Job Searching

Questions to ask the folks who are interviewing you when they ask if you have any questions. (Note: Do not ask ALL of them.)

Department Chair

* Big picture
o What is your vision for the department/school? Where is it going in the next 5 years? 10?
o When was the last planning exercise? Can I get a copy?
o How does this position fit in to that vision?
o Is the department growing or shrinking?
+ Which subfields?
+ Are there tensions among the subdisciplines?
+ What are current plans for future hires?
* New Faculty Assimilation/Success
o What sorts of programs are available for new faculty members?
+ Formal mentoring?
+ Written faculty handbook?
* Department Administration
o How big is the department?
o Is it unified, or split along disciplinary lines?
o How often does the department meet to discuss departmental business?
o How are decisions made?
o How is chairmanship determined? How long is the term?
* Students
o What kind of graduate students do you attract?
o Where do they go once they finish their degrees?
o Who pays for graduate students? Are there any training grants?
o Do students have a say in search decisions?
o Do students have a say in department administration?
o What interdisciplinary collaborations are already in place? (Are there any training grants, for example)
o How many undergraduate majors come through the program each year?
* Research
o What is available as “set up” money?
o Is there department research support available? Of what kinds?
o Are there vehicles available for field trips/research use?
* Teaching
o What secretarial help is available for working with courses? With grants/papers?
o What is the teaching expectation through time? How many courses?
o Which courses?
o What would this person teach over the next 3 years?
o How much flexibility in what an individual teaches?
o How much flexibility in when courses are scheduled (within a week, within a year)?
o How big are classes? Are teaching loads weighted by the number of students in the classes?
o Is there time to prepare the first course?
o Can I teach a seminar the first semester/quarter?
o Are TAs available? For what courses?
o How much funding is there for courses, particularly new ones?
o How do ideas for new courses get processed?
o What are the teaching labs like?
o Are there computer teaching labs? Software? Support personnel?
* Service
o What non-teaching expectations are there?
o What are the standing department committees?
o How does undergraduate advising work?
o How does graduate advising work?
* Promotion & Tenure
o Are there annual reviews before tenure?
o Who decides on tenure?
o On what criteria are decisions made?
o Are the criteria written down and handed out to new faculty?
o What are the unwritten criteria?
o What percent succeed?
o Is there a tenuring up policy?
o schedule -when do people come up for tenure?
o What are the criteria for promotion to full professor?
* Details
o Can I see the space for this person?
o How much office space, lab space, offices for graduate students?
o How long to remodel? Who pays?
o Ethernet? Networks? Email? Who pays?
o Reprints? Page charges?
o IMPORTANT FOR YOUR SANITY: When will a decision be made? When might I be notified?

