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Do conference presentations matter on the job market?

In our new “how can we help you?” thread, a reader asks:

Do conferences matter at all on the job market? I’m a grad student and I feel like I hear such a wide range of perspectives on this topic. Some people say they’re important, but only for practicing giving talks and networking, some people say it’s a red flag if an applicant has no conferences but not a “plus” if they do, and others seem to think that some of the fancier conferences are a boost. Part of the rationale for this question is that I’ve definitely been encouraged to put a lot of effort into applying for and attending conferences, and I’m wondering if this is a good use of one’s time as a grad student.

Another reader seconded the query:

I’ve been wondering about this too! I’d also like to know what “level” of conference is considered enough. Are graduate conferences sufficient? And are big, crowded conferences like the APA meetings or the Joint Session actually helpful for the job market?

I could be wrong, but my sense is that–perhaps with a few special exceptions–conference presentations matter very little (if at all) as an item on one’s CV. When it comes to research, my sense is that committees care vastly more about publications, the writing sample, and (in some cases) recommendation letters. This isn’t to say that conference presentations aren’t important, however. I think they are. They can be a great way to get feedback on one’s work, practice giving talks–and yes, networking can be important on the market. But these are just my thoughts.

What do readers think?

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21 responses to “Do conference presentations matter on the job market?”

  1. Anonymous

    Just my two cents, but when I had no pubs, I put everything on my CV. When I started to have pubs, I only put very selective conferences and invited talks on my CV. Now, I just have pubs.

    I think it had something to do with what I felt I needed to prove. When I had nothing, I had to prove that I’m trying; even if the conferences were more akin to “everyone who pays the admission fees gets to present.” When I started to have something, I think the pubs prove themselves.

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  2. Anonymous

    Take this with a pinch of salt since I am ABD and this is my first year on the market.

    I’m not sure how much conference presentations matter in terms of a line on a CV that gets you a job (I think probably not much), but going to conferences is still very important. Publishing papers *is* very important for getting a job, and going to conferences helps with this. 2 of my published papers were presented at conferences, and were massively improved by feedback I got. Conferences are also the main place for networking, which again also helps with the job market. You can meet people who might be willing to supervise post docs for example, or people who can write references, or read future work. I have often attended conferences without presenting as well, partly because I enjoy them, but also because I learn a lot and I find the networking valuable.

    Also, some conferences do lead to publications and so are very much worth going to. For example, if you attend MadMeta, then you have a good chance of being published in Oxford studies in metaethics, which is one of the best venues for metaethics papers and would definitely help a CV.

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  3. Anonymous

    For a certain set of employers, I think this category matters, but in a limited way akin to the second of the OP’s hypotheses. It concerns mostly newly minted PhDs or ABDs at lower-prestige schools. (More seasoned candidates will likely have presentations.) That type of candidate with publications will have likely already put a few conference presentations on their CVs anyway. For those without publications applying to the vast majority of (non-prestige) jobs, they need something to show that they can do the job without a lot of hand-holding, as they’ll come in having to teach and publish and perform service roles well enough to get tenure without a lot of support. So hiring committees will want to see evidence that they can do the research part of the job when the candidate is all of a sudden teaching 12 hours of class time per week and serving on three campus subcommittees. At least, that was an explicit conversation the last time I was on a hiring committee at a non-prestigious school: conference presentations are one indicator of future success in that regard. No committee wants to roll the dice on a rare hiring line, so showing you know how to do all the parts of the job already is a good thing.

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  4. Anonymous

    It depends on the job you are going for, and what conferences you have presented at. In some corners of the world, if you are slightly more senior and get invited to ALOT to give talks and presentations, it does suggest that people like your work and that you have a good network to draw from for grants and collaborations. This matters more in places like Europe and the less ‘Americanized’ UK/AUS/NZ universities.

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  5. Anonymous

    No, yes, no.

    A conference itself matters not at all. What can matter is meeting people. This is true both because those people can give you real feedback that makes your work better AND because the people that you meet can mention how interesting your work is/impressive it is to their friends and colleagues. I have recommended people/championed people that I don’t know personally to parts of the hiring process both because I met them at a conference and they stood out to me and on the recommendation of people I trust who met them at conferences but don’t otherwise know them. It doesn’t get them the job (they have to have otherwise super impressive work etc). But it does get them a second look in the pile, and when the pile is 200 people, that matters.

