

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  165. Failed searches OP

    Thanks, everyone, for the insights! It’s helpful to hear how things sometimes work out behind the scenes. And, @one explanation, I hadn’t thought about the tech angle and the fact that there can sometimes be specific/extra money for those types of things. I think that’s a fair theory!
    I do want to just say into the void, however, that it really does kinda suck when positions go unfilled when there are hundreds of talented people getting shut out year after year and being forced to leave the profession. I get that it’s MIT, but it still sucks that there’s one less job this year that one of many talented people could’ve had. Obviously someone in contention for MIT will likely get a job somewhere else, but that of course means someone else won’t get the job they end up with, and so on and so forth.

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  166. lol

    Has anyone gotten a job after thinking they bombed a zoom interview?

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  167. passerby

    @ lol, I remember reading a post that somewhat touched on your question. https://philosopherscocoon.typepad.com/blog/2021/12/predicting-fly-outs-on-the-basis-of-interviews.html#comments

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  168. bombshell

    @lol Yes, I got a three-year position after “bombing” the zoom interview. I was shocked when I got the offer a week after the interview and even more shocked I was the first choice.
    But I honestly doubt that it’s the candidate that bombs the interview. I suspect that more often than not it’s the committee that bombs the interview. I’ve had 5+ zoom/skype interviews for academic positions. But I’ve also worked in non-academic contexts, and it seems to me the interview practices of professional philosophy are terrible on average, e.g., the questions are almost always exceedingly vague. In contrast, at an interview for a business analyst position you might get asked very specific, but helpful for everyone, questions like “Suppose a developer needs information XYZ. How would you query the database?” But in a philosophy zoom interview it’s “How would you teach X?” Seriously?! A better question would be “We read XYZ in your teaching dossier (which you clearly spent 40+ hours on, nicely done), could you please tell us a bit more about this particular student outcome?” or “We see you have student outcomes A and B, can you tell us a bit more about what you do when these outcomes can’t both be met to the same extent?”
    It’s so frustrating. In a philosophy zoom interview, it often feels like nobody has read the documents I spent a ridiculous amount of time preparing. And I easily put 20+ hours of prep time into each interview but in many cases I end up feeling completely uninspired by the interviewers. For example, after my first few interviews, I worried that I was talking too much. So, I started consciously putting in more pauses and places for interviewers to ask followup questions. But when I did that at my last interview, they just moved on to the next question! All this is to say, I suspect many candidates do a perfectly good job on the interview. I think committees should respect our time and do a bit more work in preparing themselves. They might try interviewing fewer first round candidates. Better yet, maybe we could just do away with first round interviews altogether.

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  169. shrapnel

    My experience matches with what ‘bombshell’ wrote in that every time I felt like I bombed an interview, I realized after further reflection that it was actually the committee that bombed it. If you’ve done everything you can reasonably do to prepare for the interview (e.g. review your materials, practice responses to standard questions, run through practice interviews with peers and mentors) and it still goes badly (barring standard things like messing up or forgetting things out of nerves) 9 times out of 10 it’s because the committee didn’t set you up for success.
    Like ‘bombshell’, I have also been interviewed for jobs outside of academia. Interviewing job candidates is a skill and an art in being able to ask questions that are both informative for the hiring committee beyond what’s already in the candidate’s materials, while at the same time giving the candidate an opportunity to show themselves in a realistic but positive light. Many interviewers lack this skill and end up blaming the candidates for poor performance.
    For what it’s worth, from the job candidate side of things, it helps tremendously when interview committees send the questions in advance, particularly if they want to ask specific questions about aspects of their department that are not in the job ad and that an outside candidate cannot reasonably find out about.
    For example, I’ve had committees ask me how I would teach specific courses in their department that are outside of my AOS/AOC, or how I would teach a philosophy course in a highly idiosyncratic gen ed program at their university. Expecting a candidate to be able to give good answers to questions about courses they only heard of a minute ago with 15 seconds of time to think about it can’t possibly be informative for the committee. This doesn’t reflect any realistic scenario one would face on the job. Further, it sets the candidate up to fail.
    I’ve also had committees treat the ‘research’ portion of first round interviews as an opportunity to engage in hostile, aggressive colloquium Q&A style grilling. This reflects especially poorly on the department as it’s a sign of a negative, unproductive, and unfriendly overall climate.
    I’ve personally always left these interviews with the sense that I wasn’t given a fair chance and that the committee wasn’t serious about my candidacy to begin with. Given that the market is stacked against applicants, hiring departments sometimes forget that they are still interviewing members of the profession, and that their own lack of positive, professional conduct during these interviews can also end up burning bridges with colleagues who will end up at other schools.
    I know that the feeling of having bombed an interview is a bad one, but it’s usually not your fault. You can’t predict how the committee will react or figure out what they were looking for. If it goes sour, just make a mental note of it and forget it happened. You did the best you could with what you had, don’t be so hard on yourself!

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  170. Conrad

    “For example, after my first few interviews, I worried that I was talking too much. So, I started consciously putting in more pauses and places for interviewers to ask followup questions. But when I did that at my last interview, they just moved on to the next question!”
    I’ve had exactly the same experience. +1 to all you say.

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  171. not good at improvising

    On a related note, I was told that (at least in my department) it is considered best practice to ask all applicants the same questions. I don’t have strong views on whether this is what should be done or not. But if search committees do think this way, they’ll stick to a catalog of generic questions and won’t ask follow-ups. I have been in at least one interview that was like that, and it ultimately meant that I had to get all the info I wanted to get across into my answer, because after I would be done they would move on. (On the plus side, I was pretty much able to stick to my “script”.)

    Reply
  172. anon

    @Confused, I am virtually certain that this is not about MIT’s TT epistemology position.

    Reply
  173. Sigh

    How normal is it for a school simply to move on to fly-outs without notifying/rejecting candidates they interviewed in the first-round? I assumed most places would be decent enough not to do this, but the longer I wait, the less sure I become…

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  174. Anonymous

    @Sigh I don’t know how common it is but I think it’s absolutely deplorable and unprofessional behavior. We should call out departments who do this. I’ll start: Loyola University Chicago. Boston University did let me know that I did not advance to the flyout stage and that was very kind of them.

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  175. ghosting

    @Sigh: extremely normal, unfortunately. I’ve been ghosted several times by schools that I interviewed at, only to find out via the reporting thread that they have moved on. So yes, it’s unfortunately common (though imo disrespectful, even cruel).
    Does anyone know if there is any good justification for ghosting candidates post-interview (who have often spent hours prepping and are already anxiety-ridden from waiting)? Like are there any HR-related reasons? I understand that some schools might want the option to go back to the Zoom interview list, but it seems like they should just let people know that they’ve made initial fly out offers but may go back to the interview list if needed.

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  176. anon

    A lot of places claim that HR forbids them from sending news to shortlisted candidates until an offer is formally accepted. On the other hand, I don’t know what practical consequences a search chair could face for breaking this rule, and it seems like there are easy means of evading it while communicating to candidates.

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  177. anonymous associate professor

    I don’t think there are HR reasons to do this for most places, but there might be occasional actual obstacles. I think it’s mostly just people being crappy! Unfortunately based on recent conversations with people on the hiring side, sometimes I think it’s also ignorance (!) about what candidates want (two people recently expressed surprise that anyone would want to receive a rejection). But I think most of the time it’s just people failing to be minimally thoughtful. I agree that departments should be called out that do this, but I don’t think many search committee chairs are reading this thread (or this blog).

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  178. postduck

    I would appreciate a thread/post that provided candidates with an opportunity to discuss the “bad behavior” of hiring committees…

    Reply
  179. AnonPD

    I was also ghosted after a first-round interview. W&L. I saw that they moved on on the Cocoon’s reporting thread. I even reached out to the search chair and was told they were still interviewing and deliberating (yes, they technically were still deliberating, but the wording of the email made it seem like they were still conducting first-round interviews). I only recently received a form rejection letter from HR. To my knowledge, the silence and obscurity is demanded from HR. My wife works in administration at a large university, and I know from her hiring experiences that central HR lets them have very little control over the hiring process. I assume this is similar with academic hires.

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  180. feedback

    In light of anonymous associate professors’ post, maybe such a thread could be framed as candidates constructively reporting things that they don’t like/contribute to bad mental health, etc? That might also get more uptake than people complaining, especially if people are not aware of what candidates would prefer…
    My list would include:
    1. Not updating shortlisted candidates who didn’t make the fly out stage. (Or, more generally, not updating candidates who you told made progress but then did not advance.) It comes off as disrespectful, even cruel.
    2. Not having accurate timelines. If you tell candidates you will contact them on date X, then either update them to tell them why you can’t do so (e.g. delay), or be more careful about giving such estimates. Constantly waiting and checking makes it very difficult to focus, especially when you’re waiting for news on a particular day.

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  181. Marcus Arvan

    feedback: That’s a nice suggestion, and I’ll plan on running such a thread early next week.

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  182. Job applicants are people with feelings

    In response to the insight by @anonymous associate professor about how some SC members might just be ignorant/oblivious: I cannot even comprehend being so detached from the plight of job seekers (in any field, not just philosophy academia) so as to not realize that people would prefer to be informed in a timely and respectful manner that they’d been rejected as opposed to… just languishing while checking one’s email and gradually getting the memo over the course of many frustrating and stressful weeks?!

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  183. Curious

    Do schools sometimes hire two people, even if their initial search was only listed for one? For instance, if the department’s circumstances change from the time they posted the job ad to the hiring phase?

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  184. kria

    I have chaired a number of search committees at a large public university where the administration strongly discourages us from communicating with candidates who are no longer being considered until the person hired has signed their paperwork. I agree with posters above that this is terrible and try my best to keep candidates abreast of the process, especially those who make the shortlist and flyouts, but I have to fight the Dean over this every time. The way I see it is that all these fabulous candidates are my colleagues, not his. And I don’t want to treat my colleagues like that.

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  185. Cognate discipline villain

    What are the reasons why an American department would consciously avoid advertising a TT position on philjobs, but post on other academic websites?
    Is it simply to try to decrease the number of applications received? Are there other sound reasons?

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  186. wondering

    @kria, that’s very interesting and good to know! Just curious: what is the alleged justification for this practice? Why would there be a problem with communicating such updates to candidates?

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  187. anonymous associate professor

    @Curious, yes! It’s not super common but it definitely happens. (Sometimes partner hiring causes it, sometimes other factors. Some departments are currently sometimes able to get two lines late in the process for diversity reasons, or e.g. because someone announces a retirement and the university is well-funded enough to let them replace the person before they retire, etc.)

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  188. SLAC Associate

    @Curious: I won’t say it never happens that a school hires two, but it’s quite rare. All the instances that I’m personally aware of have involved two-body problems, where the school gave a candidate’s partner some kind of visiting, non-tenure track position in order to secure their chosen candidate.

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  189. Frustrated

    Last year, I applied to about 70 schools. I received about 30 PFO’s, had a few interviews, and then silence from the rest. This year, I applied to significantly fewer schools, around 35, and have gotten no word from anyone. It might be because the schools haven’t made final decisions, but I see other people reporting official rejections. There is something particularly frustrating about the radio silence. No one likes being rejected, but I think I prefer rejection to silence. I can imagine why rejections are not sent out–it takes time, applications are many and hiring committee members are comparatively few, no incentive to do so, etc.-but it definitely feels like an extra slap in the face. “Not only do we not want you, but we cannot be bothered to tell you.”

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  190. Radio silence hurts

    @kria, amen!

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  191. kria

    @wondering: I think it is several factors. One is a view the administration seems to have which is that if you have officially told people they are not on the initial list, then you cannot revisit it. I think that is bonkers and stems from a misunderstanding of how hiring works. Sometimes this idea is supported by some vague reference to legal stuff, which is never spelled out.
    There is another reason SCs may not communicate in a timely manner and that is that, depending on the school, people, faculty and staff, might be totally overworked and overextended and prioritizing tasks that need immanent attention (reading the files and engaging with candidates and in the case of staff, logging and organizing applications and taking care of logistics for interviews and visits). We generally get 300-400 applications for a position and the work for the search is on top of everything else. It is exciting to read about all the wonderful stuff candidates are doing. It is also a lot of work.
    But I agree that keeping people abreast of the process is a vital part of the process itself and we should all aim to change how that part of hiring is done. The ghosting part of the job search makes a difficult situation much worse.

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  192. Reframing

    @Frustrated — I feel you. I’ve only heard (positively or negatively) from a total of 16/80 positions I applied for this season. The only thing that makes me feel sorta okay about it is remembering that in non-academic job markets, I would never get rejection emails at all when I applied. So, if we ignore the fact that academic job apps take significantly more time and effort (and that’s probably a bigger issue here — How much of our dossiers are committees really reading? How much is just needless hoop-jumping?), then there’s nothing malicious or unique about the way applicants are being treated when academic institutions don’t send us PFOs. Perhaps that way of thinking about it ignores too much bad behavior, but it’s a reframing to try.