Faculty Members

* Big Picture
o What do you like best about this place?
o What do you like least about this place?
o What are you looking for in this new position? (want to know: is there agreement? Or are there opposing ideas?)
o What are hiring priorities for the future?
o What else does a newcomer need to know?
* New Faculty Assimilation/Success
o What sorts of programs are available for new faculty members?
+ when you started
+ now
+ what do you wish you’d known?
* Higher Administration
o How is the [higher] administration? Rigid? Flexible?
o Are they fair?
* Department Administration
o How often does the department meet?
o How are decisions made?
o Do you feel that faculty have an adequate say in day to day operations?
+ In major decisions?
* Graduate & Undergraduate Students
o How about the students? Are they motivated? What do they do after graduation?
o What support is available for graduate student research? Enough computers?
o What support is available for undergrad research?
o Are work study students available from time to time?
o Is there travel support? How often? How much?
o Do all biology majors do research?
o Do they have to submit a thesis?
o Are there any curriculum changes in the works?
o Do grad students with TA’s have time to get their own research done?
o How are most grad students funded?
* Research
o What support is available for research?
o How’s the library? Journal availability? Where do you go for the obscure stuff?
o Does the administration support travel to scientific meetings? How often? How much?
o How much equipment sharing is there?
o Do you feel like this is a congenial environment?
o How much collaboration is there within the department or college?
o How much external collaboration is there? Is this supported by the administration?
o Who does grant book-keeping?
o Is there access to mainframe or UNIX-based computers?
o How much technical support is there for computing?
* Teaching
o What do you teach?
o What is the general teaching expectation through time? How many courses?
o What would you like this person to teach over the next 3 years?
o How much flexibility in what an individual teaches?
o How much flexibility in when courses are scheduled (within a week, within a year)?
o How big are classes? Are teaching loads weighted by the number of students in the classes?
o Can I teach a seminar the first semester/quarter?
o Are TAs available? For what courses?
o How are TAs trained?
o How much funding is there for courses, particularly new ones? Can you buy what you need?
o How do ideas for new courses get processed?
o What secretarial help is available for working with courses? With grants/papers?
o Is this a Mac based or PC based department? What are the student computer labs like?
o Who sets up equipment and washes glassware for teaching labs?
* Responsibilities/Loads
o How are administrative committee responsibilities?
o How about advising?
o How many minor committees for graduate students?
o What percent of your time is spent on teaching, research and service?
o What is the average class size?
o What is the average lab size?
o What is your overall work load?
* Sabbaticals
o What is the policy on sabbaticals? Do they have them? When? Are they automatic?
o How much?
* Promotion & Tenure
o Are there annual reviews before tenure?
o Who decides on tenure?
o On what criteria are decisions made?
o Are the criteria written down and handed out to new faculty?
o What are the unwritten criteria?
o What percent succeed?
o Is there a tenuring up policy?
o schedule -when do people come up?
o What are the criteria for promotion to full professor?
* Details
o How’s the salary?
o How do raises work?
o Are the benefits any good? Are they transferable to other schools?
o What are housing costs?
o Is good housing available?
o What’s it like to live here? Where do most people live? In town? Elsewhere?
o Schools?
o Crime rate?
o Cultural events on campus? Locally?
o Tuition assistance?
o Opportunities for spouse/partner?
o How’s the parking?
o Family leave policies? Maternity coverage? Day care?
o Who pays for photocopying, phone calls, interlibrary loans, faxes, page charges, reprints?

Miscellaneous Questions

* Salary/Benefits
(Ask administration, untenured faculty, or benefits coordinators)
o How much?
o Hard money or soft money?
o What are the fringe benefits like?
+ health insurance. Who pays? What %? How does copay work?
+ maternity coverage/leave. How long a leave is guaranteed?
+ sick leave
+ retirement plans (TIAA-CREF? How do they do it? Matching? Who pays?)
+ any mortgage assistance programs?
* Raises
(Ask administration & untenured faculty members)
o what are the typical ranges?
o On what criteria are raises granted? Who decides?
* Living
o cost of living: high/low?
o housing costs
* Start Up
o How much money for equipment, supplies and travel as “set up” money?
o Can the spending be spread over a number of years, say two or three?
o Summer salary included?
o How about summer salary for undergraduate and graduate students until grants?
o Is there seed money available from the college/university?
* Tenure
o schedule -when do people come up?
o Are there annual reviews before tenure?
o Who decides on tenure?
o On what criteria?
o Are the criteria written down and handed out to new faculty?
o What percent succeed?
o Is there a “tenuring up” policy?

