How to Apply for Adjunct Positions

As director of my university’s first-year writing program, I hire twenty to thirty adjunct faculty members each semester. I also worked as an adjunct for three years before I took my current permanent position. Adjunct faculty positions often do not follow as clear or consistent of an application process as tenure-track or other more permanent positions, which makes it difficult for some people to know how they can most effectively attract the attention of those who hire. In this post, I will offer ProfHacker readers a few concrete steps that will hopefully help them find adjunct positions more quickly and easily. First, I must be clear that these are the steps that I know will work with me and my program. Because of the lack of consistency that I already mentioned, it’s highly possible that another person at another institution will want to follow a different process, and I hope we can cover those differences in the comments. To get the conversation started, I would like to offer the following thoughts.

Applicants can usually contact hiring supervisors directly. Occasionally, I will receive a letter or CV forwarded to me through my university’s Office of Human Resources, but most applicants contact me first If you need to go through a more formal process with HR, whomever you speak with in the home department will tell you that and give you a name to contact. Usually, though, you can start with the department chair listed on the university’s website unless the department lists separate directors for its various programs. And if you contact the wrong person, it is really not a big deal. I get applications forwarded to me from my department chair all of the time. I also get things forwarded from the chair of my university’s English department because people think they house first-year writing (when it is actually a part of my rhetoric department). It does not look bad to initially contact the wrong person. Rather than take time worrying about finding the right contact person, start with the department chair. It won’t take long for your information to arrive where it should.

Email is a fine way to communicate. In fact, I prefer email over anything else. Occasionally, I’ll receive a letter and CV through snail mail, but I usually scan it as a PDF so I can add it to the digital file where I keep all information about prospective adjuncts. I take the digital route because I often have to make hiring decisions during the summer when I’m not on campus regularly. If I get an email that a current adjunct cannot take a course I’ve offered, I want to go right to the file to find another one quickly without having to drive to campus to look for paper. Again, if the supervisor wants to have a paper copy, they will most likely tell you so and give you the chance to send it. I do think email is often the best place to start, though.

Supervisors often want to see just a cover letter and a CV. Applying for tenure-track positions usually requires a range of documents from letters of reference to teaching evaluations to writing samples. For adjunct positions, though, supervisors generally want to see a CV that lists your education and teaching experience first and a letter the describes your teaching experience with the subject you are applying to teach. In fact, this last point is so important that I want to give it its own section.

Your letter and CV should emphasize your experience with and interest in teaching that program’s subject matter. You are asking this person to hire you to teach, and everything you send should focus on your teaching. If you have an impressive list of publications, list them on your CV after your teaching experience, but do not spend a lot of time talking about them in your cover letter. Instead, describe what you have taught and give a sense of how you have taught it. What experience do you have with active learning strategies? What technologies do you have an interest in using in your classes? What kinds of comments and scores do you generally receive on your student evaluations? You do not need to go overboard with the details, but giving a few might make you stand out from other applicants. Yes, it is true that you might mention a detail that turns off the supervisor a bit (“Oh, great, do we really need another person who wants to get students blogging?”), but that same detail might excite her or him, too (“Cool! Someone else who is into blogging!”). No details will make you forgettable, so just be honest about who you are and the teaching you do.

If you have little to no experience teaching in that field, emphasize your interests in teaching that specific field. My first goal is to hire people who have already taught classes elsewhere like the ones we offer at my institution, but those people are not always the ones who apply to teach for me. There are no universities in my entire state that offer graduate degrees in rhetoric and composition, but almost every school offers first-year courses in it largely taught by adjuncts. I have hired people who have not only never taught a writing class before but who have never taught a class before. It is not an ideal situation for anyone, but it’s something that can happen in an educational system that overemphasizes the use of adjunct labor. I just want to emphasize that lack of experience does not always cut you entirely out of the running. What you should do in that situation, though, is write a letter that explains why you want to teach that particular subject and what you can bring to that teaching. Last January, I had three classes to fill and five applications from people who had never taught before. The people who talked about their desire to teach writing moved to the top of the list, while the people who talked about teaching in general but rarely, if ever, discussed teaching writing moved toward the bottom. Your cover letter is an argument. Use it convince people why you should be the specific person to teach that exact course.

Follow up consistently but not obsessively. Adjunct life is a fickle beast as we all know. Some semesters, I hire no one new. Other semesters, I’m replacing half of my staff. I have learned that there is often no logic as to why these hiring shifts take place. You might apply just when that supervisor needs someone or months before she or he will have anything. If you are not hired right away, I recommend emailing your contact person once a semester restating your interest and perhaps attaching a revised CV if you have new experiences or information to add. Last January, I received one of these follow up emails five minutes after getting another email from an adjunct I’d already hired pulling out for the semester. Within twenty-four hours, I’d already met with and hired that person. As to when you should send these emails each semester, I admit I do not have much of an answer. At my own institution, some supervisors hire more than a semester in advance, while I have to wait until after registration is almost done. Stay on their radar without being annoying about it, and you will increase your chances of getting the next available class.

Remember what power hiring supervisors do and do not have. Once, I tried to hire someone who wanted to negotiate salary, which is just not possible. I think our adjuncts are paid abysmally low, especially when compared to other schools in the area. My opinions are known on my campus, but I cannot do anything about the salary for those I am currently hiring. To my knowledge, it is highly rare for adjuncts to be able to negotiate such things as salary or office space.
I have had adjuncts leave us for higher paying jobs down the road, and I fully understand why that happens. In fact, I want to know when it happens so I can have more evidence in my arsenal when I do argue for higher salaries and increased benefits to the people who have the power to make changes. But I am told what to pay my adjunct faculty as well as how many sections I am allowed to offer and, sometimes, when they get offered.

I wrote earlier that hiring can be quite fickle for my program. Some semesters, I will take almost anyone who has even the most remote interest in teaching for me. But if it is one of those semesters when I have seventeen people interested in three openings, these strategies will move some applications to the top over others. If you are an adjunct or administrator (or, like me, someone who has worn both hats), let us know in the comments how things have worked for you.

[Creative Commons licensed photo by Flickr user emdot]