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  193. lol

    Can we have a thread on strategies to deal with burnout during app season? I am really struggling and have a million irons in the fire (new research, revisions, trying to finish dissertation) on top of dealing with applications and interviews and it feels different than other years where I’ve experienced burnout.

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  194. Marcus Arvan

    @lol: absolutely! I’ll run one early this week.

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  195. Lost in the Cocoon

    @Marcus Arvan: Where can we find the subsequent threads proposed in this discussion (like the one you’re creating for @lol)? Are these subsequent threads filed under the categories in the right hand column? Or, are there more direct ways to find these threads like links posted in this discussion thread?
    (Sorry! I’m a little new to the blog. It’s great. Thanks for all you do!)

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  196. Marcus Arvan

    @Lost in the Cocoon: thanks for the kind words! I post new discussion threads on the main blog page as new posts. So just keep an eye out there.

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  197. Found in the Cocoon

    @Marcus Arvan: Got’cha! Thank you!!

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  198. Cognate discipline villain

    I may have found out the answer to my own question above. So, here’s a new one:
    What percentage of calls for applications by philosophy departments are fake (because they already know specifically who they intend to hire)?

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  199. anonymous associate professor

    @Cognate discipline villain: almost none.

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  200. I hate this all.

    Suppose after a first round interview, you’re told you are not a finalist and will not be receiving a fly-out at this time but that your candidacy is still live, to please be in touch if anything chances on your end, and that they will be in touch if they are unsatisfied with the finalists they are flying out.
    I am proceeding as if I am rejected, but wondering: 1) Do departments send this to everyone they gave a first-round interview to? And 2) do departments ever dip into their alternates or is this just a terrible way of dragging out the waiting game?

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  201. East Coaster

    @Cognate: I have the same experience as AAP. I’ve been involved as a grad student or faculty member with double-digit hires, and I’ve never seen anything like that. I have seen opportunity hires done, but those are not on philpapers, etc. Everything made public was in fact open.
    @I hate this all.: Those are not always sent out, and probably in fact are rarely sent out, and maybe not even to everyone. And a grad-school classmate of mine not only got the later flyout but also got the gig.
    Things stink, but I don’t think they stink misleadingly so all that often.

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  202. flyouts

    Question for those of you with past experience: I’m in the fortunate position of having a couple of flyouts coming up soon. My campus visit schedules include meeting with the dean and/or provost. What exactly happens in these meetings, and is there anything I should do to prepare? I feel like I have a good idea about what to expect for the other aspects of the flyout, but I’m a bit at a loss here. I’d also love to know whether and how this varies by type of job, since the flyouts are at very different places (think R1 vs. Catholic SLAC).

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  203. TT faculty

    flyouts: In my flyouts, the dean/provost meetings have been for my information, not theirs. That’s what they’ve said, and despite my best efforts, they have all just talked at me basically, telling me HR things and the like. Maybe you could ruin a candidacy in one of these (“Want to see a magic trick?”), but my sense is that otherwise, they don’t play much role in decision-making. (And, fwiw, I have never heard anything substantive from a dean/provost in the times I’ve been on the hiring side.)

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  204. mhm

    @flyouts: agree with everything TT faculty said above, but at least at the Catholic SLAC, I’d expect a question from the dean like “Why this school/job?”

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  205. anon

    I’ve had extremely different interviews with R1 dean/provosts vs. SLAC dean/provosts. My R1 dean experience basically as TT faculty describes above – here’s the chart of salaries, here’s the list of benefits, etc. Felt like a total formality.
    But the SLAC experience was entirely different – this one had questions about my research and teaching, and one about – it was something about the “arc of my life story” and why working at their institution was the next right thing to happen in my life, or something like that. And I also had the sense from the committee that this was a person I should care about impressing.

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  206. anon californian

    at both the flyouts I had (both R1s) I was basically re-interviewed by the dean, so I think there is a lot of variation given what the above two posters say. I’d be prepared to talk about your research and teaching to someone who is probably not a philosopher, and to have things to say about university or college level things you would be interested in doing, interdisciplinary stuff, etc.

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  207. FC

    @flyouts: I agree with TT faculty and mhm.
    However, one time, I was asked something like “why philosophy?”, and I responded with something like “queen of the sciences.” She paused and then said, “no, it’s math.” Her field. We sparred good-naturedly for a moment and then turned to the HR stuff.

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  208. aesthetician with a temporary job

    @flyouts I agree that administrators at Catholic schools will probably ask you to say something about 1) the Catholic intellectual tradition or 2) the specific mission of the order that sponsors the school. Maybe a dean at Georgetown wouldn’t ask this – but, then again, maybe they would.
    Most of the time, I think this is a fit question, not a statement of faith question. They want to know if you “get” what’s important about the way they go about their work.
    Last time I interviewed at a Catholic school the provost asked this question. The provost wanted to do some philosophy (they were also a member of the sponsoring order, which I think makes a difference). The dean, on the other hand, did a poor job assuring me the school was solvent. In that meeting, I was there to be talked at.

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  209. deans

    @flyouts, I have limited experience so far, but so far I have had two different types of dean experiences. In one, it felt like an interview — they asked me everything from how I got into philosophy to my commitment to DEI, and why I was interested in the school. (There was a short amount of time for questions at the end.) In the other, it was mainly an opportunity to get information, especially about resources & mentorship for new junior faculty. I have also heard that these often function as “pitch” of the school. I would be prepared for both ends of the spectrum: something that feels like an interview and something that feels purely informative on your end, just in case.
    Curious about others’ experience/advice, as I also have some more coming up!

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  210. Faux Job Add

    @ Cognate discipline villain: I know of 2 real cases (at different universities on different continents) in which this has happened in the last few years. The institutions were required by HR to advertise the job, but they ultimately hired the person they more or less promised the position to. Since this is usually kept secret (and would be horrible for a university and the candidate to have it publicly revealed), it’s very unlikely that we’ll ever know if any given job ad is for a job with a predetermined candidate. My guess is that it’s not terribly common, but my knowing 2 real cases of this is very peculiar to me (perhaps I’m just a good secret keeper and that’s why I know of 2 cases at all!). It’s probably not representative of anything.

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  211. Busy deans

    In my experience, Dean/provost/president interviews tend to be the most variable. Some are just formalities. Others actually want to ask you things. The good news is that the vast majority of these meetings don’t seem to factor much into the hiring decisions. Most of the time, the dean isn’t on the hiring committee. They just have to approve the hire. Basically, as long as you seem remotely personable, the dean is likely to just go along with whoever the committee picks.
    As that said, in terms of tips, keep in mind that the Deans tend to be busy with something or another, and some won’t want to waste their time interviewing you at all. Twice I had deans end my interview meeting early because something random came up. Just roll with it if that happens. It doesn’t affect the outcome at all.

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  212. SLAC Associate

    @I hate this all:
    I don’t think that’s all that typical as a response from a hiring department, but I’ve seen it happen before (it actually happened to me a number of years back where I got a late offer from a place after their chosen candidates bailed on them). But from your end, you have no idea what it might mean. Maybe the committee wanted to flyout three candidates, but the dean only approved an initial two, you’re #3, and the committee is still trying to change the dean’s mind. Or if it’s a less prestigious kind of place, maybe the committee is worried their top picks will go elsewhere and they’ll have to return to the interview pool, and so don’t want to turn candidates off with an outright rejection. Or maybe the committee was too cowardly to just say that you’re out of consideration. The problem is that there’s no way to know from your end which of those possibilities is the case here. I’d advise treating it like a rejection now, move on emotionally, and enjoy the happy surprise if you hear positive news back from them later.

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  213. I hate this all

    @SLAC Associate Thanks for that. What’s especially frustrating and confusing is that I was lucky enough to get a few first round interviews and received this sort of you’re-not-a-finalist-but-keep-us-updated rejection from all but one one them. That’s why I thought maybe it was regular for committees to send this to everyone they Zoom interviewed. So maybe it means they liked me enough they didn’t want to eliminate me right away, but not enough to spend a first round fly-out on me. I guess in some ways that’s an okay place to be, but ugh. Just tell me no and don’t mess with my head for any longer than you truly need to. Yeeeesh.

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  214. On the market

    I’m curious: When places do zoom ‘flyouts’, do they then actually bring out the candidate they offer the job to? Or is there an expectation that you would start (and thus potentially finish) your career in a city you’ve never been to?

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  215. visits

    @on the market: a few places that are doing virtual fly outs explicitly mentioned the possibility of visiting in person if one gets an offer (presumably on the school’s dime). So it’s worth asking! I think in the worst case, one could visit the city on one’s own, but it’d of course be better if the school sponsored it.
    This is of course assuming there is enough time before the offer needs to be accepted/declined, but my impression is that — at least in the US (but not the UK, from my understanding) — candidates usually have a few weeks before deciding?

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  216. decisions

    If one is interviewing at several schools and receives an offer from one of them while still in the interview process with others, what is the proper etiquette? How should one proceed in regards to a) the school that made the offer, and b) the other potential jobs?
    This also alludes to what “visits” said above. How long is usually permitted for this kind of decision? Especially given that it involves moving, and often with family, too.

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  217. SLAC Associate

    @decisions: The proper etiquette and the best strategy all around is to be forthright with all the places you’re interviewing with if you get an offer from one institution. Tell the schools you’re interviewing with that you have an offer on the table, and tell the school who made the offer that you are also under consideration at other places.
    Usually the school who made the offer will give you something like 10-14 days to make your decision. You can ask them for more time to make the decision (up to 3 weeks isn’t all that unusual), but be prepared that they might not give you that time and might try to force you to make a quick decision. Or they might sweeten their offer in hopes of getting you to accept. The schools that are still interviewing you, conversely, may try to speed up their process if they are very interested in you, or they might decide they can’t get you and they’ll just tell you congratulations and wish and you well as they move on to other candidates. But in either case there’s really no way to make your situation better by being quiet about the offer in hand.

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  218. it depends

    @decisions: it will also really depend on the school. Once I got an offer that I had to decide on in the next day, but that’s considered very bad manners (it was a tiny school, and they didn’t really know what they were doing at all). I told the other application in progress (after the 1st-round of interviews) that I was not continuing with that application.

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  219. Curious

    I know this must vary, but what is (roughly) a normal amount of time for an institution to give a candidate to make a decision about an offer?

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  220. Conrad

    @decisions: I want to echo what’s been said already. I’ve been in your position twice. Both times, the Early Offer University gave me just over two weeks to decide. In one case, I contacted the other schools I had upcoming interviews with. One moved up my interview and I ended up being offered (and taking) that job instead of the early offer. The best strategy is what others are recommending: let the other birds in the bush know that you have a bird in the hand. It’s at least a signal of your value.
    As many have noted in other venues, one unfortunate effect of the move to online interviews is that the Eastern APA no longer anchors interviewing timelines. Some schools can interview earlier, without having to wait for the APA. Other schools can drag their heels without having to worry about missing it. Consequently, it’s harder for candidates to hold two offers simultaneously because it offers are now seldom simultaneous, given unanchored interview timelines. Organized schools can make early “bully” offers to candidates, who have less negotiating leverage. It sucks, but it’s the new normal.

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  221. lesser-known school?

    In terms of negotiating an offer, I am curious to know when a school I am offered a position is a less prestigious kind. For example, I am offered a position from school A, a very small liberal arts college. Then, I am also invited to a second-round interview for school B, which is a small but a state university. In terms of prestige, B school is better. In this case, can I make myself competitive or speed up the B’s process by informing B that I am offered a position from A?

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  222. Cognate discipline villain

    @ it depends. That’s called an “exploding” offer. It is relatively common in some other disciplines and is sometimes made by higher-ranked universities.

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  223. jobtalk question

    I’m looking for some advice regarding a job talk I have to give in a month or so. (Fly-out; the talk is an hour long and should be geared towards faculty+grad students, some of whom are experts in the area.) I have basically 2 options: a) present a forthcoming paper; b) present something from a new project.
    I know that (a) is sometimes frowned upon, but it would be easier; I started my new project not too long ago, and while I can probably get together an hour-long talk from it, it will not be polished. On the other hand, since I’m invested more in the new project than in the old one, it may be more engaging.
    Anyway — what do people think about this? (Also, I’m applying from Europe, and most of my peers here are very unfamiliar with the US system, so I can’t really crowdsource locally.) Any advice, from either side of the hiring table, would be very much appreciated!

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  224. Anon1

    @jobtalk question: When hiring a colleague, I am more interested in what they are going to produce than what they have produced. So, knowing that they have something interesting that they are working on would play better with me than knowing that they have something coming out that won’t count for their work at my university.

