Imagine you are looking for a teaching job somewhere in the United States. But instead of being able to use a search engine that allows you to browse openings all over the country (like the one on this site), you have to search for jobs in each state individually.
Even if you are seriously motivated and dedicated to your mission, how long would it take before you went crazy? How soon would you be wishing for a nationwide search engine to exist?
I have such a wish. I dream of a single search engine that would enable me to look for academic jobs all over Europe at the same time. It certainly would come in handy as I search for my first teaching position in sociology.
When I first came across the European Researcher's Mobility Portal, I thought, Great! This is exactly what I'm looking for. And indeed, when I searched the site for jobs in my field, the result said, "239 job vacancies found."
Alas, most of the listings were not even proper job ads. Some were links to other search engines. Other links redirected me to the vacancy pages of individual universities, where messages along the lines of "There are currently no vacancies at . . ." only helped to worsen my mood.
A search on Academic Jobs EU.com proved even less fruitful. When I looked for positions under the term "social science," I found six listings.
I'll spare you the further details about my, thus far, unsuccessful search. (Yes, I've checked other major search engines that provide the option to specifically search for jobs in Europe, such as The Times Higher Education Supplement and Scientific Employment in France. But, to be frank, most of them are incomplete at best, and pretty useless at worst, when it comes to job listings in countries outside of their home base.
Despite the shortcomings of those sites, I still rely on them. At least once a week, I scour seven sites for the latest openings. And if I'm feeling unusually desperate, I search those sites a couple of times a day.
As a sociologist, I am inevitably tempted to further analyze this state of affairs. So bear with me if you will. The problem -- and, to be fair, the strength -- of Europe is that it comes in many guises. I envy all those who have the opportunity to deal with the relatively neat and clear-cut versions of Europe that have emerged over recent years: the European Union with its 27 member states; the Eurovision song contest that involves a much broader categorization of Europe (including, for instance, Turkey); European football competitions such as the UEFA cup or the Champions League.
In terms of politics, cheesy music contests, and sports, at least, Europe clearly exists. There are places, events, and Web sites that somehow create a kind of Europe, and -- I get the impression -- make Europe work. In terms of research and higher education, however, we still have a long way to go.
On the positive side, we have witnessed the creation of the European Research Council, the European Union's Framework Programmes for research and technology development, the Lisbon agenda (which intends to turn Europe into "the most competitive and the most dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world"), and the Barcelona agenda (an effort to improve Europe's higher-education landscape), and so on. Evidently there is some will to build a homogeneous space for European research and higher education.
But the gap between those politically motivated initiatives and the reality with which people like me are confronted is still substantial.
On the one hand, politicians and decision makers keep talking about mobility within Europe, the strong European knowledge economy, and the European Research Area. The dream of the latter is "creating a frontier-free European research area, enabling scientists across the EU to join forces in pursuit of excellence" (as stated in the European Commission's report, "Looking Beyond Tomorrow: Scientific Research in the European Union."
On the other hand, there are many things that hinder the mobility of researchers within Europe: linguistic and cultural barriers, different institutional setups, diverse research traditions, feelings of national identity, and so on. In terms of a homogeneous and thoroughly interconnected space in which to look for academic jobs, and carry out work as a researcher, a united Europe has yet to be built. That complicates life for researchers -- except maybe for those who analyse the process of creating this new Europe and secretly hope, for the sake of their jobs, that it is a never-ending process.
So what am I looking for?
I search for a career center, a node where the information I seek is drawn together. I search, like a tourist, for an information center with some friendly staff members who can help me find my way around the European research landscape.
As things stand, I have yet to travel to individual countries to understand the "whole picture." Nonetheless, I suspect that it is not even possible to get the "whole picture" of the academic job market. I guess that may also be true in other parts of the world. The jobs advertised in newspapers or newsletters, or found through Internet search engines, only represent a fraction of what is really out there. How small is that fraction in relation to the "invisible" jobs that aren't easy to find -- the hidden part of the iceberg?
My personal experience tells me that many job openings do not even make it to the conventional career sites where you would hope to find them. And those positions that do make it to those places are quite competitive. In other words, for young researchers, the easiest (meaning: least-competitive) jobs to get are probably the hardest to find.
Some jobs, like part-time research assistants and lecturers, open up routinely in most academic departments. It is those jobs that young people need in order to get experience, become more marketable, and build their CVs. But those jobs are rarely publicized. They are usually advertised via word of mouth and are only visible to those who are already part of a specific network.
My impression is that the United Kingdom and the United States, in particular, have formalized some of the spaces dedicated to networking. As a result, within those spaces, prospective candidates are required to really sell themselves.
In continental Europe, on the other hand, the networking landscape seems different. Things are less formalized. You wouldn't go to a conference -- as you do in the United States -- with a few CV's in hand, thinking about your scheduled job interview that will take place at the conference. You wouldn't write in a cover letter that you "perfectly match the job description." Rather, you would secretly hope that those who read your application letter will draw that conclusion by themselves. In Europe, you are not expected to act like a business person who sells a product -- yourself.
It is probably fair to say that, from an Anglo-Saxon perspective, the European job market is less effective, less open, and less professionalized. But a comparison between one country and a union of 27 countries (if we take Europe to be the European Union) inevitably reveals some discrepancies. Europe is not one thing. It is many things: many national and cultural identities, many languages, many traditions, and many histories.
That heterogeneity is clearly a richness of Europe. Yet at the same time, it is what makes the building of a unified Europe so difficult. It is probably a key reason why Europeanwide search engines are so ineffective. Indeed, if we are to believe the sociologist John Law, who once argued that "the world is largely messy," then things do not look particularly promising on the search-engine front.
Nevertheless, let me end on an optimistic note with a hope that one day there will be a user-friendly and effective search engine that will satisfy my needs. And let me hope that those politicians who keep borrowing an overused phrase to proclaim that the challenge for European research is to create "unity within diversity" actually mean business.