Graduate Students

* Big Picture
o What do you do?
o Why did you come here?
o What do you want to do after you finish?
o What’s the best thing about this department?
o What could be improved?
o What’s the best thing about this institution?
o What could be improved?
o What do you want from the new person?
o What skills/courses/seminars could I offer that would be especially helpful to you?
* Student Life: What’s it like to be a Ph.D. student here?
o How much camaraderie is there among the students of different professors?
o How much say do you have in administrative decisions? Job searches?
o Do students worry about support? How are the TAships? RAs?
o How many students have their own grants?
o Do you have enough money to live on?
o Is there a department social life? Within the grads/postdocs?
* Department Politics
o Do the faculty get along? Are there hierarchies? Clear schisms?
o How do things work day-to-day? Does each professor have their own lab, which works independently of other labs? Or have professors banded together in groups with more shared equipment?
o What do you hear from faculty about:
+ job satisfaction
+ department politics
+ tenure issues
+ salaries
o What do you think about these issues?
* Courses
o What’s a typical junior/senior course like?
o What’s a typical grad course like?
o What classes are hard? How much out of class work is there? Is there a lot of variation among different sections of the same course?
o What’s the grad curriculum, beyond the core courses? Do students take many courses?
o How do you like having required core courses?
o What’s this statistics core course like from a student perspective?
o How big are the classes?
* Teaching
o Do you have time to do your own research when you’re teaching?
o How much teaching does the average student do?
o Do you get trained?
o If so, how?
o Would there be interest in seminars to improve teaching methods?
o Can you take a more active role in teaching, if you want to?
* Research Training
o How many of you had M.S. degrees when you started here?
o How many of you had research experience as undergrads or as technicians?
o Do you feel like you’re exposed to sufficient techniques here?
o Is there support to get training elsewhere if it’s not available here?
o Do you have enough computers/equipment to get your research done?
o What do you need that I could buy with startup funds to help the community?
o Do you have enough time to do your research if you’re also teaching?
* Details
o How’s the food? Beer?
o Do alumni come back and tell you about life after graduation?

Questions to be Prepared For

* In one of my interviews, I was given these four topics in advance:
o Future research plans: what directions do you see your research taking in the next 5-10 years? What will be the topic of your first major research proposal as a new faculty member, and where will you submit it? What balance do you anticipate between field research and lab/office based research? If field work will be important, what field sites would you want to consider in the first few years?
o Education: Given our curriculum needs within the X group, how will you contribute to the undergraduate and graduate curricula? In particular, what graduate course(s) what you like to teach, and what will be your basic teaching model (e.g. lecture, lecture + lab, discussion, etc)?
o Graduate and undergraduate research: How will you engage graduate and undergraduate students in your research program? That is, what style of advising/mentoring will you use?
o Resources: What critical resources do you need in order to establish a successful research program? What critical resources may already be here? What kind of help would you want from the X group, the Department, and the University for you to achieve your goals?
* From Everham & Smallridge, ESA Bulletin Dec 1994
o What is the main point of your dissertation?
o What are your professional goals?
o What is your concept of teaching in a 4-year college as opposed to a research university?
o What specific research will you pursue if you are selected? How do you anticipate funding it?
o How has your experience and training prepared you to teach the courses required?
o What other courses might you teach?
o Why do you want this job?
o Why should they hire YOU?
o What strengths would you bring to the department?
o What would you expect from this department and administration?
o What kind of start-up funds, facilities, and equipment would you need?
o What experiences or interests do you have in college-wide activities and service?
* From an underground primer by Peter Kareiva (UW-Seattle) and Dan Doak (UC-Santa Cruz):
o What research will you be doing when you show up here?
o What projects will you start next?
o Why would you want to come here?
o What teaching would you like to do?
o What is your philosophy of grad student training? How will you support students? What types of projects do you expect them to work on?
o What do you contribution to the department that is not already well covered by the faculty?
o What makes you think you could ever get any outside funding?
o What is the best idea you ever had?
o What do you do? (the 3-5 minute summary of your entire research agenda)
o Where do you see your work going in the next 10-20 years?
* From an underground list of questions used by graduate students at the University of Arizona
o In what areas do you think your work would uniquely contribute to this department?
o With whom in the department do you envision interacting the most? Outside the department?
o What meetings do you attend? What societies do you belong to?
o What do you envision as your ideal lab: # grads, undergrads, postdocs, techs, participation of grads who are not your own students?
o To what degree do you see integrating grad students into your research program?
o Is their work usually closely related to your research focus or is it fairly independent?
o How do you help grad students get started on a project?
o What’s your perspective on grad student funding?
o How would you respond to a student who is floundering (early vs. late)?
o What types of mentoring have you experienced — and what would you do similarly or differently?
o What courses have you taught before?
o What do you see as the major challenges of teaching at a large (small) university?
o What do you want to teach? (grad, undergrad, seminars) Statistics?

from the CHE fora, Romance’s list.