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  6. Anonymous

    On the one hand, of course it is better to have publications in great journals than to have a large list of conference presentations and NO publications. On the other hand, if you have no conference presentations then readers of your c.v. may wonder: “what’s up wit dat”. A normal part of our profession is presenting our work publicly to our peers. So I would strongly recommend presenting at conferences on a regular basis (once a term or once a year, at least). It gives a signal. For example, for a philosophy of science candidate it is good to see that you have presented at the PSA or the BJPS (or, to a lesser degree, at the SPSP, EPSA or the LM&PS conferences). (if you do not know what those strings of letters mean then you are probably not a philosophers of science). If, instead, you are only presenting at local conferences, or workshops hosted by your own (non-elite) university, or at graduate conferences, then you are giving a different signal. I am not a gregarious person, but I have enjoyed many conferences. I have some very good friends that I have met at conferences, and we now even plan our research activities around meeting each other at other conferences.

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  7. Anti-role model

    Just one datum, but:

    I’ve struck out on the market the last two years. (This past job cycle, I had the PhD in hand). As all know, the market sucks, so there’s no telling why I didn’t get more interviews. But, personally, I was most nervous/self-conscious about having no presentations listed on my CV.

    I gave no conference presentations in grad school because, years ago, I read on this very blog that pubs matter much more than presentations. I interpreted this (naively!) to mean that if you have pubs, presentations don’t matter at all. Traveling for conferences is a hassle, so I didn’t bother. (Fear of public speaking was a deterrent as well.) Instead, I focused on pubs and my dissertation. This paid off; I have two publications in specialist journals, two R&Rs at top-10ish generalist journals, several additional papers in development, my dissertation wowed my committee and was nominated for an award at my uni, etc.

    None of that got me a job, permanent or temporary! I now view having no presentations as a big mistake. If I could restart grad school, I would aim for two presentations per year and beef up that section of my CV (especially since presentations are way easier to rack up than pubs). Don’t be like me!

    (Caveat: My PhD is from a non-top-50 PGR school. This, I’m sure, has played a much larger role in me getting no interviews. But you can’t control where you get into grad school. You can control how presentations you do or don’t rack up.)

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    1. Anonymous

      Just one …
      I think think the key challenge you faced was due to the relative ranking of your department. I graduated from a low ranking PhD program, but one in the bottom of the Leiter ranking. Basically, you are NOT competitive at all until you have your PhD. But the fact that you have not been presenting at conferences will continue to work against you. So try to get out there.

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  8. Anonymous

    To me (and to many people as far as I see), conference presentations show little about the quality of your research. Presenting at prestigious conferences is no guarantee that a paper will appear in a good journal, and many presentations never make it into print at all. When search committees evaluate the research of job candidates, what ultimately matters is the quality of the work itself. Conference presentations, for this reason, carry little weight.

    However, conference presentations can tell people other aspects of your research. For example, it might indicate your work pattern as a philosopher, if you demonstrate a clear pipeline from conference presentations to published papers. This could be some positive trait as a philosopher. They could indicate the breadth of your research interests. Suppose you only published on topic X, but had conference presentations on topic Y. This at least shows that you have some serious interests in Y. This could be something people like (e.g. the hiring department wants this person to teach courses in Y). Also, if you are a regular presenter at conferences on innovative teaching and pedagogy, it would indicate that you are serious about teaching.

    So, I would say that conference presentations do not tell much about how good a philosopher you are, but it could say something about what kind of a philosopher you are. And sometimes the latter matters.

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  9. Practice, practice, practice

    Besides networking and feedback, you also get practice giving talks, and also seeing them, and that’s really really important because assuming you get a campus visit, your job talk makes a big difference.
    Also, conference presentation lines can add credence to your AOSs or projects in your research statement when you lack publications there and only have papers under review.

    Reply
  10. Anonymous

    I think all the things that the first question-asker asked are compatible with one another, as with Marcus’ reply.

    (1) Conference presentations _in general_ are only directly important in the non-absence way. Absence of any conference publication might raise a red flag, but above that, they don’t really matter.
    (2) Conference presentations are indirectly important for networking and paper-feedback.
    (3) Exceptions to (1) are very prestigious conferences that have their own conference proceedings. (MadMeta, Sinn und Bedeutung, CogSci, …)
    (4) If the decision is strictly between investing time in publication and investing time in conference, it should be publication. But in practice, the decision isn’t really between these two, since, per (2) (and (3)), a decision for conference-time-investment can be a decision for publication-time-investment.

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  11. Anonymous

    I don’t think that conference presentations matter much as an item on your CV. But most positive experiences I’ve had on the market had at least something to do with having previously made a positive impression on someone in a conference talk. Do them if you think they might help in that way, don’t feel the need to do them if not. (Not that we’re the best at judging this for ourselves — maybe ask your advisor, or give it a shot or two as a test run.)

