When Patrick Hall isn't observing distant galaxies, he's keeping an eye out for juicy tidbits about the astronomy job market here on Earth.
Visitors to his Web site, Astronomy Job Rumor Central, won't find job listings, but they will find information about the status of faculty and postdoctoral job searches at nearly 50 colleges and research institutions, including which shortlists have been completed, which jobs have been offered or accepted, and which searches have been canceled.
Mr. Hall, a postdoctoral fellow in astronomy at the University of Toronto, got the idea for the site just over three years ago, when he entered the job market for the first time. "Job rumors started flying early in January of that year, and I suggested to a friend as a joke that someone should put together a Web site to keep track of all the rumors," he says.
The more he thought about it, the more it seemed like a good idea. Many people must agree, because the number of hits to his site has skyrocketed every year -- from a total of 3,400 hits in 1996, the site's first year, to a total of 26,000 hits last year. So far this year, his site has received more than 24,000 hits.
At first, Mr. Hall posted rumors that he and his friends had heard. "One of us would say, 'Oh, I hear so-and-so got a Hubble fellowship,' or, 'They offered this one job that I was on the shortlist for to someone else,' and I'd put the rumors on my Web site," he says. The site took off as his friends told their friends about the site, and their friends told more friends, and so on, he says. "It just snowballed from there."
Mr. Hall says he doesn't have time to verify the information he posts, but when a rumor is false -- to his knowledge, this has happened only twice -- contributors send him corrections, which he then posts.
His site is just one of a crop of Web sites in physics and astronomy to which graduate students and faculty members send in tips about the status of jobs:
- The Theoretical Particle Physics Jobs Rumor Mill, founded in 1995, is an anonymously run site that includes the names of candidates who've been short-listed or offered positions. It also features links to other rumor sites, a satirical letter "rejecting a rejection," and other job information.
- The Experimental Particle Physics Jobs Rumor Mill, which also originated in 1995, is run by Bruce Behrens, a research associate at the University of Colorado. His site includes job listings from Physics Today, information about recent appointments, and job statistics for particle physicists.
- One of the newest and most popular sites is called the Astrophysics Jobs Rumor Mill. This site, which has received more than 27,000 hits since February, features the names of people who've accepted jobs or who've been short-listed or offered jobs. It's run anonymously by a graduate student whose alias is Edwin Hubble, aptly taken from the American astronomer for whom the Hubble Space Telescope is named.
Eric Schulman was a frequent contributor and visitor to Mr. Hall's site before landing a job, in August 1998, as a researcher at the Institute for Defense Analyses in Alexandria, Va. He still monitors the site occasionally.
The site is very useful for job seekers, he says. "It's helpful to find out, for example, that Harvard's made a decision about who's on the shortlist, and if I'm off that list, I don't have to worry about that job."
The Astrophysics Jobs Rumor Mill wasn't around when Mr. Schulman was job hunting in 1997 and early in 1998, but he says he wishes it had existed then.
"I wouldn't have sent out as many applications," he says. "I applied to places where I was not nearly at the same level as some of the other applicants, but I didn't know it at the time. While you don't want to see that the job you were offered was declined by two other people, it's useful to see who you're up against. In a small field like astronomy, you usually have a good handle on where you rank next to other astronomers."
The content from Astronomy Job Rumor Central and the Astrophysics Jobs Rumor Mill is often similar. For example, information about jobs at the University of Chicago appeared on both sites. (Note that the dates listed next to rumors refer to the dates that they were posted, not to the dates that positions were offered or accepted.) Pat Hall's site omits the names of candidates:
Astronomy and Astrophysics department: Candidates for two tenure-track positions are giving talks and interviewing (12/15); one offer made (3/6) and accepted (4/12).
The anonymous astrophysics site, meanwhile, provides the names of candidates:
Astronomy and Astrophysics department: Candidates from an informal shortlist for two tenure-track positions invited to give colloquia during fall and early spring (1/16): Robert Caldwell, Sean Carroll, Daniel Eisenstein, Wayne Hu, Lam Hui, Lloyd Knox, Max Tegmark, Martin White; offer made to Wayne Hu (3/17), accepted (4/12). Physics department: Offer made to Sean Carroll (4/5). Another offer was made to Savdeep Sethi, a string theorist (4/5).
While these sites are popular with graduate students and junior faculty members looking for jobs, they raise questions about accuracy and privacy.
According to Michael Turner, chairman of the department of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Chicago, Mr. Hall's site is correct. Mr. Turner also confirms that a portion of the excerpt from the site with names is also correct -- jobs were offered to the people listed above.
However, Mr. Turner says that although his department invited the people listed above to give colloquia, the shortlist had not
