Reason One: The Market Eats Enormous Chunks of Time. All candidates report that the academic job market can quickly take over your life. First, in the fall, you've got to read an enormous number of job listings, whether on paper or online, most of them not targeted for you. You've got to contemplate these positions, prepare and proof letters, hone and send out writing samples, make plenty of trips to the post office, and more. And that's just the initial phase, since later, ideally, you turn to conference interviews and possibly campus visits.
All of this eats up time you could spend on teaching, reading, writing, finishing your dissertation, or even -- gasp -- nonacademic life. Even a "limited" run takes time, since sending out that 21st letter doesn't take much extra effort. Thus chasing "only" 10 positions might take as much time as pursuing 44. Overall, the academic market is a major task.
Reason Two: The Market Costs You Money. The cash expense can be hard to justify, especially if the market sees that you're "early." This includes postage for letters, photocopying and postage for writing samples, telephone expense, and dossier-handling fees at many colleges. If you have conference interviews, you typically foot the conference bill yourself. And you might want to upgrade your interviewing wardrobe, though if you do you'll obviously have those clothes in future years. All in all, it can mean substantial costs.
Reason Three: The Market Taxes Your Emotions. Another argument for holding off one year is the cost, not in time or money but in emotion, since pursuit of academic jobs can tax your soul. You get your hopes up, fantasize about that special job, put energy into your C.V., wait nervously for phone calls, second-guess your letters and interview responses, and, finally, get plenty of rejections. In most fields these days, even the best candidates hear No from 90 percent of applications. In fact, it's likely that at no other time in your life will you be so negatively judged. Colleges get four chances to say No (after initial letters, writing samples, conference interviews, and campus visits), and only one for Yes.
October is anxious, November is busy, December is in limbo -- to say nothing of, perhaps, January, February, or even March for campus visits and hiring decisions. This can mean half a year. And the further you get with any given job, the higher the emotional stakes will go. Being aware of that can lessen the expense, but can't eliminate it.
Reason Four: You Might Not Be Ready. You might authentically be too early. Your teaching background, publications, overall maturity, or dissertation might still be short of what hiring committees want. Sometimes such prematureness is evident in the initial application letter, or perhaps in an insufficiently marinated thesis chapter. But the later in the game that your unreadiness becomes apparent, the greater the waste of time for everyone concerned, yourself included, and the poorer a reflection on your training program. Thus a merely "experimental" search can be a terrible idea.
Reason Five: You Might (Whoops!) Succeed. The final reason to wait another year is unreadiness's worst-case event: the risk that you might succeed and get the job, when your dissertation will be quite unfinished by the following fall. Starting a job still undefended can be very problematic -- initial salary and rank may be lower, and it's awfully tough to complete a dissertation in a new job's first year. Many uncompleted dissertation writers have successfully begun a full-time job, but the risks can be substantial.
"Should I go out to the market now" is, finally, a question only you can answer for yourself. It depends on your probability of success, emotional stakes, specific field, degree of preparation and accomplishment, and other factors. For me, a carefully analyzed unsuccessful first run yielded great improvements in the second. Most importantly, it resulted in several excellent job opportunities, including the position I hold now. For others, I know a seemingly "early" run achieved success. And yet that is not universally the case.
Of course, this whole discussion has been predicated on the rotten fact that several years' attempts may be necessary for even the best candidates to get a solid job. But since that is, for now, a fact of life, the pros and cons may be useful to candidates (and their advisers) asking tough job-market questions in the coming months.
