In our March "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:
Does having a website help at all on the job market?
I guess I doubt it, but then again, who knows? I do think that search committee members can be interested in reading more of your work, so if your work isn't readily available on PhilPapers, maybe having a website where all of your work is readily available might make some difference.
Do any readers have any helpful insights?
I’m an R1 prof and I often serve on job search committees.
Yes it can help. Depending on what the person shares, it can help us search committee members feel more justified in believing that the person will be a good fit. Depending on what you decide to share in the “extra” space that a site affords a candidate, it can help search committee members better contextualize your pubs if e.g. they’re in non-standard outlets, confirm that you really have that third (!) AOS, what kind of departmental citizen you’ll be, and so on. The more good stuff you have to share that doesn’t fit neatly into a CV, the better. It’s a missed opportunity otherwise.
Not everyone in the department will have access to your file. Students, in particular, will not; for them, a website is the best way to get a sense of your work and accomplishments.
I can’t say whether it actually helped or not, but my website hits went way up during application season. Thus, I take it that search committee members frequently check candidates’ websites.
The personal website thing has always felt very silly to me. If you have a philpeople account with your cv and papers, what more can you put on your website that will be informative? Pictures of your cat/dog? Hiring committees have an overwhelming amount of info on which to base their decision of who to interview (cover letter, teaching dossier, research statement, etc. etc.). Gaps are then filled in as the process unfolds. Seems totally unnecessary to have a personal website; fine if you want to have one, but if it’s a standing expectation that all applicants have one that’s bogus imo.
re:prof You’re right that a lot of information on one’s website might already be had by a search committee. However, one thing that my website has that my application does not is all of my syllabi. Of course, a search committee interested in those could just ask for those in the job ad or at any point of the search. But to your question of “If you have a philpeople account with your cv and papers, what more can you put on your website that will be informative?,” the answer would be syllabi, which don’t appear in your philpeople profile. I also wonder if having a website makes an applicant appear more “professional” or career-focused than an applicant without one. And (at least anecdotally) there does seem to be a loose correlation between the two. At least in my grad program, for instance, students who were serious about a future in academia and building a professional reputation tended to have websites, whereas students who did not have this focus rarely had one. And the faculty who were still actively involved in conferences, researching, publishing etc. tended to have websites, whereas “checked-out” faculty rarely did. So I think having a website can be a soft indicator of a certain level of professionalization or something similar.
I know that the op’s question was specifically in terms of the job market, but prof’s comment makes it seem like there is no reason at all (even beyond the market) to have a website, and I don’t think that’s accurate. I refer to people’s sites very frequently to learn more about fellow academics whose work I’m interested in, since I don’t have access to their job application documents. I agree with prof that they probably have little benefit on the market, but there are plenty of other reasons to have a website that aren’t related to the market.
@anon: do people not include sample syllabi in their teaching portfolios? I include upwards of 6-7 sample syllabi in mine. Maybe that’s not standard practice though.
addendum to my last post: to the potential objection that people who are less likely to be professionalized are not going to be applying to jobs in the first place, or, conversely, that if someone is an applicant for an academic job that already indicates that they are professionalized (and thus a website doesn’t give you any more information about that applicant): I think it’s very possible to be both an applicant and not be very professionalized or “output-focused,” and I think there are aspects of this professionalization that are hard to capture via cv and publications alone.
I’ve seen websites help people get jobs, and I’ve seen websites hurt. For whatever its worth, the cases where they have hurt spring more easily and vividly to mind, but I suspect it is really just a wash. I don’t think refining one’s website is the best use of jobseekers’ time.
I’ve seen websites help even when they contain the same information as the job file. In these cases, the information is framed in such a way that some aspect of the candidate’s research or teaching history becomes more salient and attractive.
I don’t want to go into details of when websites can hurt, but I can think of several cases where they took a candidate out of contention for a job. These were cases where there was already a worry about the candidate based on the file, and this worry was then amplified by the website.
In other cases, the website created a vague, nagging, worry that wasn’t present when reading the file. I think everyone tried to just put these sorts of concerns out of their minds, but I’m not sure how successful people were at doing that.
@The Real SLAC Prof,
I respect your wishes to not go into detail about when a website could hurt. So, do you think you could say something about what you think could help?
@ Nick: Well, I don’t especially want to go into details about hiring processes, but here’s an example that comes to mind: looking at the website of a candidate helped me appreciate the breadth and diversity of that person’s past teaching experience, and so gave me an additional reason in favor of that candidate. I think maybe there were course descriptions listed below each course title, or maybe the course titles were hyperlinked to syllabi. Either way, something about the way the past teaching experience was represented on the website helped me come to a greater appreciation of this strength, even though I already had access to this information through the file.
As I hope is clear, this wasn’t a transformational experience; it was a case where I already had a positive assessment of the candidate’s file (including teaching strengths), but something about the way the information was presented on the website helped deepen the appreciation.
Unfortunately, I don’t know that there are any general lessons to be drawn from any of this! But I do think the argument that websites are redundant since hiring committees already have all the relevant information is ignoring the fact that framing effects can shape how people respond to the same information.
The question posed — does having a website make any difference on the job market? — is the wrong question to ask. The better question is, “Does having an accessible and substantive online profile make a difference on the job market?” The answer to that question is almost surely yes. If people want to look up more about your research or teaching and are unable to do so quickly, that will probably be a negative compared to candidates where that information can be easily found. Having a personal website is one of the easiest ways to guarantee that those searching for you can find what they are looking for, so in those instances, it can help. But this can also be done effectively with sites like PhilPapers, academia.edu, etc.
@The Real SLAC Prof, is it possible to speak, in very general terms, about the situation(s) in which a candidate’s website has hurt them? I have never heard of such a thing, and it would be very helpful to know what to avoid as a job seeker.
Yes. It can help. Just think of committee members who are searching websites. They see other candidates’ sites and nothing for you.
I am not sure either way, but I could imagine it hurting for certain jobs. For example, having a website might make community colleges or other teaching-focused institutions think that you are more likely to try to leave for a more research-focused job. Almost every website I’ve seen for someone on the market seems to put much more emphasis on their research.
But perhaps this concern could be mitigated if one’s website is attuned to the sorts of jobs that they will likely be applying for.
@anxious:
The cases where the websites have hurt are the inverse of the cases where they have helped: there was something concerning about the teaching or research that was made more salient through the way the candidate presented themselves through their website.
I certainly didn’t mean to add to anyone’s anxiety by making the observation that websites can hurt, but some of what people were saying about websites struck me as untrue in light of my experience.
From the hiring side, it was clearly a good thing that the candidates made these features of their dossiers salient on their websites; we want a good fit. And while it is much more difficult to appreciate from the job-seeking side, I think candidates should also want to eventually land in a job with a good fit.
While I don’t think it is, ultimately, a bad thing that websites can sometimes hurt, there have been many times where I’ve looked at candidates’ materials and thought, “where is this person’s advisor?!” because the materials were sending messages I assume the candidates would not consciously want to send. My actionable suggestion is to make sure that you get as many eyes as possible on your dossier, including your website, if you have one. Ask people to candidly assess these materials and offer their opinions about what messages you are sending about the type of person and philosopher you are.
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