Job Searching

Long-time readers know that I wear many hats: rhetorician, composition specialist, early Brit lit expert, pop culture guru, etc. It’s been a problem, as I have mentioned in Too Far Afield?

I finally decided to explain the multiplicity of interests as my being an instructor of writing and reading, in all its many forms. But that doesn’t really completely cover what I do.

For instance, there is little that the average academic would recognize as new media experience in the traditional instruction of reading and writing. Yet, I have presented and assigned communicative works of art that are not necessarily paper and ink essays and yet present the same, similar, or even better information. That isn’t part of that identification either.

College Ready Writing author Dr. Lee Skallerup has been dealing with those same issues. And she has made a decision, a life-changing decision, an ENORMOUS decision, just last Thursday.

Dr. Skallerup has decided to become (even more than she already is) a digital humanities specialist. Such a thing might (will, I hope) subsume all the other work she does under one umbrella and allow her to be as diverse as she and her students need while remaining specialized in a sense that academics would recognize, even if it is in a field most of them do not understand.

I was thinking of this in terms of graduate students particularly, but if you are looking for a job, you may need to do this too. Or if you are one of those people who dithers around thinking of all you could work on but never working on anything, you could use this too.

From Robert’s Rules of Writing by Robert Masello, rule number 96:

[O]nce you do make a decision, and pick one project and stick to it, you’ll notice something strange happens.
…
You become a virtual magnet for related information and ideas. Suddenly, you will start discovering, all around you, all sorts of juicy tidbits–observations, quotes, statistics, stories–that directly relate to, and nicely amplify, the project you are working on. You’ll stop at a yard sale and find an old book, for fifty cents, which provides great background research…. You’ll open the morning paper and come across a piece in the science section that neatly explains a rather arcane bit of business….

The more you focus in on one piece of work, the more attuned you are to everything around you that might help. And there’s a lot.

While I found this more true about my novel than my research, which would match up with his “nonfiction tome,” it is something that students need to be told so that they will
1. choose a topic and
2. start seeing what floats to the top around them.

The best line, and its explanation, comes immediately following the quote above.

Writers are scavengers–we find all kinds of odds and ends and either paste them into what we’re working on, or into notebooks for later use.

Karen Kelsky wrote about How to Talk Like a Professor in her article Dissertation Limits

Here is a partial list: They talk about journal articles and the frustrations of long journal response times. They talk about conferences and the frustrations of getting the paper done in time. They talk about grants and the frustrations of institutional review boards. They talk about teaching and the frustrations of apathetic students. They talk about graduate students and the frustrations of inadequate TA funding. They talk about their large courses and the frustrations of dealing with the dean. They talk about parking and the frustrations of the football program.

Inside Higher Ed has Karen Kelsky’s article Dissertation Limits, which is an excellent work for graduate students to read.

Here are some points that I felt especially poignant/relevant/fascinating.

The heart of her argument:

What young scholars don’t realize is that the more they talk about the dissertation, the worse they do on the job market. …

The fact is, nobody wants to hear about your dissertation.

Yes, they want to know that you wrote one. …

Beyond that, they don’t want to hear about it.

So what do they mean when they say, tell us about your dissertation?

What a dissertation does is bring about tangible and visible results in the world. What are these results, you ask? Here is a partial list:

It intervenes in major debates in the field.
It generates important peer-reviewed publications
It qualifies for large and prestigious grants and awards.
It provokes dynamic discussion at symposiums and conferences.
It transforms efficiently into a book, preferably at an influential press.
It inspires interesting and unconventional classroom teaching.
It catalyzes an original second major project.
The dissertation does the very things that faculty like to talk about — publications, grants, contracts, teaching, and new research.

Until you transform your dissertation bladdedy-blah into short, pithy, punchy statements about refereed journal articles, book plans, conference papers, prestigious grants and fellowships, innovative teaching and new research, and learn how to express all of these in a dynamic (not static), dialogic (not monologic), symmetrical (not hierarchical) manner to your would-be future colleagues, you are dooming yourself to fail, forever, on the academic job market.

Fascinating idea.