Inside Higher Ed’s “Too Nice to Land a Job” article has this to say:

You are reading a letter of recommendation that praises a candidate for a faculty job as being “caring,” “sensitive,” “compassionate,” or a “supportive colleague.” Whom do you picture?

New research suggests that to faculty search committees, such words probably conjure up a woman — and probably a candidate who doesn’t get the job. The scholars who conducted the research believe they may have pinpointed one reason for the “leaky pipeline” that frustrates so many academics, who see that the percentage of women in senior faculty jobs continues to lag the percentage of those in junior positions and that the share in junior positions continues to lag those earning doctorates.

The research is based on a content analysis of 624 letters of recommendation submitted on behalf of 194 applicants for eight junior faculty positions at an unidentified research university. The study found patterns in which different kinds of words were more likely to be used to describe women, while other words were more often used to describe men.

So, when you are asking folks to write reference letters, it is probably a good idea to show them the article or send them a copy of the study.

I am going through some of the reference letters I know have been sent out.

The closest that a former chair came to the words discussed were: “She is cooperative, conscientious, and reliable.” This was in the middle of a paragraph about my students having respect for me and positive evaluations as well as how I helped the department implement their goals.

A co-worker wrote: [Dr. Davis'] “willingness to collaborate, whether on teaching endeavors or on publications or presentations, will be, I believe, both pleasant and welcome. Your department will benefit from her presence as Suanna would bring the type of “team work” attitude necessary for the sake of facilitating student learning. ”

Is that too close?

At the end of a long letter praising my teaching, another former chair wrote: “In addition, [Dr. Davis] is a personable, intelligent educator who is blessed with abundant literary interest and enthusiasm. She is a scholar who loves to teach, and she enjoys discussing her teaching with her peers. She is pleasant and professional, and she listens carefully and courteously to other people.”

Hmmm. Maybe you should send notes to your reference writers. Or maybe I should send them to mine.

Up-to-date CV
If you update your CV regularly, that is, each time you do something which should be put on the CV, then you will always have an up-to-date CV.

CV Memory
You will also not forget things that were important but become forgotten as you go along. When I was recreating my CV about three years ago, I went to older versions and discovered things that I did not remember having done. But, once I saw the list, I had vague memories associated with the items on the list.

Recently I realized that an encyclopedia article that was accepted was not on my CV. When I went to put it on there, I found out that the editors had not received my contributor’s information. So I need to send that. But I have another item on my vita.

Publications
The good thing about having in-process publications is that you show a pipeline.

I have 27 publications listed on my CV. Seventeen of those are already published. Ten of them have been accepted. In addition, I have a list of four “In Progress” works. One of these has been conditionally accepted; if I get my chair to write a foreword, I will be published. One has been submitted. One has been solicited and I have a solid draft. One has a first draft written.

If a search committee (or tenure review committee) asked to see my in-progress works, I could print off and hand them physical work without panicking. Anything that doesn’t have substance to it does not go on my “In Progress” list. If I am researching, note taking, or coming up with ideas, those are NOT on the list.

Service
I find this area the one I am most likely to forget about. Some people divide their service into three distinct genres: professional, institutional, and community. My lists are divided into Service and Community Service.

Okay, it was. As I wrote that, I decided to see what it would look like divided into three service lists. Now it is.

Professional service has nine items. None of these are particularly impressive. That tells me I need to strive to be more involved professionally.

Institutional service has seventeen items. Although the colleges want us to do this, there is little incentive for having done it.

Community service has six items. Only work which I think is significant is included on this. Some of those would be deleted, depending on the college or university I was sending the CV to.

References
You might suppose that references do not need to be updated. However, mine needed updating this year for two reasons.

First, I needed to change how many years one of my chairs had been my chair. She is no longer my chair, so that number will not continue to increase, but it did between last year and this year.

Second, one of my former chairs is now at another university. I needed to get her new contact information and put it into my CV.

After this year I will add another reference, my new chair. But since I haven’t been reviewed yet, I’m going to leave him off right now.

If you do not move and your references don’t either, then you may not need to review references often. But if you have a line like “has been my chair for x years,” then you will need to review it every year.

