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Handling/explaining ongoing serious medical issues on the job-market?

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

I’m a PhD student in the US. I was supposed to go on the market last year, but unfortunately developed a very serious health condition, for which I’ve been receiving treatment (lots of surgery etc). I’ve basically been fully off work for the last 12 months, although I’ve stayed enrolled as a student for visa / health insurance reasons (fortunately my department has been very understanding). My condition is stable, so I’m hoping to apply for jobs this Fall.

I’m wondering if people have advice on whether to disclose this leave of absence to hiring committees / ask my letter writers to mention it? On the one hand, I want to explain why I’ve been so unproductive in the last year. I would also require some disability-related accommodations if I was offered a flyout. On the other hand, I don’t want departments to see my health as a risk to my productivity going forward, especially since it probably is(!) — the situation is unfortunately still very uncertain, and will require at least three more major surgeries in the next couple of years.

I would welcome all thoughts, especially from those doing the hiring! I’m also curious to hear from other people who’ve been through prolonged medical sagas at this stage of their careers.

Do any readers have any helpful insights or experiences to share?

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7 responses to “Handling/explaining ongoing serious medical issues on the job-market?”

  1. Anonymous

    I can see it going multiple ways. Probably, I’d say you are by no means obligated to divulge the extent of your disability or the nature of it to any potential employer. Simply ask for your accommodations for flyouts, etc., if you are offered those. As far as having to take time off for surgeries, the department survived without you there, so they’ll survive with you being less-than-fully productive. Departments hire TT positions for the long haul, not the next 3 years. As for disclosing it for why you were not productive the past year, I’m not sure. On the one hand, I am not sure how much one can tell this information from your CV. They won’t be looking at whether you took classes, and so long as your dissertation has been or will be defended by the time you begin your potential job, they will have assumed that you have been diligently working on that during the past year. Second, if you have publications, these things take years to bear fruit, and so maybe even your papers were published in this past year, which makes it seem like you were appropriately productive.

    You are legally entitled to protection for your disability, including accommodations and leave. Any department that is not willing to work with you on that is one that you don’t want to be placed, since it is indicative of a culture of disability discrimination.

    Reply
  2. Anonymous

    Don’t tell the search committee anything. Disclose only if you need accomodations and only using the confidential channels available to do so. You do not owe anyone any sort of explanation about personal issues, including health, and it is absolutely no one’s business, except maybe HR and the admin who make accomodations. I think people forget that academia is like literally any other job, and any other professional setting, even though the jobs are hard to get. I say this as someone who worked in industry and is not a TT prof, who is very frustrated by the fact that it seems to be forgotten a lot that it is just a job, not your identity, no matter how much BS there is about it.

    Reply
    1. Anonymous

      *is now a TT prof. Oops!

      Reply
  3. Anonymous

    First things first: if your heart is really still in academia considering, I highly advise delaying going on the market until you have a record that is competitive to get you a tenure track job (if you can afford to do so/have sufficient teaching/are capable of working another e.g. service job). The penalty for taking an extra year is much smaller than the penalty for having a weak teaching/publication record. If committees ask about time to defend (unlikely they will), just say ‘major life events’, ‘family health difficulties’, etc; you will not be pressed to elaborate.

    Second: in general, unless you are a superstar, I advise against mentioning medical concerns before you get the job. As someone with a serious chronic health condition, I can say that committees do, in my experience, discriminate, whether or not it’s legal and whether or not there are sufficient grounds to prove that they do so in court. In practice, it’s all whispers and insinuations of the sort you couldn’t really subpoena–but faculty members, as you say, will infer from your past health issues the potential of future health issues, and wonder about your future productivity.

    Third: as the first commentator says, once you get the job you are entitled to accommodations. The standard for them to discriminate against you in hiring is going to be much lower than the standard required to discriminate against you in e.g. tenure review, because very subtle judgments are enough to tip hiring against you, whereas there’s this whole evidentiary record in tenure review. The American ADA is quite generous by global standards, the purview for accommodations may well include a range of things spanning from all remote teaching (where possible) to an extended clock for tenure review (seriously, I’ve seen this provided by a university office before). But you have to make it across the line first. Once you do so, it’ll become between you and an HR department which is used to handling these things, rather than you and the Department.

    Reply
    1. Anonymous

      Well said!

      Reply
  4. Anonymous

    One line in the cover letter would be more than enough. “I feel I should mention that the dip in my productivity in [academic year] was due to a series of medical problems, just so the committee doesn’t worry about my output.” But I don’t think you even need that. If your file is otherwise strong, they probably won’t even notice. Many people have a dip in output during their final year of grad school, since that is when they are finishing up their dissertations.

    Don’t request accommodations until you get the campus interview. Normally, the central HR office will contact you after you get invited, and those are the folks to whom you make the request for accommodations. They are supposed to make sure the department follows them without disadvantaging you. BTW, if you need frequent breaks, make that an accommodation request or the visit schedule might end up very packed. If you don’t hear from HR after the invite, tell the search chair that you need disability accommodations (without details at first) and they will tell you the process from there.

    Don’t mention future medical needs. Once they hire you, they are required to give you paid medical leave. Before that, who knows how that info might influence decisions.

    Reply
  5. Anonymous

    I would not mention it, if it does not contribute to the job. Not because disability is bad or something, but because anything not contributing to the job should not be included in the materials, including the job-impeding ones. e.g., I wouldn’t mention i have time-consuming hobbies or kids.

    Speaking of this, I just remembered our last search used kids as a reason against a great candidate! 🙁

    Reply

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