And, I think, very true. Especially in its reference to the guilt graduate advisors feel while dealing with the stress of the 500 applicants for their single position.

I don’t think I ever talked about my dissertation until after I’d been hired. The reason for that is that it is done, was done, has been done and I’m on to the things that make a colleague. So the dissertation talk isn’t why it took me three years to get a full-time job. But I can see that it might be a problem for newly minted PhDs who have just spent two to six years of their lives on it.

“One of my old profs once told me that a PhD program isn’t about who is the smartest; it’s about who is determined to succeed.” –@trentmkays (Twitter)

Several years ago, when I joined Facebook, I friended old friends and colleagues. One of those was a friend who was also the chair at a college I knew well.

As I was looking for a position in my city, I would post on fb whenever I had an interview. I would ask for prayers, encouragement, good vibes, blessings, whatever positive things could be sent my way.

I was very encouraged by my job search because I was getting interviews and second interviews in positions which had hundreds of candidates.

When a job came up at the college of my fb friend, I applied. I was not even considered for the position. The reason? My friend/chair said, “If she can’t get a job when she’s been a finalist twelve times in Big City, there must be something wrong with her.”

Why did she think that? Her college had 5 applicants for the position they advertised. She assumed, very wrongly, that all colleges and universities were receiving about the same number of applicants for positions. Imagine if I was one of a pot of 48 people for 12 different jobs and never got one. That would not say great things about me, or it would say REALLY great things about at least 12 of the other people.

Thankfully she was speaking with another friend and that friend had job searched in Big City for five years, before she went to work at the college with my friend/chair. She explained to friend/chair that the jobs I was applying for had 250+ and that my having made it to the finalists 12x was a BIG deal.

I did finally get a ft position in Big City. But it was very painful to know that my friend had used my fb posts against me.

Be careful what you post on facebook. The context is not always as clear as you think it is.

Here is a model of discourse analysis on Facebook that was presented by Kate Retzinger:

Escape the Ivory Tower makes a recommendation that I require for my business writing students, but one which I think would be particularly useful in an English majors capstone course: “one of the best ways to explore your options is to actually go out and scan job boards, company job postings, and anywhere else you see jobs listed.”

Why is this necessary? It is necessary for us as professors.

Because we live in a world of strict credentialing and clear pathing, we don’t see the various serendipitous ways that people get and become qualified for jobs. We don’t see the ways jobs are more about skills and fit than they are about degrees.

But outside of academia, jobs are being invented daily that don’t have paths or credentials, because the jobs themselves didn’t even exist yesterday. But something changed and now we need someone to do this particular set of things. Voila – job.

And think. Our students have been students for twelve, fourteen, sixteen, eighteen years. They know little else. Sending them to the job postings is a good way to get them thinking about how they are going to make a living.

Most people don’t have a husband supporting them while they work full-time for part-time pay and spend over half a year’s ft salary going to conferences in order to get a full-time position. (I did. But most people don’t.)

Sell Out Your Soul has “The Ultimate Guide to Finding Jobs as an English Major.”

The problem is that academia organizes the world by subjects. But the world isn’t organized by subjects. It’s organized by skills.

This is an amazing insight. And it’s hard for students to understand this point of view because they have been ensconced in academia all their lives. Their heads are organized by subjects. As a business writing professor, I know this is true, because the students have no trouble organizing a chronological résumé, but a skills résumé seems to be exceedingly difficult.

The author of the post, Michael LaRocca, used Michael Edmondson and Peter Abrams’ book How Liberal Arts Majors Can Succeed in Today’s Economy: A Workbook to get a job outside of academia making good money.

LaRocca interviewed Edmondson and there are some thoughtful and useful points in the discussion.

I remember thinking that there should have been a course in college about this. Everybody should learn how to translate their liberal arts education into the business world.

I think that the capstone class for English majors would be a really good place for us to teach that at my new university, where I will be teaching graduate students in rhetoric and composition and (hopefully eventually) the capstone class.

I want kids to major in English, Philosophy, and History. It’s really important. They are valuable degrees that can be used in business, marketing, and all types of fields.

