Babette Faehmel, a graduate student in history at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, is finishing up her dissertation and trying to find a job at the same time.
So she made her way to the American Historical Association’s annual meeting in Washington this month, where hundreds of people were interviewing for jobs, or wishing they were.
“I’m definitely on the market, but I didn’t get an interview lined up prior to the conference,” said Ms. Faehmel, whose fields of study include the history of American gender and sexuality and modern American history. “My flight was already booked, so I said, well, I’ll come anyway and just see what happens.”
The association’s most recent data on the job market suggests that new openings will outpace the number of newly minted history Ph.D.'s in 2006-7. But that news is tempered by an oversupply of Ph.D.'s for some specialties, including American and European history and too few Ph.D.'s available in hot areas, including Asian and African history. Meanwhile, association officials have acknowledged the rising stress level of would-be professors during recruiting season. The process of getting a job in academe is shrouded in mystery — no matter what the market.
“This is probably the most difficult moment in your career as a historian,” said Anthony T. Grafton, a history professor at Princeton University who recently finished his term as vice president of the AHA’s professional division. “We want to make the process a little more transparent.”
Mr. Grafton was speaking to job seekers at a session that focused on interviewing. That session, which drew about 100 attendees, was designed to allow small groups of people to talk with seasoned interviewers about how the job hunt plays out at specific types of institutions.
The groups’ facilitators gave candid answers to a wide variety of questions from job seekers about application letters, tenure, interview questions, campus visits, teaching experience, and the negotiations that follow a job offer.
Current Events and Timelines
Suzanne L. Marchand, an associate history professor at Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge, urged would-be professors to be prepared to talk during an interview about the timeline they have established to get their research published. An interview killer, she said, is to say you need 10 or 20 years to get your research done. “People immediately shut down when they hear that,” she said.
Current-events questions during interviews aren’t off limits either, the session’s attendees were warned. “It’s not a test, it’s just curiosity,” Ms. Marchand said. “They want you to put it into context.”
Jonathan M. Gray, a doctoral student at Stanford who graduates in June, wondered about what he should do if he is not immediately offered a job. Ms. Marchand advised him and others in that position to spend time revising a few chapters of their dissertation and trying to get an article published.
Ama Biney, who has a Ph.D. in modern African history and is a lecturer at Kensington and Chelsea College, in London, wants to teach in the United States. She has applied to nine institutions in states that include Ohio, California, and Illinois.
At an 8 a.m. coffee-shop interview with the California college on the first full day of the AHA’s annual meeting, Ms. Biney realized that she “wasn’t prepared for some of the questions that they asked. “
She diligently took notes on Ms. Marchand’s remarks and raised several questions, including one about the ins and outs of negotiating a salary and various perks.
“Negotiating salary is so puzzling,” Ms. Biney said. “I just don’t know what to do.”
However, M. Ivonne Wallace Fuentes, an assistant history professor at Roanoke College, told job seekers at a different table at the session that once they got a job offer, they would “never have more power than at that moment.” She and others advised those in the market to push for a bigger salary, fewer classes to teach, moving expenses, and a research account to cover the cost of a computer and of building a library of books in their field.
And there was also a word of caution from Edward W. Muir, a history professor at Northwestern University who sat on a panel billed as an insider’s guide to the job market: “Nothing exists until it’s in writing.”
High Stress at the Screen
The stress level was perhaps most palpable outside the entrance to a massive hotel exhibit hall, where the bulk of job interviews took place at AHA.
Small groups of people, many of them visibly nervous, clustered in front of a large screen where a scrolling list of institutions, their job openings, and their interview location inside the hall were displayed. A total of about 260 searches were conducted during the meeting, whether in the exhibit hall or in conference rooms, said David M. Darlington, co-manager of the association’s Job Register. Most interviews were prearranged, but some colleges scheduled interviews once they arrived at the meeting — and that eventually worked in Ms. Faehmel’s favor.
While at an evening reception, Ms. Faehmel got a telephone call from a college in California — a state among her top places to live — that wanted to interview her the following day. The interview went “very well,” Ms. Faehmel said in an e-mail message. And getting inside the exhibit hall, “being able to check out the setup, getting a taste of the atmosphere,” made her trip to AHA worthwhile, she wrote.
Some institutions are trying to lower the stress levels among job seekers with information. Ms. Marchand said there was a movement at Louisiana State to “demystify the process” of finding work in academe. Within various departments, mock interviews are offered along with workshops on how to get published or how to get grant money.
Meanwhile, Ms. Marchand did her best to offer a stress reliever of sorts by reminding job seekers that they are “not necessarily out of the running if the job is offered to somebody else.” When a search committee’s first choice turns down the job, it gets offered to the next person in line, “and that could be you.”
http://chronicle.com Section: The Faculty Volume 54, Issue 19, Page A7