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[Yet another Ph.D]

Hello.

Let's say I am a Ph.D in Latin-American history, with a specialty in modern Mexico. I find an announcement for a tenure-track position at a nice, friendly school, for which I am qualified. They provide a list of general expectations, all of which I can meet, and they state that the area of specialization is open. I then click on their department's Web site, and notice at least one of the following: (1)  They have recently hired someone who does modern Mexico.  (2) Their department chair is a specialist in Mexico. (3)  They have someone else focusing on Mexico. (4) Their department has an obvious need for a specialist in Argentina.

While Latin America is not my field, this is a problem I have encountered. I specialize in another part of the world, in which one often does either country "A" or country "B." I've seen plenty of announcements for my field where the department leaves the area of specialization open. What should I do when I find out they have at least one person working on country A (mine), and have no one responsible for country B? Obviously I know how to teach about country B (along with countries C-Z + the whole darned area), but in this heavily impacted job market, my qualifications probably don't match well against a specialist in that area.

To complicate matters further, I am about to begin a full-time temporary position in a department, in which my strengths and focus overlap with theirs. The needs from a full-time temp are, of course, different than those from someone in a T-T position, right?

[Senior Scholar]

As for the full-time temp, it may well be the case that one specialist is going to be on maternity leave, another is near retirement, and a third has a study leave next year or a research grant to buy out time and teach only (say) one course a year for the next three years. Since this is an area of specialization there's a demand for the courses -- hence a full-time temp until they get their full staff back up to strength.

And indeed, the same might be true of the "area of specialization open" tenure-track job, though less likely. There might be an upcoming retirement, a person on sick leave unlikely to return ... indeed, in my own department, we have a "paper" strength in one of the subfields but (due partly to administrative assignments) we'll sure need replacements very soon. But we will probably advertise as "research strength in x, y, or z" since we have some weakness in the other two subfields as well and at this point (at a research university) we want the best person we can get and don't want to take a chance that there won't be a publishing scholar in the field we need most who is, in the end, interested in us.

[Yet another ...]

Thanks! Given how long it takes to write a proper application for each opening, it helps to know how realistic one's chances are.