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  225. SLAC Associate

    @lesser-known school: There are no guarantees but your best strategy is to inform B that you have been offered a job. A job offer is a job offer. You’ll have negotiating leverage over B just in case (i) B is already seriously interested in you and (ii) B thinks that you’re seriously considering the offer on the table. As long as both those conditions hold, B will probably respond in much the same way if your offer is from NYU or if it’s from North Lutheran College of West Carolina or whatever.
    Also, you don’t need to say where the offer is from, though they might ask. But even if you say that it’s from school A, for all school B knows you might be very interested in A’s offer. Maybe you have reasons to want to live in A’s part of the world, or maybe you like the idea of teaching at an A-like institution, or maybe your partner’s great-grandfather was one of the founders of A and they have multiple family members who work at the college, etc. The specific reason doesn’t matter, all that matters in negotiating with B is that B thinks you might be interested in A’s offer.

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  226. jobtalk question

    @Anon1, thank you.
    I guess the question, basically, is whether a committee would be more interested in (1) knowing what a candidate’s mostly finished research looks like; (2) knowing what the candidate is working on right now. I could imagine either, but really don’t know which is the case. (But for (1), they may just want to consult the published papers.)

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  227. Butler update

    https://www.wishtv.com/news/butler-university-professor-fired-after-being-charged-for-child-porn/
    This seems to be the reason the chair of the butler search “stepped down” – he was charged with felonies and fired. It doesn’t seem to have slowed down the search at all though

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  228. lesser-known school?

    @SLAC Associate, thank you! It really helps!

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  229. moving

    Do institutions offer to cover moving expenses? Cross country moves can be quite expensive, and difficult to finance for an early career academic. What is the norm here, at least for new TT hires?

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  230. Moved West to East

    @moving: I think it is pretty variable, both in terms of whether assistance is offered and in terms of how much. I expect that variable probably correlates strongly with other forms of material support. I think many people get some assistance but not enough for full coverage. I got my expenses covered, but I would not have been able to afford a full moving company situation.

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  231. I wonder

    If you have an offer from A, and you would really truly enjoy working at A, but you have a slight preference for B, and you have a fly out at B, but it’s not for another month. What should you do? Should you tell B about A to see if the timeline might be moved up? Or would this be a bad idea? Or should you try to drag out the timeline until you get a verdict from B and hope that A waits?

    Reply
  232. Gambling Addict

    @Wonder: So, here’s what I would do:
    Tell B about your offer and see when the earliest would be that they could notify you about their decision. It’s not so much when you have a flyout, as when all the candidates will have interviewed and the search committee/faculty/dean will have decided on a candidate. Once you have that date, ask A to give you enough time to complete your last scheduled flyout, but give them the date that B told you that they’ll be able to notify you by. If A won’t give you that much time, then take the offer.

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  233. The importance of BCC

    To anyone running searches who reads these threads (maybe Marcus can make a post about this), it’s really really important to use BCC when doing things like sending out Zoom interview invites.
    If you invite all of the participants to their Zoom interview by creating a single invite for all (rather than inviting them to an individual interview time), then all of the participants are visible to each other. When looking to see which faculty are involved in the interview, one might then discover exactly who else is being interviewed.

    Reply
  234. mover

    about moving …
    many places pay NO moving costs. But some do. In fact, I once had a contract job (sessional lecturer position, in Canada) where they paid your flight to the city, and out of the city (after two years, when the position ran out). But my first TT job at a state college paid nothing!

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  235. Moved

    Re moving costs, yes, this is super variable. My first TT job paid up to $500 in moving expenses, while my second (current) TT job covered all moving expenses. Because of the changes in the tax code under Trump, though, moving expenses are now taxable, so keep that in mind. (I opted to have the moving company pack up my house, move everything across the country and unpack, because I had an infant, but that was way more expensive than other options would be, and I think I ended up having to pay something like $3k in taxes on my moving expenses – which would have been really tough if I was just coming out of grad school.)

    Reply
  236. Gambling Addict

    Did anyone also see the HigherEdJobs ad for a TT position @ Wellesley posted yesterday (1/29) which helpfully informed us that the deadline for applications was the day before (1/28): https://www.higheredjobs.com/details.cfm?JobCode=177784324&utm_source=01_30_22&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=JobAgentEmail
    As far as I can tell, Wellesly didn’t advertise anything on philjobs. There’s also nothing currently on their HR jobs website about this position. Anyone know if this is (or was) a real opening? Some weird error? A digital trace of a behind closed doors job search?

    Reply
  237. anon

    The ad seems pretty straightforward on it not being a normal ad: “A strong candidate for this position has been identified”.

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  238. beep beep

    @Gambling Addict I notice weird things like this on higheredjobs at least two or three times per application season. Sometimes jobs will be newly posted there after the search has been cancelled and disappears from the HR website (no hire is made subsequently, so nothing obviously shady has happened). I also occasionally see jobs posted there past the deadline, usually this is an error as it shows up on PhilJobs later with the correct deadline.
    In general it’s not clear whether higheredjobs is moderated so it’s good to cross-check the ad. Since it isn’t posted anywhere else and the HR link doesn’t lead anywhere definite, your safest bet might be to find an admin staff member at the philosophy department and email them about it, if for no other reason than the fact that the ad doesn’t actually link to an application.

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  239. beep beep again

    Oops I didn’t even notice the line ‘anon’ pointed out. Yeah this isn’t a standard search. Probably explains the past due deadline, the absence from the HR website, the suspiciously specific AOS categories, and the fact that it isn’t/wasn’t posted anywhere else.

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  240. also anon

    I also tripped over that Wellesley ad. I’m not gonna apply, but it’s fun to speculate about what’s going on there. The job ad stipulates a 2023 or 2024 start date, which is very odd for a junior search. So my best guess is that their identified strong candidate is still in grad school. Not sure why they would go for something like that, but I can at least think of two possibilities: either it’s the only way for them of getting someone with that aos profile from a top program, or the strong candidate has some connection to their department (e.g. a couple hire situation).

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  241. Beware the internal hire search ads

    Re: Wellesley, I have to guess that this is an inside hire and a post to meet minimum institutional requirements for all hires. Keep in mind that many institutions have requirements for all hires, e.g., that an ad be posted in X venue for Y amount of time at level Z of specificity. I saw that Wellesley job ad and am guessing that Wellesley’s department aims to make a specific hire and not do a search (they say almost as much in the ad), while their larger institution requires that all searches be advertised on HigherEdJobs, though not for a specified period of time, hence the negative amount of time allotted.
    ‘Pace’ what was said on here recently, my sense is that a fair number of job ads are for internal hires that will not entail an actual search. Tell-tale signs of these cases include short periods of time between posting and closing, minimal documents required (e.g., just letter and CV), and hyper-specific AOS and AOC, as with the Wellesley ad.
    Also, I can confirm that HigherEdJob postings are moderated.

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  242. East Coaster

    Also anon: My speculation is that this is a lateral, opportunity hire, given the late date, and that the question is how long the person they are after wants before they move.

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  243. Just sayin’

    WRT the Wellesley ad, they appear to have a very specific Princeton ABD in mind and it is not a real search.

    Reply
  244. ahhh

    It’s February and it feels like things are about to get even more stressful….
    How are you all staying sane knowing so many decisions will be made soon?

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  245. Epictetus

    @ahhh – everything has two handles, the one by which it may be carried, the other by which it cannot.
    I’m trying to hold onto the right handle.

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  246. spring?

    I am really not looking forward to dealing with the Spring market if I end up in that situation. When do Spring postings start picking up?

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  247. Gambling Addict

    The speculation on the strange Wellesley job ad was more informative than I thought it would be! Thanks all.

    Reply
  248. Wishful thinking

    How long do search committees typically take after flyouts have happened to get back to their first choice candidate with an offer?

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  249. SLAC Associate

    @Wishful thinking: Every search I’ve been on, the search committee has made their decision before the final candidate’s plane has taken off. Not sure that everyone does it quite that rapidly, but the slowdown is typically the institutional process of getting final approval from the dean or whoever. I’d expect most places are making their first offer within 96 hours of the final visit, with the median being half of that.

    Reply
  250. norms

    what are the norms for negotiating an offer? salary? course release? do you need to have another offer to have leverage? is negation typically expected?

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  251. the sky is the limit

    Norms
    If you are working in the USA, anything is open for negotiation. But, know the local culture. If you ask for a pre-tenure sabbatical when you have colleagues who have been teaching there and not had one, you will look a little too self important.
    Also, if it is state university you can find the pay of public employees. This should set your target for what you can reasonably ask for. If you are staring a TT job and you ask for what a tenured person is paid, again you will look like a big ass.
    And you are then off to a bad start.

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  252. Anon12

    Wishful thinking
    Here, it can take a week or so to have a departmental meeting to formally discuss the finalists and vote. Then things go to the Dean for final approval, so it can sometimes take a couple of weeks after the last candidate visits to get an offer to our preferred candidate.

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  253. SLAC Associate

    @norms: I hope more people respond than just me, because I’m not sure whether this is generally true: but in my experience you don’t need another offer in order to be able to negotiate, but you do need to have reasons that are saliant to the administrators at the instutition. “I’d like to have a course release” isn’t going to fly, but “If I could have a course release my first year, I’d be much more competitive for this large grant application” has a better chance of working. It’s also easier for deans to grant one-time bonuses (e.g., moving allowances, start-up cash, one semester or year of course release, etc.) than to grant recurring boons such as significant salary bumps.

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  254. Marcus Arvan

    This discussion (about negotiating offers) is so important that I’d like to migrate it over here: https://philosopherscocoon.typepad.com/blog/2022/02/norms-for-negotiation-an-offer.html
    Feel free to keep discussing here if you’d like the (relative) ‘privacy’ of this thread, which may not be as widely viewed as the new post discussed above. But, please do feel equally free to discuss there!

    Reply
  255. Q

    It seems like quite a number of departments are going straight to fly-outs without first-round interviews this year. I am very curious about what others think of this practice as this is my first time on the market: is this something relatively new? Is it more common among high-ranked research places? For schools that adopt this, do you find it a helpful way to minimize bias arising from interviews?
    Any discussion would be greatly appreciated!

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  256. anon

    NTT here in a dept currently doing a TT search and so I have an inside look at the candidates getting to the final stage.
    Just gonna say its depressing and insane.
    The sheer level of of pedigree of ABD candidates is staggering. They have better CV’s than tenured folks at my same institution.
    I think it reveals just how awful this market is–awful because of the sheer number of amazing candidates.
    Not surprising that anyone needs to here this but there are going to be so many well qualified folks left without a job.

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  257. Stiff market

    @anon: what is the AOS of the search, if you don’t mind revealing?

    Reply
  258. Giving up on 2022

    At what point did any of you decide to quit the market? What led to that decision and how did you survive it? Are there spaces we can go to where we can just process the emotional weight of this trash fire with other academics?

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  259. anonymous search chair

    @anon: Going through files this year, I’ve seen more than one newly minted PhD who had more and better publications than my entire search committee combined.

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  260. anonymous footstool

    anonymous chair: I am not in the US now, but when I was, just a few years ago, I did not see what you described. I see very accomplished applications, but I did not see them as so much better than the search committee members, and I neve saw anyone better than a whole committee! Indeed, I never saw anyone approaching my earlier self when I got my first TT job.

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  261. postdoc

    @anonymous footstool, I guess that would depend on the kind of school you were at. I can totally see what @anynonymous search chair means. I, and plenty of people I know, have applied to and gotten PFOs from jobs where none of the department members had serious publication records (and we do/did).

    Reply
  262. Ripe

    Zoom interview B.O. is worse than normal B.O. Discuss.

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  263. abd

    I’ve applied to over fifty jobs this season and haven’t gotten an interview. This is my first time on the market. Just wondering if this is normal, any feedback is appreciated.

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  264. postdoc

    @abd Unfortunately yes, it is kind of normal, a little bit depending on your AOS/AOC. The market is extremely competitive, and there are people who have already defended, with good publication record and lot of teaching experience, and still not getting jobs.

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  265. bad magician

    @abd, yes, unfortunately, this is quite normal. I applied to 150 (!!) jobs in my first year and when I was ABD. I did ultimately get two interviews and one non-TT job (advertised in April and accepted by me in July). So unfortunately, these kinds of horror stories are quite normal, but the non-TT market is still kicking up and is reason to hold out hope, as excruciating as that can be.
    @Ripe: I LOLed. Thank you for that. I’ve gotten a few belly laughs from this board this year. I’m still laughing at the suggestion that one could try to show the dean a magic trick during the the dean meeting made above. I am a finalist for a TT job for only the second time here in my fourth job market year, and have the interview on Monday. I’m working on my magic tricks for the meeting with the dean.

    Reply
  266. Also curious about giving up

    @Giving up on 2022 I struggle with this question a lot. I’ve been on the market over four years now and I can’t quite figure out how to stop. Here is what I’ve come up with so far: I’ll likely leave for good when I strike out the first year after I haven’t added anything significant to my CV (such as a VAP or postdoc position or a publication).
    For example, suppose I don’t land a VAP for 2022-23 but in late summer I manage to scratch out a forthcoming publication. Then I’ll definitely go on the market during fall 2022, spring 2023, and fall 2023. (But where will I live!? What about the placement gaps in my CV!? Argh!!) If for all three seasons I have no placement success and no additional publications forthcoming, then I’ll considered that three strikes and call myself out. (And I’ll likely start transitioning to a non-academic career during summer-fall 2023.)
    I have no idea if this is a good strategy. I’m curious if others have thought about Giving up’s important question and what strategies they are taking.

