"The wiki is evil," said one of the other graduate students in my department, referring to the Web site where job candidates share information about the status of various searches.
The rest of us nodded knowingly.
"But if I know it's evil, why can't I stop looking at it?"
Most academic job-seekers are information addicts. We like to do research. It's what we do best, and it's easier to do now than it has ever been before.
Ten years ago, when I started checking out doctoral programs, departmental Web pages were businesslike. I counted myself lucky if I could find a list of faculty members online, let alone any information about graduate-student life or the courses I might be teaching. These days, a few clicks on most departmental Web sites reveal photo galleries, detailed course syllabi and CV's, and the occasional blog.
While doing research on job openings, I often found myself browsing the faculty profiles and learning that one of my potential colleagues had a young son who collected coins -- or, in one memorable instance, that the head of the search had published an article about Bigfoot.
I found those bits of information encouraging. They made the search committees seem less like capricious gods and more like human beings and potential colleagues.
My first hint that too much research could be a bad thing came late in the autumn of my first year on the market. I discovered that the contact person for one of the positions I had applied for specialized in cultural studies and studied the body and its digestive processes. I'm sure people who work in biology departments are accustomed to detaching the person from the field of study, but I found it hard to stop thinking about digestive processes as I finished my letter of application. I sealed the envelope with an uneasy feeling that I had learned more about the contact person than I really wanted to know.
Similarly, I suspect that the amount of information available about the search process causes job candidates to spend far too much time contemplating its inner workings. At first, the resources I found online seemed like a first-time applicant's dream: page after page of interview tip sheets compiled by graduate programs, dozens of requests for advice on The Chronicle's discussion forums, a whole network of academic blogs.
If I wanted to, I could spend hours on end reading the collected wisdom of people who were obsessed with the same things I was. And of course I wanted to.
I discovered online debates about every aspect of the search process, from the grand questions about the future of the profession to the petty anxieties of applicants seeking control over an often-arbitrary process: Should I paper clip or staple my application? Use regular paper or 100-percent cotton for the CV? If the search committee offers me coffee or tea, and I've already had enough caffeine to keep me awake until next year, must I say yes?
No matter how obscure or mundane the question, somebody who had -- or claimed to have -- insider information would invariably weigh in to say that there was a single right answer, and somebody, somewhere had lost a job for getting it wrong. Stories of candidates disqualified because of an innocuous hobby or a poor choice of words in the job letter circulate freely on the Internet, when they would have stayed safely behind closed doors a generation ago.
In many ways, that level of transparency is good for candidates. We're better informed about how the process works and how to avoid doing things that will work against us. But all too often, that transparency also fosters a sense of paranoia and a belief that hiding every scrap of personality is a reasonable price to pay for employment.
After a few too many hours online, I began to get the impression that there existed a single, imaginary ideal of a candidate, in comparison with whom all real human beings would inevitably fall short.
The ideal candidate carefully conceals wedding rings, hobbies, and other signs of a personal life in order to give the impression of complete devotion to the profession. That paragon has enough free time to read everything the members of the search committee have ever written and work up a list of flattering -- but not overtly obsequious -- questions about their research.
The ideal candidate sends thank-you notes promptly and likes any type of food or drink the search committee happens to offer. (One of my colleagues had the misfortune to be offered a tangerine during an interview. The ideal candidate would probably find a way to peel it without getting sticky fingers and swallow the seeds to avoid further awkwardness.)
If female, she wears a conservative suit in a neutral shade and then jazzes it up with a colorful scarf or a piece of jewelry intended to show a little, but not too much, personality.
Many of the tips seemed to be copied from some particularly manipulative dating manual. One "expert" claimed that you should always refuse the first time slot offered to you for an interview in order to give the impression of being sought after. The unstated message behind much of the online advice is grim: Candidates should be too grateful for any show of attention to think of their own desires and preferences, yet it's fatal to seem desperate or overeager.
Above all, the anonymity of most blogs and forums -- and the constant concern that someone will be able to assign a real name to your online identity -- sends a subtle but constant message that voicing opinions of any sort is dangerous.
Throughout this period of research, my students kept me grounded, as they so often do -- in this case, by reminding me of all I had taught them about evaluating Internet sources.
It was time to step away from the computer, turn off the flood of information, and reflect on what I had learned. It occurred to me that I did not want a tenure-track job at any price. I wanted a job, inside or outside of academe, with reasonable expectations and congenial colleagues. Pretending to be somebody else's ideal wasn't going to get me there.
A few weeks into my job search this academic year, I made a conscious decision to spend less time browsing Web sites frequented by desperate job candidates and more time working on the things that mattered: teaching and various writing projects. My resolution held until early December, when I began getting requests for writing samples and a few early phone interviews.
I couldn't resist checking the wiki afterward to see whether any of my fellow job candidates had posted information about the status of searches at the departments that had expressed interest in my application. Of course, that meant I had to check The Chronicle's forums to find the Web address for the wiki. And, oh, why not read a few discussion threads while I was at the forums, just to see if I could learn anything useful?
A few hours later, I was no longer under any illusions that I had kicked the information habit.
But if nothing else, I've learned that the Internet, like all tools, works best when used wisely: It's probably time to walk away when reading about the search process makes you feel less confident and less prepared than before, and it's time to stop taking advice from others when it threatens to overwhelm your sense of self.