I have five chairs listed on my short reference list. I moved. They changed.

On my long reference list I have seven chairs and two non-chairs. One is retired. One is fixing to retire. One is no longer chair and is now an assistant dean.

Even your references may need reviewing.

The Chronicle of Higher Education has an article on the meaning of service in academia and how it should be listed and discussed on a CV.

Of the three typical kinds of service—community service, institutional service, and service to the profession—the first one is the least valued in a university setting, and the last one is the most valued. Often, however, vitas and tenure cases do not clearly distinguish between those very different types of work.

Institutional service—chairing or serving on departmental, college, or university committees and councils—is the most easily understood. After all, it is a standard work assignment, the sort of task expected of every academic.

The confusion over service usually arises from a conflation of community and professional service.

The highest value lies in service to the discipline. Whether you are an editor of a scholarly journal, officer of your national professional organization, coordinator of a scholarly conference, manuscript reviewer for a press or journal, external reviewer for tenure and promotion, or contributor to the discipline in some other capacity, those activities typically receive the most credit in deliberations over tenure, promotion, and performance review.

The article is interesting. I think that a lot of what is discussed within this article is simple confusion. But some of it might be an issue of what is acceptable or labeled as something at one college is not always looked at in the same way at another.

The definitions the author gives are, however, the standard definitions for service.

Top 10 Interview Mistakes is not specifically about jobs in academia, but I think that they are things that folks in academia can also do without even realizing it. I don’t think the four years which have passed between the study and now matter either.

One of the most aggravating interview gaffes noted by IT recruiters was a lack of enthusiasm for the job.

“One of them actually said, ‘I don’t want to work with people. I just want to be left alone to do my job,’” Gabrielson told eWEEK. “Can you imagine the impression that left?”

While a person interviewing for a job at a CC is unlikely to make this mistake, someone interviewing at an R1 might. Yes, you are there to do research, but you also have to interact with your colleagues and students.

There’s a lot more in the article.

It took me a lot longer than I had hoped. In two and a half years I had:

32 job applications
6 phone interviews
9 on-campus interviews
1 job

I was NEVER interviewed at the campus where I had spent eight years teaching whatever courses were needed.

At one school I was told I was too old. I can’t fix that, though I did consider a facelift.

At one school I was told I had no presentations. So I got presentations. That wasn’t really what they wanted either. I did 18 in 18 months.

At another school I was told I had no publications. So I got a book, eleven articles, five reviews, and eight creative writing pieces accepted. That school hired me in the next round. (I felt like a draft pick!)

Teaching is no longer (if it ever was) the main criteria for hiring educators, even at schools where the primary function of the job is teaching.

JIL is the Job Information List on MLA. It is no longer included in the amount that you pay for MLA membership. So I went in and paid half again as much as MLA to be able to access the JIL.

Nope. I still can’t get in.

Why did I pay for it if it is not accessible?

I think it’s just fun to see what is out there. But now I’ve paid for my fun and still can’t access. I guess I’ll contact MLA and see what the problem is.

At least officially it is.

But apparently it’s not September 16 on MLA. The Job Information List is supposed to post the 16th, but it’s not up yet.

Culture Cat has, in her first year practicum syllabus, some recommendations for what must go in the teaching philosophy.

The Teaching Philosophy Statement
When I read a teaching philosophy statement, I want to get answers to these two questions:

1. What specifc skill, more than any other, do you want students to get out of your class?
For writing classes, what kind of writing do you think it’s most important for students
to know how to do? For literature courses, what kind of reading or literary analysis do
you want them to be able to do by semester’s end? Of course we want students to enjoy
writing and to appreciate literature. For a teaching philosophy statement, though,
saying that is a little too easy and obvious. I’m interested in seeing something more
thoughtful and specifc.

2. How do you teach the skill or content you most want students to learn? This part
needs to be a detailed description of an assignment you give students or a classroom
activity you do with students. If it works best to use an anecdote about a particular
student to illustrate your philosophy in practice, give the anecdote with the student’s
identifers changed.

I thought that was good advice.

The syllabus for the practicum is also interesting in terms of looking at how grad students are taught to teach.