    Reply
  267. strive on with diligence

    @abd The APA article linked below provides a decent analysis of placement more generally. But I’d be curious to know what percentage of ABDs get placed in a TT job. I suspect that it’s low when all ABDs are considered. So my guess is that, unfortunately, it is common. But it likely depends on many different factors like home institution, publications, letters, etc.
    Overall, I don’t think it’s uncommon for people to spend 5+ years on the TT market. I’ve been on the market for four years. I did not graduate from a so-called “top” institution. The year of my defense I did not go on the TT market and I barely landed a VAP. (And I really mean “barely”! I only had two interviews that spring, and the institution I landed at offered the position to another person who had to turn it down at the last minute because of visa issues.) That fall I applied to over 30 TT positions but did not get a single interview. I did get my first publication. That spring, I applied to 60+(!) VAPs but only got two interviews. Fortunately I landed a VAP that was renewable. Since that first year I’ve had a couple TT zoom interviews but so far nothing has stuck. I have a ton of teaching experience but not a super strong publication record.
    Meanwhile I know of many “superstars” from “top” institutions that seem to have ridiculous luck. I know of a few that have gotten both a postdoc and a TT job while they were ABD. I know another that got a TT job while ABD and has since gotten yet another TT job at a different R1 school. All of this is to say I sometimes feel that the overall distribution of opportunities in our profession is extremely unfair.
    On a brighter note, I know of someone who spent a few years without any academic position but still managed to eventually land a TT job at a decent institution (after seven hard years on the market). So it’s not unreasonable to keep going if the payoff of academia is worth it to you. When I get discouraged I just try to keep focusing on the students, keep focusing on philosophy, and keep applying, applying, applying. So don’t give up!
    https://www.apaonline.org/members/group_content_view.asp?group=110435&id=918649

    Reply
  268. Another abd

    I applied to 30 TTs this year and have so far gotten 4 interviews and 3 flyouts. I do think it has to do with one of my AOSs, which happens to be in high demand this year.
    Also, although I am not from a Leiterific program, I do notice the (quite substantial) halo effect top programs add to their candidates. That’s pretty hard to fight, unfortunately..

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  269. Anonymous #00004857

    Is it ever worth adjuncting just to stay in academia after striking out? After all, they say it’s super important to keep an affiliation while on the market.
    Also important: when is it determinately not worth adjuncting?
    (I don’t think adjuncting 1 class to keep an affiliation + doing good non-academic work is super viable since most classes are scheduled during normal working hours. Seems like for most of us, at most you can adjunct and work in the gig economy simultaneously.)

    Reply
  270. Branding Strategies

    @abd – That sounds normal, but maybe it depends a little on how selectively you applied too? I’m also ABD, applied for 80+ jobs (almost all TT), and I interviewed with 4 institutions. If I had been more selective about location or teaching load, I probably wouldn’t have had any interviews.
    Also, each job I interviewed for was in a different AOS/AOC (e.g., history, m&e, ethics). So, being a bit of a generalist allowed me to apply to more jobs, but I get the sense that the people who will ultimately get these jobs will have one main AOS.
    What do you all think? Is it better/more strategic to go on the market as a generalist or as someone super focused in one main AOS? (I may rebrand if I go on the market again next year.)

    Reply
  271. postdoc

    @Branding Strategies: My sense (having been on the market for a few years, although, apart from the first one, never quite full-time) is that it depends on the school. Being able to teach in a broad area is definitely an advantage for most, and (unless you have actually taught a lot of different classes) easier to demonstrate if you have a broader AOS. But of course they would also want you to publish in excellent journals etc., which is probably easier if you have a very specific focus.
    My strategy, which has mostly worked so far, was to underscore my broad AOS when applying to more teaching-focused jobs, and underscore the specificity when I was applying for research-oriented jobs with specific AOS’s.
    @Anonymous #00004857: circumstances matter a lot. I could not adjunct since they generally don’t sponsor visas for non-US citizens. You may also not get health insurance benefits. How much that sucks will depend on your situation.

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  272. Branding Strategies

    @postdoc – Thanks for sharing! I think your strategy is one I would definitely like to try next time!

    Reply
  273. Follow-ups

    How are follow-up emails inquiring about one’s status after a first-round interview generally perceived by committee chairs? Is it better not to inquire since it may just annoy them?
    I’m considering doing so in a case where I was told they wanted to make offers fairly quickly, and it’s been a week longer than the estimated timeline for offers they gave me.
    From all of that, it’s probably safe to assume I’m out. But, I wonder how common it is to request updates or how welcome that would be given where we are in the season? Is it only best to do so when one has an offer from another school on the table?

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  274. Ghosted interviewee

    I would just like to chime in that I would also love to hear more about the norms and do’s/don’ts when it comes to follow-up emails. After I was ghosted by one institution for several weeks after an interview and no one else posted about any updates on here I did send the contact person a follow-up email, to which they never replied… That obviously made me think even less of the professionalism of this particular search committee, but perhaps it was inappropriate for me to email them at all? If it matters, they also gave me a timeline for when I could expect to hear back from them and then totally blew past it with no word.

    Reply
  275. Marcus Arvan

    @Follow-ups and Ghosted: I’ll post a discussion thread on the main Cocoon page for search chairs to weigh in!

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  276. hoping

    How often do search committees need to go back and make an offer to their second (or third…) choice? In other words, how often do candidates turn down offers?

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  277. East Coast

    Hoping,
    Of the four most recent job searches that I have been highly proximate to, 2 went to first-choice candidates, and 2 did not. Ymmv.

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  278. in vain

    In response to @East Coast and @hoping (and others), does the verbiage of “the position has been filled” in a rejection email following a campus visit indicate that the SC’s first choice has accepted AND all of the relevant paperwork has been signed on both ends? I was recently a finalist in a search and I’m wondering what sort of sliver of small chance there might be that the current person still backs out

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  279. SLAC Associate

    @Hoping: Of the last five searches I’ve been involved with at my SLAC, I’ve known two candidates to turn down an offer, one for a better offer elsewhere and one who chose to leave the profession rather than accept our job.

    Reply
  280. the wait is killing me

    Suppose you’re a finalist for a job. You know that an acquaintance (met a couple times and friendly but not friends) is also a finalist. Is it weird or inappropriate to reach out to them and see if they’ve heard anything or gotten an offer? I know it’s a stressful time and I imagine this sort of thing could add to the anxiety, but of course it’s hard to be patient and it could be helpful information for a number of reasons.

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  281. Rosa

    @the wait is killing me – I think it would be fine to reach out to them. They might not be your friend yet, but if they work in your area and are a decent person and you both stay in the profession, you’ll likely become friends. Even if you are competitors now, you can start to build a relationship for the future where you’re not.

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  282. pro-information sharing among applicants

    @the wait is killing me, for what it’s worth, I’ve done this and/or had it done to me a few times and it has never felt weird. There’s a kind of camaraderie and solidarity among the applicants, and sharing information is very helpful. Especially if I trusted the other finalist, I would reach out to them if I were in your position.

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  283. SEC postdoc

    @the wait is killing me – I think if someone reached out to me in this way, I would feel weird about it but not necessarily in a way which involved the other person. Don’t know if that makes sense.
    I guess, if you think it will make you feel better to know something, it seems fine to try and know that thing.

    Reply
  284. frustrated

    Is anyone actually making offers? It feels like nothing is moving along, and the wait is torturous. Is anyone actually done with the process?

    Reply
  285. Gaining Grit

    @frustrated: I’ve been wondering the same! Do people typically post in the report thread when they’ve received or accepted offers? I haven’t seen anyone do so this season. If it’s normal for folks not to post that info, that could partly explain why it seems like nothing’s happening?

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  286. Anonanon

    I think people don’t often post offers themselves for fear it might annoy the people who made it. And in fact some depts intentionally don’t tell the runners up, in case the first person turns them down. Then they can pretend the runner up was their first choice. I know of two offers that have been made but not posted (not made to me, sadly). I also don’t want to get anyone in trouble, so I haven’t posted them. Maybe I will.

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  287. sisyphus

    Out of pure curiosity, how many other job seekers feel that their CVs were comparable, or perhaps, were even vastly “better” than the search committees of the jobs they were applying for? I don’t ask this to be rude or snooty, but rather just as a reality-check. I think I got lulled into believing I had a chance at certain jobs because my publication record seemed a cut above what was coming from the department where I was applying. Obviously, it’s all about who you’re up against in the applicant pool – but isn’t it weird to apply for jobs where your CV seems longer than the tenured faculty at the institution? Anyone else have similar experiences? Makes me feel like I was born in the wrong era.

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  288. David

    @Anonymous #00004857 I don’t know when it’s determinately not worth being an adjunct to stay affiliated or whether adjunct affiliation matters a great deal for future searches, but depending on the good non-academic employer or field, it’s not at all abnormal to adjunct teach while working outside of academia.
    Over the past 4 years, I’ve had research roles spanning two companies in industry (first 2 years PT, last 2 FT) and teach FT (3/3, no research, service, or advising responsibilities). Both industry employer and academic dept have been accommodating and flexible, and it benefits each in various ways. I also know a bunch of other people who work in industry FT and adjunct teach on the side.

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  289. Tenured now

    @sisyphus When I was on a search committee a mere 5 years after getting my TT job I felt like basically all of our finalists were way more impressive than me – so it’s very likely true and you’re probably not the only one thinking it. Things got way more competitive even in that short period of time.
    As for being born in the wrong era to be an academic, there was a 70 year old professor when I was doing my PhD who said that when he’d started his job, the wisdom was: your MA gets you a TT job, your PhD gets you tenure, and your first book gets you Full. Jesus H. Christ.

    Reply
  290. leaving academia?

    I think I might get an offer from a non-academic job soon that is pretty decent. The job market for non-academic jobs is incredibly hot right now and it was such a breath of fresh air to feel like I had leverage and bargaining power compared to my academic job hunt experiences. I would really prefer to stay in academia but nothing from my fall search has panned out and I found it really stressful and draining. I’m confident I could land an academic job eventually since this is my first year searching and I’ve had a few interviews and one flyout but I don’t want to be on the market anymore and am especially reluctant to take a VAP or a one-year postdoc.
    Any advice? I’m leaning towards taking the non-academic offer.

    Reply
  291. Greg Stoutenburg

    @leaving academia: Take the non-academic offer! I’ve told my story previously here: https://philosopherscocoon.typepad.com/blog/2021/08/how-to-leave-philosophy-guest-post-by-greg-stoutenburg.html
    I can confidently say that since leaving I’m less stressed, working on things I find more interesting than the 4-4 (minimum; reality: 4-5-2) slog I was in, and the pay is considerably better. Run, don’t walk.
    Also, I’m working on a more structured version of the advice I gave in the blog post above, so if you know anyone in the same position, stay tuned and feel free to send them my way.

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  292. Frances Billere

    What are the potential costs of reneging on a contract? What are the professional norms against this? Does this happen more than one would think? Say you already signed a contract, but then you get offered a job you prefer (e.g., a job close to family), would it be horrible to break that contract? What are the reasons for/against here? Putting legal considerations aside, I’m guessing this would just mean burning a bridge with that previous school (messing up their search), but is there anything else?

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  293. stressed

    Good problem to have but: I have several fly outs coming up which will require me to cancel class for my current students. At what point is this frowned upon? How many times can I cancel class for job interviews? For background, I currently have a full-time NTT position.

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  294. Blink

    Hi fam. I’ve heard tell of a mythical Facebook group that also does job market updates. Does anyone have the link?

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  295. anon

    Not sure about the Facebook group but now that someone has brought it up I do wonder why job market updates are posted here in a reporting thread instead of an actual philosophy jobs wiki page?
    I find it kind of annoying to have to filter through pages and pages of comments to find anything on top of the fact that when people do post updates here half the time they don’t include what job it’s for and when there is more than one job at the same institution, it prompts a thread of replies asking which job the update is for, which creates further clutter to sift through to get any actual information. It’s so much more user friendly and a lot more organized to have all the jobs posted on one page, and then updates for each job all appear under the relevant posting, and recent updates to the page are listed at the top. It makes no sense do this in the format of a forum though I suppose it helps that it’s moderated (thanks Marcus!) because maybe there’s less chance of gossip/things devolving to a toxic metaforum, but still!

