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Why “open AOS/AOC” job ads?

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

I don’t really understand TT positions that have an open AOS/AOC. Why do departments advertise these? And what should the applicant’s strategy be in applying given that they don’t know what the department wants or needs vis-a-vis research/teaching expertise?

I’ve repeatedly heard that these are often de facto “Core: Language, Mind, Metaphysics, Epistemology” searches where the committee may want to leave their options open if there is a really attractive candidate in another area. But again, this is just what I’ve heard.

Do any readers have helpful insights to share?

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7 responses to “Why “open AOS/AOC” job ads?”

  1. anon UK

    I can only speak from experience, but my department has run these searches and I was hired through an open search. For us, they aren’t ‘de facto Core: Language, Mind, Metaphysics, Epistemology’. We genuinely were open. We ran them because we felt that we didn’t have any clear or overwhelming gaps in our research or teaching provision. We’ve hired people in “Language, Mind, Metaphysics, Epistemology” through them, but also ethics and history.

    My advice to candidates would be similar to non-open positions. You still want to give a sense of what you would bring that is new/interesting to the department, such as how you might help cover what you see as a gap in their teaching/research provision, or how you might bring two areas of research together, or how you might connect elsewhere in the uni. You can, I think, be more honest about what you work on though than when applying for non-open jobs. You don’t know what they might be interested in, so your best option is just to pitch what you think is the best/most interesting things and hope they agree (rather than twisting things to try to fit an AOS/AOC).

    Of course, it might be that the department has some secret need/want out of the search, but this can be the case for non-open positions too. And some open searches might be as Marcus suggests, but at least some are genuinely fully ‘open’.

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  2. Anonymous

    I don’t know how universal this is, but I have heard that some departments want to hire the best candidate on the market – regardless of their subfield. These might be departments that already have enough faculty to provide coverage on all core areas (they arent looking for a specific required class to be taught that none of them can teach) – but are open to which subfield they develop expertise in. This isn’t to say that subfield plays no role whatsoever in their decision-making process – but they typically don’t want subfield match to be a reason for an excellent candidate not to apply. If the AOS/AOC is fully open, Id recommend sending along your application and seeing what happens.

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  3. Anonymous

    Two motivations come to mind: (1) a department cannot agree on what they want, and so they plan to work it out as applications come in; (2) a department thinks there is some way to just hire the “best” philosopher, and that such a determination can be made independent of specialization simply by things like journal rankings and prestige.

    In the case of (1), I don’t think a candidate can magically suss out the internal workings of such a committee. They can, however, look closely at the language of the job ad, the program’s descriptions, the current faculty specializations, and try to draw some inferences, addressing how they meet potential needs in their cover letter. For instance, if a major requires coursework in X but no faculty member has an AOS in X, then one might think that strengths in research/teaching of X are valued. This is not guaranteed, however, as sometimes faculty may have decided that hiring is a good time to change the program and remove X from the requirements.

    In the case of (2), looking at the profiles of the faculty can give some sense of what sorts of publications and institutional pedigree the department values, although there’s not much an applicant can do to change these features of their own application. The challenge is that if a department thinks that only “core” or “generalist” journals demonstrate top qualifications as a philosopher, certain specializations that are more difficult to place in these journals (perhaps some history, non-Western philosophy, more applied/interdisciplinary work) will be relegated to lower in the stack.

    These two motivations aren’t mutually exclusive, of course.

    Reply
  4. Anonymous

    I remember when I was on the market many years ago, one of UC schools had an open call – open AOS and open Rank. My rejection letter said they had 600 applicants.
    I think these calls are generally attempts to get very strong applicants – in cases where a department does not have a specific need.
    On another issue – if you see an ad with a very specific (and idiosyncratic) set of AOS and AOCs, it often means there is an inside candidate. The school is merely following the letter of the law

    Reply
  5. Anonymous

    Coming from a small school without a philosophy major or significant research expectations, we would do hires like this because we focused on teaching needs. So long as certain (mostly introductory) courses could be taught, the candidate’s research specialization didn’t really matter to us.

    Reply
  6. Anonymous

    Often the open AOS/AOC jobs are at the fanciest places who are either looking to court (if not hire) one of the hot/brilliant people on the market coming out of grad school, or they just are refilling a line (e.g. due to retirement or someone leaving) and if they don’t at least try to hire, they could perhaps lose the line. Or, they are genuinely open to hiring in all areas because they can’t agree at first on what they want, so they leave it open area to see who applies.

    I don’t think applicants should think too hard about how to apply for those, since there is almost nothing you can do to fine-tune your applications (unless you have some insider info from folks at that department, or can see they are down a few faculty in your areas). Just apply and hope that somehow you get to the short list.

    Reply
  7. Anonymous

    My department has run open AOS/AOC searches.

    There are several reasons for this: (1) we are a fairly large department without particular teaching/research/graduate supervision needs to fill; (2) we are a research department, so we are looking for colleagues with a strong publication record or potential to produce one; and (3) we are in a geographical area that might not be a first choice for some candidates.

    Thus, the open AOS/AOC is meant to be as inclusive as possible, in the hope that we will get some extremely strong candidates and get one to take the job. It is not implicitly restricted to LEMMings, and we have hired multiple historians on open searches.

    In my experience (both on search committees, and many years on and off the job market), open AOS/AOC searches, especially at elite places, are kind of an open recruitment call. They want to see what comes in, but do not necessarily need to hire – and in some years, they do not hire at all. Some of these places post job ads for years on end, and hire (or fail to hire) seemingly at random.

    Speaking only for my own department, there is probably not much one can do to tailor their application. Just apply and hope for the best.

    Reply

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