{"id":3014,"date":"2008-10-06T08:54:14","date_gmt":"2008-10-06T08:54:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2008\/10\/06\/job-search-criteria-fit-matter\/"},"modified":"2008-10-06T08:54:14","modified_gmt":"2008-10-06T08:54:14","slug":"job-search-criteria-fit-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2008\/10\/06\/job-search-criteria-fit-matter\/","title":{"rendered":"Job Search Criteria: Fit Matters"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over at Terra Sigillata, Abel has a post on the limiting of job searches<\/a> that is an excellent example of the problems with the academic mind-set:<\/p>\n

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The short summary: postdocs and other academic job candidates are disqualifying themselves from even applying for certain positions because:<\/p>\n

1. they don’t feel they meet the job description in the ad<\/p>\n

2. the job is at a “lesser” institution or department<\/p>\n

3. the job is in a place (they think) they’d never want to live<\/p>\n

4. they’d feel bad about turning down a position at a place they know they’d never want to be.<\/p>\n

First things first: in this climate, academic job candidates are lucky to be offered faculty positions anywhere<\/b>. Community colleges big and small, Research I universities, desolate field stations of major universities, #24 of a 24-institution state university system, Bob Jones University. . .anywhere.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This is an excellent example of the toxic effects of the “If you don’t get a tenure-track faculty job, you’re a loser<\/strong>” attitude that permeates academia.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

If that is your attitude, of course, then Abel’s advice is spot on. If you need to have an academic position right now<\/strong>, and nothing else would do, you’re crazy to limit your options based on geography, quality of institution, salary, benefits, or anything else.<\/p>\n

The thing is, though, the choice is rarely between a tenure-track academic job and living on the street eating scraps from a trash can. There are other options, particularly for people with Ph.D.’s in the sciences. (If, on the other hand, you have a Ph.D. in the hermeneutics of liturgical dance in 15th century Cambodia, the situation may not be so rosy…)<\/p>\n

The criteria Abel listed are perfectly legitimate things to take into consideration during a job search. Indeed, you’d be crazy not<\/strong> to take them into account, given the nature of academic jobs. Academia isn’t like the corporate office world, where people naturally expect to change employers three or four times. People do move from place to place, but it’s not that easy to do. For the most part, academics are in it for the long haul– it takes seven years (give or take) to get tenure, and most people who get tenure stay where they are for another ten, fifteen, twenty years. If not more.<\/p>\n

The current academic culture, in which grad students learn that a tenure-track position at a research university is the only career worth having, is incredibly corrosive to the well-being of academics. People end up being so desperate for an academic job, any academic job, that they go places where they are miserable, and they make everybody else miserable in the process.<\/p>\n

Much more so than in other fields, when you’re looking for an academic job, you’re really looking for a place to spend your career. Given that constraint, it’s absolutely right to look for a place where you fit well, and will be happy. That means thinking about geography, type of institution, type of position, the quality and personalities of other people in the department, and everything else. <\/p>\n

The fact is, there is a certain level of happiness below which you would be better off leaving academia. It’s better to have a non-academic job in a place where you’re happy than an academic job in a place that you hate. The precise level will be different for different people, but it’s there, and it’s got to be taken into consideration when applying for jobs, or thinking about whether to accept a job offer.<\/p>\n

Abel’s right that this is not a decision to be made too casually– you might very well grow to love a place you didn’t think you would want to be– but there’s absolutely nothing wrong with taking geographic factors into consideration. In fact, I would say that there’s something wrong with not<\/strong> taking them into consideration. The tenure process is stressful enough if you’re happy where you are.<\/p>\n

“Easy for you to say, Mr. Tenured Professor,” you say. Yeah, I’m tenured faculty now, but back in the day, I was a job-hunting post-doc just like anybody else. And after watching one of the post-docs at NIST look for a job– he said he realized after getting his first offer that he would have to turn down something like 30 of the 35 places he had applied to– I made it a point to restrict my applications to places I knew I’d be happy.<\/p>\n

Granted, I was applying in 2000, at the height of the dotcom boom, when endowments nationwide were flush with cash, and everybody was hiring, so it was a little easier to find acceptable options, but I applied to less than half of the 33 colleges roughly comparable to Union who were hiring that year.<\/p>\n

I applied only to private small liberal arts colleges, because I knew that’s where I wanted to be. I ruled out schools with an explicit religious affiliation, because I knew I wouldn’t be comfortable with that. I ruled out one or two schools on the basis of geography– I went to graduate school in the DC area, and the climate there was almost too much for me. I really can’t imagine myself living in Mississippi.<\/p>\n

It almost blew up in my face– very late in the job-hunting season, I had exactly no offers. But I knew that I would rather spend another year as a post-doc than work at a place where I was going to be unhappy. For that matter, I’d look for a job in industry rather than take an academic position in a place where I wouldn’t want to live.<\/p>\n

The real problem here is that our current academic culture has built academic jobs up into something more than jobs– a tenure-track position at a top school is the Holy Grail, the Promised Land, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. This is crazy, particularly for scientists, who have other career options available to them. <\/p>\n

The sooner we can break out of the rut of thinking that faculty jobs are the only real jobs, the better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over at Terra Sigillata, Abel has a post on the limiting of job searches that is an excellent example of the problems with the academic mind-set: The short summary: postdocs and other academic job candidates are disqualifying themselves from even applying for certain positions because: 1. they don’t feel they meet the job description in… Continue reading Job Search Criteria: Fit Matters<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3014\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}