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  296. East Coaster

    @Frances: I think there are some people who would hold this against you; I would encourage you to fend for yourself. The dept can almost certainly replace you (see the reporting thread and the grim list of PFOs for evidence of other, surely stellar candidates). If it is only slightly better, I would stick with where you are. But if it is a lot better, and family life is often this sort of difference maker, you have to live your life!
    And even if that dept is annoyed, or if random people on the internet are annoyed, people move on. Departments sometimes pull offers, for unreasonable reasons, and yet other good philosophers still apply and take jobs there, and people give talks there, and the rest. The world keeps turning. The penalties of disreputation (such as they are) are often way, way, way over-weighted, imo.
    @stressed: Given what I said to Frances, you won’t be surprised that I think the number of permitted cancellations is pretty high. Certainly 2 or 3 seems fine to me (especially in the era where you can post a moderate lecture video as supplement). When I was in a similar position, my chair said to me that I should not worry at all about cancelling classes, or even posting videos. The students will survive (and, in fact, won’t remember at all that you cancelled classes by June at the absolute latest), and it could make a huge difference for the rest of your life.

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  297. re: wiki anon

    There used to be a wiki (or two). People voted with their updates, and seemed more willing to update here, until the wikis declined and then disappeared entirely.
    I’m happy with the situation. I think being in a moderated space is good. And talking to people about the details can be nice and useful, even if sometimes people are lacking in precision and there are some pointless posts due to that.

    Reply
  298. Conrad

    I’m with “re: wiki anon”. Marcus is doing us a service by moderating a place for job info. It forestalls a metablog-like scenario where every post risks devolving into anons shitting on successful candidates’ CVs.

    Reply
  299. Vappy

    Just out of curiosity, I was wondering if any other applicants know their “success rate” for applications? (This is also the sort of thing I might’ve liked to have seen comments about when I was brand new to the job market). For me, so far this year I’ve landed one interview for every 10 applications (last year it was 1/6, but I started super late in the game and almost exclusively applied to VAPs and the like. I also tend to only apply to positions that genuinely seem like a good fit). — For me, it’s sort of easier to stick with the job market slog if I can think a bit less about specific positions (and rejections) and more like “I sure hope there are at least X plausible job postings for me to apply to this year,” heh.

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  300. Class Cancellations

    @Frances: 100% agree with East Coaster, but you might take a few extra precautions with your students just in case. Even when a canceled class is noted in advance on the syllabus schedule and verbal reminders are given, some students will still forget, not look at the schedule at all, and will show up to the classroom on the cancelled day… and they won’t be happy.
    The lesson I gained from juggling interviews/flyouts with teaching may be kind of obvious: post more reminder announcements than you might otherwise about cancelled classes (especially if you’re cancelling frequently) and remind your students that there are limits to your email availability while traveling to manage their expectations for your response time.
    Some of my students will probably remember in June that I was unresponsive for almost a full day when they sent me their panicked emails before their first paper was due. (Of course, they won’t remember that I told them I was on a plane and replied as quickly as possible or that I had extra OHs the week beforehand to avoid that issue.) Negative memories tend to be stickier than positive ones! If you can avoid that, students probably won’t mind your cancellations, especially if you tell them it’s for job interviews.

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  301. late capitalism

    @stressed I second the advice from East Coaster and would add that, considering University admin has their bottom line in mind when they hire NTT faculty to teach their classes, it’s only fair you should have your bottom line in mind when it comes to allocating your time. Obviously you should do as much to support your students as is reasonably possible, but hampering your job search for teaching that isn’t leading anywhere is not, at least imo, reasonable. I know teaching cultivates feelings of obligation that present as highly personal, but at the end of the day it’s the whole edifice of academia’s job to fulfill student needs, not yours alone.

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  302. Application “success rate”

    @Vappy, I have been tracking my applications for seven years. Like you, I apply only to positions where there seems to be a good fit (no open/opens at fancy places). I am lucky to have a TT job but I also a range of issues including, but not only, a two-body problem that means I need to move or eventually leave academia.
    I average 10.5 applications a season (at most 30, at the fewest, 1). I’ve been solicited as a candidate numerous times. The best year for first-rounds got me 5 out of 30. Zero of these yielded flyouts.
    I had a few years where I had direct flyouts. Zero turned into an offer.
    I had one year where all my first-rounds turned into flyouts. Zero turned into an offer.
    Almost each year I have had direct flyouts or first-rounds. Zero turned into an offers.
    I know the details of how often I have conversions from one stage to another, but I don’t think it tells me anything about the likelihood I’ll get a job. This isn’t a coin toss. Feedback from interviews has been unhelpful–conflicting and idiosyncratic, and mostly about the department’s pre-conceived desires, which I cannot mold myself into.
    I’m at a point where getting tenure is in sight, at which point moving will be nearly impossible, I think. Probably I’ll take tenure if I get it and see if I can’t find something alt/non-ac. I suppose I’m happy to have had these few decades training for, and being (relatively speaking) successful in a career. But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t anxious and sad about the future. At least I can look at my spreadsheet to see that I gave it my best shot.

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  303. Former Chair

    @stressed:
    Consider leaving your students with an online assignment. E.g., a video or case study with a discussion board exercise/prompt. It doesn’t have to be something you create or grade. Just aim for content related to the course so it doesn’t look like your students got x days less content than similar students.

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  304. VAP

    Hi everyone! What’s the VAP application timeline? I have a limited-term appointment, which might expire somewhat soon. Have there been much fewer VAPs posted this year coopered to pre-pandemic or even last year?

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  305. SEC postdoc

    @VAP: I think you should be seeing a lot of VAP openings now – and through the end of May.

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  306. VAP

    @SEC Postdoc — Thank you!

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  307. no feedback

    Looking for perspectives on the typical ratio of first round interviews to flyouts. This year I had 5 first round interviews for TT jobs plus a sixth for a long-term teaching position, but got zero flyouts. I’m wondering if this is typical or if I should worry I was doing something bad in interviews. From my perspective, only one of the interviews went notably badly.
    Relevant context: This is my first year on the job market and I have a very thin CV, so I was definitely not expecting a TT job. But this raises another question: if I was never a serious contender, why would so many programs bother to interview me?

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  308. thoughts

    @nofeedback: I doubt there’s a ‘typical’ ratio. I received 5 fly outs out of 12 interviews (so about 42%). I have friends that had much higher and much lower ratios, and it’s hard to know what to read into it. I couldn’t really explain why I advanced for the ones I did, and why I didn’t advance for the ones I didn’t. I think fit considerations play a role, and it’s hard to know what people are looking for during interviews. People have suggested before that search committees often have some implicit ranking in mind, where some people have to bomb to not get a fly out while others need to crush to get one. I don’t know whether that’s true. I wouldn’t infer that you were never a serious contender, though, given that you didn’t get a fly out.
    Remember that it’s already an accomplishment to get an interview, and many places go straight to fly outs and get jobs from there. The job market is a lottery in so many ways.

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  309. Also VAP

    Wanna follow up on @VAP’s question and ask what the timeline is like for the process. I expect there to be a lot of variation from school to school of course. But do they generally do rounds of interview, fly-out too?

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  310. hopephil

    Just in case you didn’t see my message on the “reporting thread.” I started a subreddit r/philosophyjobmarket22 for those of us wanting to chat about the job market, still. Feel free to stop in and post!

    Reply
  311. Non-TT teaching job at R1 haver

    For the sake of data collection: This is year four on the job market for me. Over the years I’ve had eight first-round interviews for TT jobs, two “fly-outs,” so exactly 25% at this point.

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  312. Yuge job lad

    For more data collection: 2nd year on the market; two first-round interviews for TT jobs; zero flyouts. 1 interview for a postdoc (did not pan out).

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  313. feedback lacking

    Thanks @thoughts @Non-TT teaching @Yuge job lad for the data points.
    I do wish committees could share more info about reasons for flyout choices (e.g., we liked how you answered question X but are flying out ppl with more publications; we are flying out ppl who gave a different answer to question X; etc). It’s hard to know how or whether to alter one’s behavior when one only gets generic PFOs or radio silence.

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  314. DataProvider

    For more data, I’m finishing up and ABD, so it’s my first year on the market. I’ve have had 3 first round interviews for TT jobs, with 2 converting into flyouts.

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  315. anon

    ABD first-timer: 5 interviews, 3 flyouts, out of 25 TT apps.
    @feedback lacking: perhaps this analogy is not entirely appropriate, but I’ve always thought about those interviews as blind dates. How many of those dates would move on to a serious relationship, and would you tell someone reasons why you decided not to see them anymore after the first date?
    Moreover, even if some committee members are kind enough to let you know why you are not chosen for flyouts, chances are there is very little you could do about it to make sure you do better next time (e.g. the winner happens to be able to teach phil-race, dpt prefers someone with a continental training, you are more ‘technicality intensive’ than ‘big-picture driven’, dpt needs someone to cover a metaphysican’s one-year leave, etc.).
    At first it was really difficult for me to accept how much of job-hunting in philosophy is about ‘fit’. Even when two departments are doing search in metaphysics, the candidates they pick out from the files can still look very different. Unfortunately, there’s very little we can do on this side of the market.

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  316. Radical Approach

    @no feedback: I’ve had similar thoughts this season. I’m also an ABD first-timer. I had 3 TT job interviews + 1 postdoc interview, only 1 TT job fly-out. The job I had a fly-out for was my first and absolute worst first-round interview of all (tech problems, no time to prep, no sleep, etc.). I was shocked to get the fly-out invite. It seemed super random, but when I arrived it became clear that a few of the interviewers connected with certain answers/stories I told.
    @feedback lacking: I don’t know if this is helpful, but this is how I’m dealing with the situation as I approach preparing for next season—
    We can’t know what goes on from the committee’s side (even when we ask) and knowing that fact isn’t super helpful for taking actions to improve. It’s also not helpful for motivation. But, we have some decent self-knowledge of our side of the interview (arguably). So, instead of thinking about what we can’t know, I identified key moments in the first round interviews that could have possibly played a role in explaining why I didn’t get a flyout offer. I’m trusting my gut that I can identify things like: my weak points (by my standards), whether I got enough sleep/other life stressors affected my mental state, what answers I rambled on, or things like a specialist on the committee in my AOS asking bad Q’s about my writing sample (that were more like talk Q&A grilling objections than genuine questions about my work), etc. I’m identifying these things to give myself something to work on to improve for next season (e.g., I’ll have a response ready in case that critical-type of Q about my writing sample comes up again). And, identifying things like that also helps me frame the story I’m telling myself about why I’m not moving on to the next round (e.g., that committee member clearly didn’t like/disagreed with my work in a fundamental way that I probably couldn’t have overcome given that individual’s philosophical commitments).
    Perhaps others will strongly disagree with my approach or the suggestion that we can really have any knowledge of what went wrong or why we didn’t move forward to the next interview stage. But, I’m analyzing my interviews with self-compassion (no self-blame!) and identifying these possible weak points gives me something to work on for next season. That feels empowering to me. Each round on the market is intel we can work with, right?

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  317. Buyer’s market

    @feedback lacking – That sort of information would not really be useful. What we are looking for when we ask question X may be very different from what another school is looking for, so changing your answer won’t really help. We interviewed 12 people via zoom his year, and would have been happy to bring 10 of them to campus. The three that we selected were not “better” than the 7 we did not select. For us, it just came down to which of these qualified candidates had experiences that were additional plusses, which ones had demonstrated teaching/research/service skills rather than just promise, etc. Each search committee and department are going to weigh things beyond the job requirements differently.
    My department’s last three assistant professor positions have gone to people who have given up tenure to come here – when that is the applicant pool for an unranked R1, it really does come down to perceived fit.

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  318. feedback lacking still

    @Buyer’s market I didn’t explain my idea very well. The type of feedback I was thinking of would help to distinguish cases where I didn’t proceed because of a bad interview from cases where I didn’t proceed because of fit and/or my CV. You say, “For us, it just came down to which of these qualified candidates had experiences that were additional plusses, which ones had demonstrated teaching/research/service skills…” This is exactly the type of feedback I would find helpful. It means I at least didn’t bomb the interview.
    @anon I assume you can usually tell if a blind date didn’t work because of lack of fit (e.g. no shared interests) versus because the other person behaved awkwardly. My point is that I’m having trouble distinguishing these two cases with respect to my interviews.

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  319. anon

    @feedback lacking still: I see! Maybe one way to do that is look at those winning candidates’ CVs and pick out likely factors of ‘fit’? My sense is that as most TT searches proceed to closure, those data should be available for self-comparison shortly.

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  320. Also VAP

    @ feedback lacking still I might have some relevant experience to share from having served on a search committee myself (perhaps usual for a grad student?). Out of the x candidates we interviewed, I’d say half of them really bomb their interviews. But overall that didn’t figure much into the deliberation process of the search committee in writing up our recommendations to the whole faculty. A bombed interview could be counter-balanced by an amazing job talk, or an impressive writing sample, or whatever. And that’s how it should be: candidates are evaluated on a holistic basis. The ways in which one bombs the interview matter, too, of course. But interviews are nerve-racking, and in my experience my colleagues were, overall, more than willing to not look too much into a bombed interview.

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  321. small fish big pond

    Does anyone have any sense of which journal has a faster turnaround time between Mind and Phil Review? I understand that the chances of getting an acceptance are dismally low for either of them, but I’m currently in the process of trying to send something out in as good of a venue as possible just to see, with the hopes of maybe landing something before next year’s job market.