The problem is that liberal arts degrees are not marketed at all. Universities, professors, and liberal arts departments have no idea what they are doing. Not one clue. That’s because the only people teaching these students are professors. And professors only know academia.

Something to think about, though he is wrong about the professors only knowing academia. Dr. Skallerup has a post on her pre-academic jobs. I am sure many others of us have also worked outside academia.

Dr. Davis’ short non-higher ed résumé:
waitress (2 years, one pre- and one post-graduate school)
McDonald’s front counter (after PhD coursework completed)
bookstore clerk (’cause I am a bibliophile, you know)
secretary and administrative assistant (2 years, in a foreign country, using two foreign languages)
translator
editor of two journals (one in ministry and one in higher education)
copy editing work (while always part-time, I have copy edited multiple user manuals, brochures, etc)
elementary school teacher (six years)
middle and high school teacher (nine years, including high school biology and history)

Dr. Skallerup, at College Ready Writing, has an interesting post on Real-World Experience, Teaching Contingently, and Academia.

The whole thing is interesting, but the part I am responding to is this:

We are told, repeatedly, not to include any sort of non-academic (or tenuously academic) positions in our job applications. We also need to police our non-academic interests (be it past paid employment or current interests and hobbies) lest we appear unfocused or lacking the dedication necessary to make it as an academic. Never mind that for most of us who are off the tenure track, the second job is a necessity and our hobbies and interests get sidelined because of a lack of time and resources. So when, as an academic, we appear single-minded or narrowly focused in our pursuits, professional or otherwise, we need to take some blame.

Skallerup knows that I’ve been where she is now. She also knows that I am one of those people referred to as unfocused.

Non-standard Items on my CV

My latest CV, at least the latest one sent out to a college, has a list of items which show that I am not focused on a single research area or area of interest. It lists my copy editing experience, my community service, and non-academic work experience. The copy editing is mostly relevant, since I am in rhetoric and composition, but the other work and community service is not at all related to my academic career.

Also, the most-recently-used CV lists additional graduate courses I have taken outside of my degree plans. (Why, yes, I do like school. How can you tell?) I actually have 39 hours of graduate hours outside my degrees, in four interesting, but not exactly related to my degree, fields. Six of the hours were in technical writing, so that’s really in my field, but not from my degree-granting college and the hours were garnered after I left my PhD institution. Even if you leave those out, though, I still have 33 hours of classes outside of my degree, outside of my field, and mostly only very tangentially related to my teaching.

Why did I add them?

I added the community service because community service is a requirement for tenure at the school to which I was applying. It seemed to me to make sense to show them that I am involved in the things they value.

I added the copy editing because I figured it could be related to business writing, which I like to teach.

The overview of my non-academic work experience (or really all my experiences, but simply with a line each) was to account for the large gap in time between my MA and my PhD.

The extra graduate courses, while mostly outside my field, do relate to one of the types of classes I wanted to put myself forward for teaching at this particular SLAC and/or show that I have experience with one of the aspects of the position which is unusual and was highlighted in the job ad.

Non-standard Listing of Conference Presentations

To further complicate this particular CV, instead of simply listing all the conference presentations I had done in the previous two years by date (which is what most people do, I know), I organized mine by topic. I am not focused on a single aspect of my teaching and the conference presentations show the diversity of my interests. These include technology, composition and rhetoric, professional writing, teaching and scholarship, literature (Old English and 20th C American), speculative fiction, and creative writing.

Results

I have no idea if the CV’s unusual presentation had any repercussions. I don’t know if anyone disliked the shotgun approach to scholarship indicated by both my presentations and my publications (which were listed more normally by type of text–article, book, chapter, creative writing piece).

I do know that the chair of the department which received this CV said, “She truly is a generalist.” This didn’t turn out to be that great a thing, since they want a rhet and comp person.

However, I did get an interview and a job offer from this unusually transparent and not particularly standard or academic CV. So, while I think it is true that in general people shy away from the non-standard, obviously I did not and, equally obviously, it did not hurt and may have helped me get an interview and a job offer for that position.