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  12. recentlytenured

    I agree with everyone’s points above about the greater benefits of conferencing being the networking and feedback and practicing of public speaking. However, I would also say that as someone who has been on hiring committees a couple of times now, I would find it pretty troubling if someone was applying for a job without *any* conferences.

    Publications matter more, definitely, but it also matters (at least to me and my colleagues, FWIW) that you are seen to be *trying* to engage with the larger professional philosophical community. One of the things we’re trying to assess is what kind of colleague you will be. That’s tough, especially before the flyout. It is illegal, where I work, to consider ‘fit’ (insofar as this was used as ‘cover’ for sexism, racism, ableism, etc.), which is why you need to have some evidence on paper that you are willing to do the work of being in intellectual community with others. It is already hard to apply for an assistant professor gig alongside people who have graduated a while back and have been postdocs or in temporary positions for a while (they’ll have more pubs/teaching experience, probably), but if you don’t look, on paper, like you’re trying to collaborate with other people, that will be a mark against you.

    Like all things in life and in philosophy, you need to sort out a reasonable balance for you. My advice is to do some (whatever you can reasonably afford) conferences per year, with the caveat that graduate conferences count for virtually nothing so don’t do them if you need to be selective for time-commitment or financial reasons. The APA is a safe bet, if you live in North America. Other professional ones (especially specialist ones) are ideal for all the reasons previously discussed in the above comments.

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  13. Daniel

    I barely pay attention to the conference section when I read a CV. I feel like it mostly tracks how much money and how few teaching responsibilities someone has, plus other things I don’t care about (how much free time they have generally, e.g. whether they’re a caretaker for anyone; how much they enjoy conferences; etc.). But I agree with everyone who says conferences can be useful in many other ways (networking is a very big one).

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  14. Mike Titelbaum

    As everyone has said, there are lots of benefits of going to conferences, both philosophical and professional. But confining attention to how it looks on a CV, I would second “recentlytenured” and say that when I’m on a search committee, and a candidate has literally never presented at a conference, that raises questions. (Those questions can possibly be answered in other parts of the file.)

    It’s also worth saying that some conferences are very difficult to get into, and acceptance there can mean something. Just to name a couple I know well, if your paper got into MadMeta or FEW, I’d be impressed to see that on your CV.

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  15. Anonymous

    Lots of good responses already so I’ll just add this: While having or not having even the most prestigious conference on your cv won’t get or lose you a job, doing some conference presentations is an important aspect of your professionalization. Being able to speak well about your research in front of other experts is a skill you need–not least in order to give a convincing job talk. So, getting conference experience is definitely worthwhile. It is also a way to build a pipeline of papers that you are drafting, presenting, revising, sending for journal review, etc. Plus you get to hear other philosophers talk about their research, which is an efficient way to learn a lot, and to get to know what is happening in your subfield.

    FWIW, getting some teaching experience is more important than getting some conference experience, but that’s rarely a tradeoff one would have to make. The reality is, to be competitive these days, candidates need to be solid in all areas and stellar in one or two. That’s true even at my regional R2, so I’m sure it is even more the case at R1s.

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  16. Anonymous

    I agree with what others have been saying. I also think that the value of conferences, especially for graduate students, should not be understood in terms of a CV line-item (as others say, it just doesn’t matter that much), but in terms of the major benefits that conferences can provide for developing your work, introducing you to your scholarly community, and giving you practice presenting and fielding questions from people who aren’t in your home department. In my dept we regularly encourage graduate students to present at conferences because we think it’s good for their philosophical development (not because we think the resume line-item will help them). For instance, it teaches them to briefly explain and motivate their dissertation projects to other people not in their department, which is *majorly* important for them to figure out how to do. This strikes me as one of those things that really only matters for the job market, insofar as it matters for your development as a philosopher capable of explaining to other philosophers what you do, why it matters, and how it relates to stuff they might care about. So: conferences don’t matter (as a ‘thing to collect’), but also matter a lot (as an educational/philosophical opportunity).

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  17. Anonymous

    I have some additional perspectives as someone who has secured a string of postdocs but not yet a permanent job.

    Teaching faculty positions might not care about conferences, but those hiring postdocs often do expect that you go to a variety of conferences. This is partly to facilitate a high research output and partly to advertise their grant project, when relevant. Also, if you apply for your own grant at any point (more relevant on the European than the US market) then you will need to demonstrate that you know which conferences to present your results at.