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  322. word of warning … from a mid-sized fish

    Small Fish
    You should have a very good sense that your paper is really really good before you send it out to either of those journals. There is a lot of discussion that implies refereeing is random. It is not – there is a lot of noise, but it is not at all like a lottery. I have published in Nous and Phil Sci. It is far more predictable when a paper is ready for a highly ranked journal.

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  323. small fish big pond

    @mid-sized fish thank you for the feedback, but I am very aware of this already. The people advising me have told me to go for one of these two after having seen the paper, so it’s really a matter of wanting to know which one has a faster turnaround time. I’ve seen stats that suggest phil review is faster, but I’m not sure that’s actually the case. This is also not my first publication in a good journal, fwiw

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  324. failed searches?

    I heard that two of the top political philosophy jobs this year were failed searches: UNC Chapel Hill and Toronto. This blows my mind. How can search fail in THIS market? Anyone have any insight?

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  325. small fish small pond

    @small fish big pond: Phil Review is way faster, at least with rejections! They desk reject almost everything (like 95%+) in a few weeks. All their stats are posted on their website, which is nice. I don’t know stats about Mind, but anecdotally they are way slower to reject, and I have no reason to think they are faster at accepting. So I would go with Phil Review first.

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  326. anon

    @small fish, etc.: Could the discussion here please stay focused on the job market? There are other threads for discussion about journals/timelines for publications. Many of us are still interested in this forum as it concerns the current season’s market.

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  327. historygrrrl

    @failed searches: In my experience, failed searches are quite common in top-ranked departments.
    Often, these searches are attempts to recruit somebody that is already well-known in the field – think mid/late assistant – and will boost the ranking of the department either immediately or within the next few years. Sometimes, they will also go for an ABD or recent PhD that is the Next Hot Thing. In some cases, the department has a secret list of potential candidates that they would like to try and recruit.
    When I was in graduate school, we had one search that failed two years in a row. In this case, the department was very selective about finalists. Some finalists used an offer as a way to negotiate with their current institution; others bombed in various ways (terrible job talk, inappropriate interview behaviour) that precluded them from getting an offer.
    When I was on the market, there was also a post at a top department that had become a running joke to me and my partner because I applied for it every year. I applied to the same job no fewer than four times.

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  328. Decision Timeline – Shorter Window for Later Offers?

    How long can a waiting period last after a fly-out? Suppose a university makes an offer to their first choice candidate, and they keep all the other finalists waiting. Many schools seem to give candidates two weeks to decide (and then negotiate). Supposing the first-choice person declines, are second or even third choice candidates usually given the same amount of time to decide about an offer as the first-choice candidate? Or, does the window for decision-making usually reduce considerably for later offers?
    I’m curious if there are practical or administrative-type reasons a search must finish at a certain point and whether a short timeline to decide for a later candidate’s offer likely reflects those time-constraints of the committee or if it reflects some unfair pushing of those later candidates. Ideally, I want to be able to identify the latter situation if it happens.
    (I know, “it depends,” is a likely answer to this question, but humor me. It would be helpful to hear from a committee member’s experience.)

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  329. Stay cool

    Decision time
    there is no law about how long they need to give a candidate to decide to accept a job offer. So you do not have much ground to stand on. Of course there are norms in the profession. But these are hard to enforce. In the USA there is a firm time-line, especially at teaching oriented placed. They need someone in the classroom in late August, when the term starts. Often the courses for the new hire are even listed before the hire is made.

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  330. Bobby Fischer

    Texas State U appears to have posted a TT ad on Thursday, with a deadline of Monday 4 days later. If you choose to apply enjoy using your weekend to write up 2 specific sample syllabi they ask for, and better have and AOS in, checks notes, Aesthetics and Philosophy of Digital Media. Oh and also make sure your 3 letters arrive on time. What kind of scam is this?!

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  331. Texas State ad

    @Bobby Fisher: I also noticed that — how odd! The timeline makes it seem suspiciously like an insider hire. It’s not even posted on philjobs.

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  332. Another Texas State ad

    I just came here to register my raised eyebrows at the Texas State U ad. I only just saw it on PhilJobs today. Initially it said the deadline was 3/21 as Bobby Fisher said, but sometime later it was modified to 3/31 at least on PhilJobs, although not on the university website where one applies. I don’t see anything about Aesthetics and Digital Media on this ad, though. And the ad on PhilJobs is titled “Assistant Professor of Philosophy*,” but I can’t find an explanation of the asterisk anywhere. Any idea or at least suspicion about what’s going on here? Also, where was the ad before it was on PhilJobs, if I may ask, @Bobby Fisher?

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  333. trapped?

    Every year I go on the market I get a few interviews for TT jobs at very good places that don’t pan out, and I get interviews nowhere else. I worry I am caught in a trap: my profile is not strong enough for top places to hire me, but too strong for other places to hire me because they don’t think I would come or stay. Any advice on how to get out of this trap?

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  334. releasing the trap

    Trapped
    I do not think you are as trapped as you think. When I worked at a 4 year state college, we took every application seriously. The only ones that we passed over who had strong research profiles were people who had no sense of what kind of job they were applying for. This was evident, not from their pedigree, but because their application package (eg. teaching materials) was completely unsuited to our students and our institution. We did not need someone who was keen to teaching a course on grounding, or philosophy of physics. What we needed was people who were prepared to teach our general education courses – which all of us taught. These included: history of ancient, history of early modern, intro. epistemology, ethics …

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  335. Gutted Decision

    When is it best to trust your gut (and decline a job offer) versus going with your advisors’ advice (to take any job in this terrible market)?
    The state of the market would suggest faculty feel they must encourage their students to take TT jobs even if there are very good personal reasons not to accept an offer. But, there may also be good reasons to question one’s judgment when it’s a big life choice, emotions are high, and one will really never know what it’s like until one is there working the job.
    Any thoughts or experiences to share?

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  336. postdoc1000

    @trapped Another angle to consider is what you might do to change how you’re received in the interviews you are getting. You write that your “profile is not strong enough for top places to hire” you, but that seems untrue if you’re getting these interviews in the first place. I doubt many (or, honestly, any) committees are interviewing you with no interest in advancing your candidacy, so it seems totally within your power to land one of those jobs. Maybe it’s just terrible luck, but maybe it’s an issue of doing more research on the departments and interviewers, and practicing your interview skills in order to present yourself as being the right “fit” (that most elusive but important of hiring committee criteria). I know for a fact that my (well-regarded R1) department has passed over otherwise excellent candidates on those kinds of grounds.

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  337. rather not

    @Gutted:
    This will probably depend on a lot of factors. From my experience, I think it’s a bad idea to accept an offer one is not super excited about. I was in the same situation and took the suboptimal TT and then ended up leaving for a temporary position after a couple of years.

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  338. be a decent human being

    This should go without saying, but when you are on a campus visit, treat everyone you interact with with respect and dignity. We just finished flying out three candidates. One gave a substantially stronger job talk, had great interactions with TT faculty and had an impressive teaching demo. However, he also treated our departmental support staff as servants – demanding that they do things for him, and ignored non-tt faculty during his visit. When our department met to discuss the finalists, there was near unanimity that he was the best researcher and teacher. However we also voted to not consider his candidacy further. We’d rather have a failed search than bring in an asshole as a colleague.

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  339. Market Ethics

    I just mentioned this in response to another post, but wanted to post here because i’m genuinely curious about what those of you on the market/recently TT offered think about this. I’m a grad student on the market, and I have witnessed multiple job searches at my department over the years. It’s a good department, so very good applicant pool. Often what has happened is that my department has made offers for TT jobs at Assistant Prof level to people already in TT jobs elsewhere. These candidates have then declined pretty quickly, and then no one gets the job. I think this is standard practice among top departments who don’t ‘need’ hires as such for teaching etc., and only want the best people. My question is, is it unethical to apply for a job you have no real intention of taking? Even if there is even a 10 or 20% chance you might take it if offered, what justification is there for doing this, given that you are essentially keeping someone else out of a job who very much needs one and who is sufficiently qualified [the other non-TT’d flyouts for example, who are clearly good enough]? I’m not talking about those people who are genuinely undecided, but those who know that, all things considered, they’d much rather stay where they already are.

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  340. Anon

    Market Ethics: As somebody who will probably be leaving academia after 7 years in fixed-term positions and who has been a finalist for multiple jobs that ended up being offered to already tenured people who strung the departments along before eventually turning down the positions leading to failed searches….it certainly seems to be a pretty shitty practice to me.

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  341. Overthinking

    I need some advice.
    I was selected for an initial interview for a VAP position. I happen to live in the area the university is in because of where my wife works. The interview is soon, however, there is a colloquium coming up before my interview. The search committee has stated that they would like to interview me via zoom out of fairness considerations for the other candidates. Would it seem odd, or be looked at unfavorably for me to show up to the colloquium? I have no intentions of using this as an opportunity to bypass the fairness considerations and sneak in an informal in-person interview; my intention was just to go, listen to the talk, and participate only if I have something to say, and then leave. The talk is open to the public. Any advice is appreciated?

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  342. hopeless academic

    @overthinking are the other candidates presenting at the colloquium? Or is it just the regular department colloquium outside of the interview process? In either case, I would just lay low until the interview process is over. If the committee is making you still do an over Zoom interview (instead of in person) so you would not have an unfair advantage to the other applicants, wouldn’t going to the colloquium and possibly meeting other faculty members or having more air time in front of them if you do ask questions, reflect that? Maybe others have different experiences and views on this….

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  343. anon

    @overthinking: If you routinely go to their talks because you live in the area, I think it’s fine to go. But if this is the first time you would be going to one of their talks, I think it would have weird vibes and you should not.

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  344. East Coaster

    @overthinking – I am (against my own best wishes) with hopeless here. Even if you aren’t planning on gaming the system, you cannot guarantee that it won’t be seen that way. And since the accusation will never be leveled against you, you won’t be able to defend yourself. (And I can’t imagine a successful defense once the accusation is made.) And, as @be a decent human being reports, faculty (very rightly imo, but regardless, they do) often take cues from the process about how someone will behave as a colleague.

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  345. anonymous faculty

    @Market Ethics: I’m sure there’s some version of that that is problematic, but this feels like an instance of misplaced blame to me–it’s the system that is the problem!
    Sure, there might be people who just shop around each year and don’t intend to move. But (just based on myself being an assistant prof at an R1 and knowing a lot of the people who are on the market/trying to get the jobs you are talking about), it seems much more common that people are on the market either because (a) they have a two body problem; (b) there is something genuinely problematic about their job, and they really want to move; or (c) literally the only way for them to get a raise or make decent money compared to their colleagues is to have an outside offer.
    Now, you can complain about (c); after all, Assistant Professors at R1s are basically all making more money than employment-insecure philosophers. But there are also equity issues within organizations that really do matter. If you’re the one woman of color on your faculty and you are making $30K less than the white men at your career stage, and your administration refuses to give you a raise, I’m pretty sure you’re justified in going on the market and racking up as many offers as you want.
    (a) seems beyond reproach to me. If we’ve gotten to the stage where our blame goes to people whose families have been torn apart by the same unjust system you are (rightfully) upset about, then this is a case of misplaced blame. But note that for most of us, even if our ideal is to stay in our position, the only way we can engage in discussion about the possibility of a partner hire is through having an outside offer. So we literally need to go on the job market each year, even if, if things go right for us, we will not accept an outside offer. (This is my situation.)
    (b) Seems fine too, but note that sometimes it will end up in someone staying where they are even with an outside offer. For example, I have a friend at a very dysfunctional department who went on the market a couple years ago; the offer she received was from an on-paper more prestigious job, but she discovered (only after getting the offer!) that the new department had potentially even more serious dysfunction problems. She reasoned that the level of disruption, etc. that it would cause her to move there wasn’t worth the gamble of potentially replacing her dept’s major dysfunction with even worse major dysfunction. I think it was okay for her to go on the market, and I think it was okay for her to turn down the job.
    I think that these kinds of scenarios are more common than just greedy people or people who are messing around for no reason (note on the latter, there are a ton of costs even to employed people to being on the job market, and so they aren’t going to do it unless they feel like they have a good reason, at least typically). I do think there are exceptions–people who just keep trying to up their salary to absurd levels, people who wrongly feel “underappreciated” by their departments that are actually just trying to be somewhat egalitarian, etc. I do think we can criticize these people. But my sense (of course I could be wrong, or have a distorted sample size) is that most of the people applying for lateral-movement jobs have some sort of good reason to be doing so.
    (I forgot to mention (d)! Tenure year application. If you have any risk of being denied tenure… you should be going on the market and trying to get job offers. And if there’s something wrong with that, it’s something wrong with the system. But this often can look from the outside like someone is just racking up offers only to turn them down. That’s because they are either using those offers to ensure that they get tenure, or using them as back up in case they don’t get tenure, either of which seems… totally fine.)

