Academia hires only once a year, a year in advance. Job openings begin to appear during the summer, then really take off during the fall. They continue to be posted heavily until after Thanksgiving (a few trickle in through Christmas, even), yet have application deadlines that vary from October through February. This means that you cannot wait for all jobs to be posted before you begin to select and apply. Rather, it will be a rolling process, where you apply in batches. So, start tracking in the summer, and plan to mail your first applications in September.
Where are they posted?
This varies by field, of course. In psychology, my colleagues and I have relied most heavily on HigherEdJobs.com and the APS Observer (print and online). I particularly recommend Higher Ed Jobs because they have a service where you can receive email summaries of new postings in your specified areas, either daily or weekly. This is a painless way to track that long, rolling process. Also be sure you are on the mailing lists for your field - additional announcements will be posted there.
How do I know which openings to choose?
This actually proved much harder and more time-consuming than I had anticipated. I naively figured there would be only a few positions, and I would apply to them all, then make more detailed selections when I actually had interview offers. However, I had no geographic restrictions, and wanted to include smaller colleges in my list, so there were actually around 300 openings I had to sift through!
If you do have geographic limits, or want to apply only to prestigious research universities (which are fewer in number, and often advertise for highly specific areas of research), then you will not have this problem. However, if you're in my boat, you'll have to come up with some straightforward selection criteria that won't require a lot of time-consuming research into each school. Think about what really matters to you... Beyond advertised research area, you might want to consider items such as setting (big city, small town), school type (liberal arts, community college), size, selectivity (think student preparation), religious affiliation, tenure/adjunct, etc.
Keep track of which openings you've looked at, and why you decided for or against, so you won't waste time if the posting reappears elsewhere (no, you won't remember) or in case you decide to revisit the criteria (maybe I will look at liberal arts...). A spreadsheet is a very handy tool here: see the next step to build one.
Comments (0)
You don't have permission to comment on this page.