The MLA Job List came out last month, and for job seekers inexperienced in the codes and workings of the personnel side of the profession, it can quickly slip into a frustrating exercise in divination. Often it’s hard to tell what the advertising department really wants, which fields and subfields and emphases and outlooks are apt, and which aren’t.

Take the ad for Assistant Professor of English at University of Vermont. It opens with a strict expertise, “Ph.D. in English with specialization in 19th-century British novel.” The next sentence, though, adds two “Desirable secondary fields . . . History of the Novel, and British Modernism.” From a curricular or disciplinary perspective, the secondary fields make sense, but consider them from the perspective of applicants. Their anxiety is already well-advanced, and the multiple subject areas only aggravate it. If they work squarely on the Brontes and Dickens but haven’t written a word on Modernism, should they worry? If they do the novel, but have only one chapter on 19th-century Brits, might they still fit? Or, more importantly, can they fake it enough to get on the interview list?

Things get worse in the next paragraph, the teaching one. U-VT cites two likely assignments, “Texts and Contexts,” a course in “close reading and writing,” and “Critical Approaches,” an introduction to “literary and cultural theory.” The second one adds yet another requirement, namely, that candidates better be conversant in various theories. Which kinds? It doesn’t say. Canny applicants might scan the Vermont English Department to determine which theories are represented there and which aren’t. (How department strengths and gaps play out in the MLA interview is, of course, an entirely different question.) In any case, good applicants should envision a version of each course, the theory one and the explication one.

The final, and worst, complication comes with the third paragraph. It mentions the expectation of “research of creative activity” that appears in “peer-reviewed scholarly outlets” — no surprise there. But the next two sentences are altogether baffling:

“The department is especially interested in candidates who can contribute to the diversity and excellence of the academic community through their research, teaching and/or service. In their cover letters, applicants are requested to include a description of how they can contribute to the department’s goals in these areas.”

What does this mean? Not, I take it, that conservative thinkers should flock to Vermont. If it means racial diversity, how is an Asian-American supposed to describe how his or her racial identity will “contribute” to Vermont’s “community”? Even though the first sentence mentions “research, teaching and/or service,” the word “diversity” carries so much identitarian weight that the request slides into a selling-of-self activity that makes the already miserable job search that much worse. Moreover, no matter what the diversity type, the request compels applicants to study the diversity make-up of the existing Vermont English Department.

People shouldn’t have to add that freighted guesswork to the stack of other tasks in job season. Ad writers should realize that more information and criteria don’t limit the pool and expedite the search. Job hunters are desperate, and they’ll do what they can with what they’re given. Do them a favor. Next time, keep it short and simple. And drop the diversity question.