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  346. anonymous faculty

    p.s. I am actually a little confused about the case: if the department decides to offer no one the job after the first candidate turns it down, that looks to me like it’s the department that is depriving candidates of jobs, not the person who turned it down (2nd and 3rd choice candidates get hired constantly!); also, it is not obvious at all in this case that those candidates would have been offered the job had the top ranked candidate simply not applied–after all, they weren’t offered the job when they were second or third in line and that person turned it down. If it’s that the other candidates are no longer available, I guess I would consider this too bad but not exactly anyone’s fault–but if it is anyone’s fault, it’s the department’s, for not being more conservative about their fly out candidates (that is, for picking 3-4 “risky” candidates). In either case I guess I don’t see how someone turning down a job is at fault in this case.

    Reply
  347. Market Ethics

    Thanks @anonymous faculty. This is helpful. I think (a) and (b) fall within the qualification I made about not referring to people who are genuinely undecided. However, I agree that there’s something to be said for (d) and possibly even (c) in specific circumstances (although there were no women PoCs involved in the searchers I mentioned, but I can see how this might happen). So I agree that it’s permissible to go on the market while TT’d in certain cases. The slightly different question I was getting at is whether this is genuinely good practice, particularly when one takes other candidate’s on the market into account. Do we have obligations to others on the market who are in more precarious situations than ourselves? Your answer seems to suggest that we don’t, and this lies solely with departments. I think that’s the standard view, and I was just wanting to know if everyone felt the same. [also good to know 2nd and 3rd choice hires do happen regularly! I’ve not seen it, and I do think this makes a difference to the evaluation in these cases. The point I was making was made on the assumption that this often doesn’t happen, as from my experience].

    Reply
  348. some committee member

    Would just like to agree that second and third and fourth choice hires happen a lot.
    If they don’t happen after a candidate rejects the job, maybe it’s because candidate 2 and 3 were jerks to the administrators. But it may be because something’s weird with the department.

    Reply
  349. wondering

    Hi – can anybody advise – I had an interview with a British university (Oxbridge) and it’s been three days since then and I have not heard back. It was my understanding that one learns basically immediately about the result, so I am just wondering what this means.

    Reply
  350. losing steam

    Well, I thought the sting of not getting a flyout after a zoom interview was bad, but I just got my first PFO after a fly out and, well, damn. The committee was kind enough to let me know that I was the runner up, that it was extremely close, and that they were super impressed. So I really don’t think I could have done anything differently.
    Nonetheless, I am now finishing my fourth year on the market and am really starting to feel burned out, majorly. Every year I’ve had at least one zoom interview. This year I had two zoom interviews and a fly out. I suspect that I spent at least 15-20 hours each preparing for the zoom interviews and 30-40 hours preparing for the flyout. All of this with heavy course loads (200+ students each semester). Am I over-preparing for these interviews? I think this matters because I am having a really hard time fitting in research. Maybe I could have used some of the near 80 hours of interview prep this year for research.(This is not even mentioning the 30+ hours spent applying cold for positions, e.g., crafting cover letters, modifying teaching documents, dealing with really annoying and out of date application portals, etc.)
    I absolutely love teaching and feel an ethical obligation to provide students with the best quality instruction I can. And I would be fine with a permanent 3/3 at a teaching focused institution (or even a 4/4 with smaller sections). But I still care about my ideas and of course there is so much pressure to publish. I have squeaked out 3-4 publications including two book chapters. But I always have a heavy teaching load, so I can’t help but feel that every year I am put in a triple bind: either slack on the teaching while focusing on market prep and publications or slack on the market prep while focusing on teaching and publications or slack on the publications while focusing on teaching and market prep. How can I try to break out of this? This year I definitely took the last option which means that my publication record is going to look more or less the same this coming fall. Right now I’m seriously thinking about just taking a year off of teaching and focusing on publishing, but this won’t help for next fall and I’m worried about having a gap in my cv.
    Of course, I might not have a choice. My current contract cannot be renewed again because of weird union rules and there just aren’t many VAPs being posted in my area this year, which is disheartening. Honestly, the thought of having to wait another year to find out if I might get a permanent position makes me feel a bit ill. I’ve been lucky and had a VAP every year since I defended, but the thought of having to wait in suspense until June to know if I’ll get to teach another philosophy course makes me feel a bit ill too. How do you keep your spirits up? How do you decide that all the suspense and failure simply isn’t worth it anymore?
    Sorry for the self-absorbed post. I hope that some of these questions are helpful for others as well.

    Reply
  351. anon

    re: steam. We’re in a similar position in terms of work history, research, etc., except I’m a year ahead of you.
    I think that the reality of this position – being a teaching-heavy VAP, but obliged to spend time on research to stay competitive and to spend time on interviews year after year – is that the total workload is too much. This means there’s no trick to fitting it all in well. There’s just compromise.
    In terms of compromise, I think I spend less time on teaching and interviews than you do. For interviews, I think the odds of success are low enough for a first round that I put pretty negligible preparation in. For teaching, I think that people can overestimate the time investment that is necessary to do well by students.
    In terms of anxiety, that’s more complicated to give an answer to. I think for me some of this came with the self-identification with the work that academic culture encourages, and I’ve managed to reduce that somewhat over the years (I think).

    Reply
  352. Who got the job(s)?

    Are people updating Philjobs with their new appointments? I’d like to know who is getting the jobs which I got interviews/flyouts for. While we all know that much in the process isn’t up to us personally, as someone who has been consistently getting close but not being hired, it would be useful to know who is getting hired.
    Or do we just need to wait until the institutions update their websites? (That could take years!–some are pretty stale.)

    Reply
  353. i did not get the job

    @Who got, I’ve found that finding out who got the job typically takes quite a while. Usually the institutional course listing of who is teaching what in the next semester will be the first place to have new information. People tend not to keep current with their PhilPeople profiles, and the updates at PhilJobs are helpful but incomplete and tend to lag.

    Reply
  354. Twitter

    @Who got: maybe use twitter. Search for “university of x, philosophy” and you’ll found out the last mentions. Sometimes those who got the job will share whether they got it.

    Reply
  355. i did not get the job

    @Who got, to be clear, what I say above certainly isn’t always the case. The bigger jobs (think TTs at R1s) are often or at least sometimes trackable on PhilJobs’ ‘Appointments’ tab, but not always. For smaller jobs (like the ones for which I tend to get interviews, at SLACs, etc.), I’ve often only ever found out who got the job by looking at the university’s Fall course listings once they’re posted and/or department webpages.

    Reply
  356. Michel

    Steam: I suspect you don’t need that much prep. You have the experience from at least one interview a year for four years. You have the experience from prepping so much for those other interviews. You have the experience from teaching and conferencing. I don’t think more prep is going to make the difference for you. (Indeed, either your prep is good enough–which it probably is!–in which case you don’t need to keep repeating it, or it isn’t, in which case repeating it isn’t going to help.) To my mind, interviewing is like teaching that way; it’ll suck up as much prep time as you want to sink into it, but beyond a certain point it’s just not obvious that there are returns, let alone that they’re worth it.
    Spend the time on yourself and your projects instead, and go in more relaxed and less burned out. Do have your job talk rehearsed and ready, and do spend some time thinking about how you want to answer various questions and what you want to know about them. But you don’t need 60+ hours for that.

    Reply
  357. KA

    For anyone who is on the non-tenure track, any thoughts on how to navigate applications which ask to contact your current employer? I am a full-time community college instructor looking to switch schools, but I don’t want my current school to know, for fear of retribution (we are on one year contracts and thus very vulnerable). My worry is that selecting ‘no’ when asked whether I want them to contact my current employer – or just the fact that my current employer is not one of my reference – is a red flag. Any thoughts on how to proceed?

    Reply
  358. losing steam

    michel and anon: Thanks so much for sharing your perspectives. I think one reason I prep so much for zoom interviews is that I struggle a bit with anxiety in general, which is exacerbated by the pressure that comes with the interview. Prepping helps me not freeze up and totally bomb. Thankfully I did not have those issues during my flyout, and I was able to more or less relax and just be myself.
    In terms of teaching prep, I think I’ve had to put so much time into it because I’ve mostly had to teach courses not directly in my AOS.(In fact, I still haven’t taught a straightforward course in my primary AOS.) I’m not feeling optimistic about the VAP market this year. But if nothing comes through I’m going to treat this as an opportunity to get some works in progress out to journals and maybe rethink my teaching strategies.

    Reply
  359. Not a problem, at least for me

    KA: it happened to me once. I wrote it down that I don’t feel comfortable to have my current employer knows that I’m looking for a job. I don’t think it had consequences, because I proceeded to the first round of interviews

    Reply
  360. philjobs

    @Who got the job(s)? (and others): it turns out to take awhile for philjobs to update appointments. Someone mentioned this, but just to give a concrete example: I’ve been waiting over 2 weeks for my appointment to post. I don’t know why it’s so inefficient — they need to verify from the employer, but they also seem to batch them. It’s really frustrating for everyone involved!
    I do wish there were something more efficient and reliable than this.

    Reply
  361. demoralized philosopher

    Worcester State ad that posted 4 days ago is now closed. I spent a nontrivial amount of time tailoring my cover letter only to find that I can’t apply any longer. smh. This is bad.

    Reply
  362. not a legal expert

    Re: the (most recent) Worcester State ad.
    From a purely legal/HR perspective, is it legit to not include the closing date in the job announcement? There’s a closing date on the interviewexchange job listing but not on the InsiderHigherEd job announcement.

    Reply
  363. Hopeful?

    I got a slightly unusual (to me anyway) request from a place I did a first-round interview with to submit official transcripts. Is this common practice? The original job ad didn’t ask for such things, and the person I was in contact with communicated that this is to meet HR requirements. But I still find it slightly odd that they’re requesting official transcripts in the interviewing phase. Any thoughts?

    Reply
  364. non suspicious

    Hopeful
    In some places you need to supply official transcripts to prove you are not a fraud, claiming to have a PhD when you do not have one. Some state systems will not hire you without them. And this school may just be wanting to save themselves times down the road.
    So, I do not think you should be concerned.

    Reply
  365. anon

    Hopeful: Yeah, this is fine. I’ve have places even run a criminal background check on me during the interview stage. But they just want to set things up so they can move quickly when they’ve made a decision, so some places just jump through all these hoops in advance with all the candidates.

    Reply
  366. Clueless about philjobs

    Re: the posting of philjobs.org appointments. I’m confused, are these announcements usually submitted by the successful candidates themselves, or by the universities that hire them, or does philjobs somehow find out who the new appointments are and then post them there? Additionally, user philjobs mentions that “they need to verify from the employer”—what does this involve? Sending out an email asking if the appointment is real? Thanks everyone.

    Reply
  367. (some) phil jobs answers

    @Clueless about philjobs , I can answer some of these but not all of them.
    Usually, they will accept updates from the successful candidates themselves, from the universities that hire them, and from the candidates’ grad program’s placement coordinator, if that person submits them. Then they verify them (in some way — I don’t know how.). Then they show up after philjobs managers approve them. As @philjobs says, this usually seems to happen in batches. My guess is that submissions to the site happen over time, then one of the site managers checks in and runs the approval for a bunch at once and posts them then. It’s definitely an imperfect system, and yet I appreciate the service work these folks are doing, since it’s better than not having such a place.

    Reply
  368. unappointed

    Speaking of PhilJobs Appointment batches, one went up today. There’s that job for which I was a finalist. Yes, I must admit they hired someone who looks really, really good. And there’s that other job for which I was a first-rounder. Oy, the person that they hired makes me look like a damn fool. Etc.

    Reply
  369. M

    unappointed: seeing the appointments can be brutal! On the one hand, seeing someone whom you’d have thought less competitive than you get a great job can make you resentful and worried you’re doing something wrong, whereas seeing someone who seems more competitive than you get a job gives you the feeling that you aren’t competitive in the first place. I guess the best you can do is keep in mind that it really is true that search committees want different things, and fit and personal connection are high on the list for many. Despite the seemingly ‘obvious’ hires, many candidates who don’t look outwardly uncompetitive get great jobs and many people who look outwardly competitive are unsuccessful. Just keep at it and try your best to keep in view that success on the job market doesn’t say anything about you personally (maybe that’s not a problem for you…but it was for me). Best of luck to you.

    Reply
  370. unappointed (still)

    @M, so very true, and thanks also for the kind words. The solidarity and camaraderie mean a lot, even in this anonymous forum. I hope this cycle has been good to you (if applicable). And the cruelty of the PhilJobs Appointments page is something that I never would have anticipated before going through the process, but it (the cruelty) is real.

    Reply
  371. Jessica Davis

    The Notre Dame of Maryland University Department of Philosophy is seeking applicants for a 10-month, tenure-track, full-time, assistant professor position in Philosophy, beginning in August 2022. The preferred candidate will have a broad background in philosophy with areas of concentration in the history of philosophy, logic, applied ethics, and critical reasoning.
    https://www.paycomonline.net/v4/ats/web.php/jobs/ViewJobDetails?job=18190&clientkey=42030F4CF91003462AB9D2C6FAED0643

    Reply
  372. question for unappointed

    @unappointed: Just out of curiosity, what’s your AOS (or the AOS for the jobs you were talking about)?