    Also consider your future social life upon leaving grad school. Once you move to a new job, your built in peer group dissipates. Having a network of conference friends can be really helpful both socially and professionally. I have recently moved countries and am working in a department that doesn’t seem to have much of a social life. However, I can at least see various friends a few times a year when I travel to conferences. I also have a network of people who I can non-awkwardly email if I suddenly need a professional favor. Some academics (including myself) end up on a career path where you have to move countries repeatedly, and it can’t be overstated how useful it is to know at least one person who is from or moved to a given country and can help you with practical matters in a pinch. Going to conferences is one of the best ways to grow your international network.

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  18. Sam Elgin

    There’s absolutely no harm in putting it on your cv. However, I would be extremely surprised if any conference – no matter how prestigious – got you a job. If I saw two candidates that were exactly alike in every respect, except that one of them had good conferences listed on their cv while the other did not, I suppose it might make a difference. But that’s really only in the case of a tie, and I have never encountered a tie.

    Where I think conferences can help is with networking – and with making your work known. I don’t know if others have a term for this, but I think that there is something of a ‘silent market.’ Well before job market season, some candidates develop reputations (sometimes, very good ones). I’ve sometimes heard it described as ‘the field’ determining that so-and-so is very promising: the sort who has a name that search committees recognize and think ‘Oh…THEY’RE applying!’ Doing well on the silent market can be very beneficial for your prospects.

    I don’t think there’s any magic trick to developing a good reputation across the profession, but it depends upon impressing many more people than are at your home institution. Even publications only go so far. There are a lot of papers published – even in good journals. These are very impressive on your cv (and certainly help your application), but there’s a chance that search committees wont have read them before you apply, and so wont immediately recognize your name.

    There are a few ways that this sort of reputation spreads – some of which are (at least partly) out of your control. When I meet up with friends from other departments, I sometimes ask if they have graduate students they are excited about, and hear names of some stand-out people. I imagine I’m not alone in having these conversations.

    One thing you have more control over is conferences. You can show up, present your work, and comment on other peoples’ work (or even just be an active audience member). The goal is to develop a strong reputation in the field – not to have a line on your cv (which I really don’t think does very much). Make sure you prepare and practice, anticipate likely objections and have well-thought-out replies, etc.

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  19. Charles Pigden

    One thing to add to the comments. I agree that a conference presentation won’t do you much good as a mere line on your CV and that the chief point of attending conferences is a) to learn (I have certainly learned a lot from attending conference presentations, especially those NOT in my area) and b) to make friends, make contacts and to get yourself known. But I would add that a successful presentation – that is a presentation in which you say something interesting and get noticed for saying it – can open up opportunities and help get you a job. I can’t say for sure since I was not privy to the relevant deliberations, but I am inclined to think that the three successful presentations that I gave at the Australasian Association for Philosophy conferences during the early eighties a) led to an invitation to write an article on ‘Naturalism’ for Peter Singer’s Companion to Ethics’ (a big feather in my cap and for many years my most cited paper); and b) pushed me up search committees’ lists when applying for a job. They were all big-target papers and all fairly controversial. All were on Meta-ethics, though one was also on Logic, but Meta-ethics is a fairly large speciality in which lots of non-meta-ethicists take an interest. So I got good audiences and good word-of-mouth. I suspect that the habit I developed of attending plenty of papers OUTSIDE my AOS as well inside my AOS and of trying to ask an intelligent question at every paper I attended also helped. Perhaps I should add that it was in Australasia that I wanted/was condemned to seek a job and that the Australasian philosophical world is relatively small, which means that it easier for somebody to make their mark.
    PS. My conference presentations from those years (1982-1984) have found their way into print and have subsequently been well-cited (a total of 302 citations to date) but they were published only AFTER I had got my first two jobs (a one-year postdoc and a temporary lectureship).

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  20. Anonymous

    To add to Charles’ remark, presenting at conferences is a good way to get invited to workshops, conferences, and colloquia (and more). Me and my colleagues routinely invite early career people to our events who impressed us with conference presentations we happened to hear. Now, this cuts both ways – if you are out there giving sloppy presentations I won’t be inviting you any time soon. In fact, I experienced a case where a young scholar gave a paper – the content was fine (by my lights), but the presentation was off-putting. Afterwards, I heard a number of senior people say how bad the presentation was (and how bad the presenter was as a philosopher). The speaker kept emphasizing throughout the presentation that their presentation was not well-worked out. I do not believe the presenter really believed this, and if they did, they should not have been presenting it, and certainly not telling us throughout the presentation that this is the case.

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