    Reply
  373. fly out

    Any sense of what is normal or expected for women to wear for campus visits? I saw the thread on zoom interviews but it would be good to know specifically about campus interviews, and specifically for women (where tie or no tie isn’t really a question). Is a suit/blazer necessary? Hair up or down? Those types of questions. Thanks.

    Reply
  374. idontworkintheology

    Anyone applying for the University of St Andrews. Gifford Postdoctoral Fellowship? I’m curious about how inclusive the criteria of the bequest can be interpreted.
    I don’t work in an area that has anything to do with natural theology. I barely know what it is and will likely be mostly making it up. Is there any point applying?

    Reply
  375. flyoutattire

    @fly out: I wore a professional-looking dress (in dark colors, like black or blue) with dark stockings, boots, and a jacket (not a blazer – more like a quilted jacket or a cardigan). Blazers with dress pants and a blouse are also common. You should go with what you feel most comfortable in but that still looks professional. A suit/blazer is not necessary — it’s up to you. Hair up/down does not matter — do whatever you prefer. (Remember that philosophers typically are not that concerned with these minutiae. As long as you look professional, you’re fine.) You want the clothes to be fitted, so get tailored if necessary.
    For visits that were multi-day, on one of the days I sometimes would wear nice (somewhat dressy-looking) jeans, a blouse, and a cardigan. (This was for the non-job talk day.)
    As for shoes, again go with something that is comfortable but professional. Obv no sneakers, but you can wear boots, pumps, oxfords/loafers, etc. (I’m less sure of norms on like open-toed sandals… I think depends on what they looked like. This Q is irrelevant if the place you’re going to is cold.)
    If you plan on wearing makeup, make sure that it’s a routine that you feel comfortable in. Don’t try new products the day of the fly out! And obv just go for a basic, non-dramatic look.
    This post is helpful and has some more details: https://theprofessorisin.com/2011/11/15/1947/.
    Oh, it’s not a bad idea to buy a travel steamer, if you don’t already have one. Irons can be risky with some materials if you’re not careful. (Plus, I find ironing to be way more of a chore.)
    I cannot stress enough that you should try to wear things that are comfortable in many senses of the word. You want it to fit your personal style — hence, don’t wear a suit if that doesn’t suit you. You also want to feel confident in it. (This often requires feeling like you genuinely look good in it, too!) And you want your outfit to be comfortable in the more obvious sense of not being painful, not requiring constant readjustment, etc. Test out beforehand and get second opinions!
    Also, bring back up things as needed. I had a backup outfit and stockings, in case of emergencies, for instance!
    Hope that helps!

    Reply
  376. unappointed

    @question for unappointed, I work on an esoteric historical subject, but the ads to which I was referring in that last post weren’t especially closely related to my AOS. One job was entirely open, and another was through a teaching AOC of mine.

    Reply
  377. Rosa

    @fly out. The advice above is good! I just want to echo that I never wore a suit – either a dress with a cardigan, or else nice pants with a button-up shirt and a v-neck sweater. If the fly out is somewhere cold, try to figure out whether there will be snow, and if so consider bringing winter boots and a pair of flats or something else small you can change into. You’ll likely get a tour of campus, and don’t want to have to give your job talk/meet the dean/whatever with slush on your shoes and pants. (Likely there will be a spot in the department you can leave your winter boots.) For non-job talk days, airport pickups, etc, I also just wore nice jeans, nice boots, and a sweater. I’d suggest hair up if it tends to get in your face, but otherwise really doesn’t matter.
    Also, pack everything in a carry on if you can – I’ve known people who have had their luggage lost and had to give job talks in the clothes they were wearing on the plane, and you absolutely don’t want to be in that position. Good luck!

    Reply
  378. anon

    Let’s say you had a first round interview and you email to follow because you hadn’t heard anything and want to know if second round candidates have been notified.
    You’re told:
    “The search is still in process and you’ll be notified once its complete.”
    Is this HR speak for basically telling me I did not advance to the second round?

    Reply
  379. 🙁

    Anon: I would take it as such. It’s not very clear, but I think it probably means you didn’t advance 🙁 . And it’s probably better to be pleasantly surprised later than to maintain hope. Don’t give them any more of your consciousness.

    Reply
  380. the market sucks

    I have been a finalist for two positions and got neither and the market only has a couple months left so now I am panicking that I’m not going to get a job. I also hate how much wasted labor goes into this. As part of my interviews I have done so much prep for job talks and teaching demonstrations that are absolutely worthless and ultimately mean nothing except hours of my life gone.

    Reply
  381. anon

    re: sucks. I feel this. Something that would be nice, but I suspect will never happen in our lifetimes, would be an acknowledgement that these interviews basically involve taking you on as a trial worker for a few days, and that trial work periods that long should be paid.
    (I think this holds more for a TT interview spread over several days with several hoops to jump through, less for a one-stage postdoc interview where you talk for a bit.)

    Reply
  382. Hopeful VAP

    To my view, the VAP postings seem remarkably sparse this year. Is that correct? Or are they usually posted later?

    Reply
  383. Southwestern VAP ad

    https://philjobs.org/job/show/20282
    This job just got posted yesterday but the deadline is only a few days from now. Any insight into whether they already have a candidate in mind?

    Reply
  384. Any word?

    Has anyone heard from the following for first-round interviews:
    -University of Virginia (general faculty, NT, renewable)
    -Southwestern CC District, Chula Vista, CA
    -Bellevue College
    -St. Louis CC, Wildwood Campus
    -University of South Carolina (Instructor)

    Reply
  385. One more

    Has anyone heard anything from Lansing Community College?

    Reply
  386. SLAC VAP

    Hopeful VAP — last year a surprising number of really solid VAPs were posted in May and even June (I got the offer I ended up accepting in late June). I think at least some of that is due to the weird impact that COVID has had on hiring timelines since it’s made budget and teaching needs less certain. I’d guess that this year would be less extreme but probably still sort of weird in this way; there may be administrators deciding around now (as the incoming undergrad cohort becomes more certain) that they DO actually need someone to teach XYZ next year.

    Reply
  387. VAP life

    At what point after a flyout is it appropriate to make an inquiry about the expected decision timeline? I did a flyout two weeks ago. I was the final flyout candidate. I’m assuming that it’s still too early to make an inquiry. Or is two weeks long enough?

    Reply
  388. Curious

    Does where you do a VAP matter for future career prospects? Like does VAPing at a R1 look different than VAPing at a teaching school, even if the course load is the same?

    Reply
  389. Marcus Arvan

    @Curious: I think where you VAP makes a difference in terms of the perceived trajectory of your career and (ceteris paribus) which kinds of jobs you’ll be more competitive for moving forward.
    My first VAP was at a research university (UBC). While I was there, I got interviews for research jobs. Then I moved to a VAP at a liberal arts university, and my R1 interviews mostly dried up (though I started getting more interviews at liberal arts universities).
    Of course, this is only ceteris paribus. If you’re a publishing beast while in a VAP at a SLAC, you could still very well compete for R1 jobs. It can just lead to changes in perception about “where you’re headed” or “where you belong.” At least that’s my impression.

    Reply
  390. personplaceandthing

    @ VAP life, if there was no indication of their hiring timeline given during your flyout, it wouldn’t (or shouldn’t) hurt to politely ask now.

    Reply
  391. Curious

    Thanks, Marcus. Interesting bit of information there.

    Reply
  392. anon

    It seems to me that one of the issue that has repeatedly come in the the job market reporting thread is the tendency of search committees ‘to ghost candidates’
    I want to be clear I am specifically referring to candidates who actually got an interview.
    I think this important to note because if you’re merely an applicant who was never notified that you didn’t get an interview, that strikes me as less problematic than the case of someone who:
    a. Advanced to first round interviews
    b. Was given a timeline during the interview to expect to hear something.
    c. Was subsequently ‘ghosted’ by the committee
    This strikes me as not only unprofessional but also just cruel.
    Now, I suspect many search committee members will retort with:
    a. HR policies constrain what we can actually communicate with candidates.
    b. We actually can’t communicate anything until an offer has been accepted because we might need to go back to the applicant pool.
    I don’t know how true either of these are but they still seem like hiding behind HR policies instead of just being open and honest with candidates in order to update them about where things stand.
    Put it this way:
    If you were someone who interviewed for a job and thought it went well only to find out via the job market reporting thread that the search had progressed to final interviews and you did not advance or maybe you find out via twitter or facebook or from someone you know in the profession.
    I honestly have no idea what can be done about this but the rate with which it seems to happen is alarming and it seems to give ‘the profession’ a bad look.
    Perhaps nothing generalizeable can actually be said about this because each case is unique to the circumstances of particular universities or particular HR policies but the reporting thread at least seems to indicate it is too common a practice.
    I think attention needs to be brought to this issue because its serious, especially when people are trying to make decisions about their futures in this god awful job market

    Reply
  393. Stop the cruelty

    I want to second the comment made by @anon that ghosting candidates is a cruel practice. Yes, each circumstance is unique, but what baffles me is: even if the situation is as described in (b)where an offer has been made but the offer holder is yet to make a decision, I don’t understand why that cannot be communicated to the other candidates. If they’re on the backup list, they’re not going to be impacted anyway, so no harm in communicating. If they’re on the backup list, what’s the harm in saying something to the effect of: we may come back to you, but there’ no guarantee of that?

    Reply
  394. Acknowledging cruelty

    I have the same concern as @anon. It is very common in my experience, and I feel that one solution is just to be clear and honest about this practice, even if it sounds awkward.
    I have bad experience with my job interviews and what happened after, though I can’t name names. Why can’t we though? There does not seem to be any platform where we can complain about the recruitment practice openly.
    As a minority person, my satisfaction with the philosophical community at large may be 5 or 6/10. My satisfaction with the recruitment practice is about 3/10—independently from a lack of jobs. (I am not saying that there is any bias towards my minority-ness. Just report my experience, as a minority.) For this reason, I sometimes fantasize about going to a different discipline—maybe it won’t be a fantasy.

    Reply
  395. almond milk

    Thanks, @acknowledging cruelty. I also find it frustrating that job candidates have no recourse when they experience bad behaviour from search committees. From ghosting post-interview to outright hostility during an interview to being rejected from a job one was a good fit for in favour of a ‘shinier’ Ivy League candidate with zero accomplishments who doesn’t fit the job ad…
    The total ban on naming and shaming, much like the hush hush culture around harassment and abuse, protects the wrong people and ensures that search committees can continue to do whatever they want behind closed doors without being held responsible and without being accountable to the people they harm, most of whom have substantially less power and privilege.
    Like everything else in this discipline, the norms are designed to protect a very certain group of people. Those with any power to change things seem more interested in preserving the status quo than in doing anything that would actually improve climate.

    Reply
  396. flyouts

    Is there a cocoon thread on flyout advice and zoom flyout advice?

    Reply
  397. postdoc hopeless

    Did anyone else notice something weird going on with Barnard’s Term Assistant Professor position? The ad went up yesterday on Higher Ed Jobs, with a link to a working internal Barnard employment page. Today, the position is no longer listed on Barnard’s employment website and while the Higher Ed Jobs ad is still there, the link to the application portal is dead.

    Reply
  398. postdr

    I’m an ABD that got a postdoc gig for the next 2 years with the plan of giving the job market another go (probably a very limited search next year and a full search during the following one). Is there any notable difference in terms of your application materials when you’re applying as an ABD vs. a postdoctoral fellow? It would be great to see a post in general about what if anything is or should be different about applying as a postdoc in a temp position vs. as a grad student.

    Reply
  399. hopeless academic

    @postdr everyone has different experiences in this regard. But to speak only of my own and some things I have observed from other colleagues […] there was a significant difference between ADB and PD. Post Docs usually demonstrate that another institution has acknowledged and believes in your research and potential/future contribution to the field. Some come with teaching, which is also seen as a plus. Hopefully you can get more writing done and have a new writing sample that is not connected directly to or at least is a modification of your dissertation to demonstrate you research range post graduation and future/current projects. There are definitely some schools and programs that want fresh ABD hires, so they mold them from the offset. But often my experience that many schools don’t want to risk hiring right out of Grad school. I would say utilize the PD opportunity as much as possible (meet with other faculty, PDs, etc. and get feedback on your work from those who are willing) and write/research as much as possible. I am sure others will chime in on this discussion […] GOOD LUCK

    Reply
  400. come on philjobs

    There have been no updates to the PhilJobs ‘Appointments’ page in a month.
    Does anyone know why PhilJobs has been so slow to update this job cycle relative to past ones? Even the new job ads this time around got posted a few times a week in bulk as opposed to past years when there were updates every day. Needs more active moderation than this…

    Reply

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