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[kedves]

Another thread made me curious about this.

Did you have other full-time jobs, a different career, or an unsuccessful search for non-academic full-time jobs before starting your first academic job search?

[qrypt]

My first job, before grad school, was in publishing/journalism.  I lasted six months, hated it.  Then I lived for a while as a busker (street musician) in Very Large City.  Much better than the job. 

[scampster]

My first job, before grad school, was in publishing/journalism.  I lasted six months, hated it.  Then I lived for a while as a busker (street musician) in Very Large City.  Much better than the job. 

What did you play?! And did you have a monkey?

My foray into the real world before grad school was much less interesting

[macaroon]

I worked 40 -50 hours a week over the summer during high school and college as a janitor in a nursing home.  That's full-time; came with benefits, paid time-off, and everything.  My boss was well aware that I was a student - in fact, he fought with HR to keep me on as an employee while I was away at college.   If I came home for a long weekend or Christmas break, which is when many people liked to take vacation days anyways, he'd pop me on the schedule.  

[polly_mer]

I had full-time grunt work jobs during school breaks and such.

I had research internships both pre-and-post-doc that were the result of my professional network and getting a call from an interested party.

I conducted full-court press job searches at various other times with no success.

So while my academic job search was not my first search for a full-time job, it was the first successful job search at a level above "showing up on Tuesday and being moderately presentable for a minimum wage job".

[barred_owl]

I worked summers during my MS years, in a non-academic field related to my discipline, then went to full time work in that field for a few years before returning to PhD school.  I had a summer VAP after completing my PhD, then worked a full-time job for a year at my PhD institution before securing a TT position.  Incidentally, I'd applied while ABD to the institution at which I eventually was hired to the TT, but was turned down on the first try because I was ABD (the dept chair told me this during my interview for the TT position, FWIW).

[dellaroux]

I'm going in a different direction, which is my take on the title--what a good point.

I bet a number of the more irritating/seems-like-clueless-to-me questions from people here have to do with this fact.

With increased loan and family support availability (I had a scholarship related to my dad's job for three of my four years in college as an U/G, but deliberately didn't apply one year to be forced to work and earn my fees myself) many people are possibly now coming to an academic job search without any previous experience in such efforts.

Very good call, at the meta-level, on an "obvious" issue that I think has gone beneath notice for several rounds now.

That might actually be something to mention to new jobseekers generally, that they need to look at 'general job' postings which are more specific about such things, because while some things are certainly acarane in academic settings (deliberately so, one might suspect at times!) others are not, and could help clue people in to aim for a better landing before they even hit the academic shoals.

Brilliant, Kedves.

[onion]

I worked full-time in development for a non-profit cultural institution for 3 years after college.  I thought it would be a good balance between being an academic (which I knew I wanted to do by my junior year in college) and having a 9-to-5 (I didn't want to end up like my parents, punching the clock in jobs they hated).  I loathed working in development, and flirted with going to library school.  Instead, I moved to a new city and went to work for a publishing company, hoping I would work my way up the ranks to become an editor.  Somewhere along that line, I read the Umberto Eco book (is it Foucault's Pendulum?) that has the editor as a main character, and there's a line in there that basically said that editors of academic books were always unhappy because they were frustrated academics.  I was also sick of getting coffee, kissing ass, and never touching a manuscript.  So I started a grad program that had classes mostly at night, and I kept the publishing job during my first two years in grad school--just in case grad school didn't work out.  Once I passed my comps, I quit the full time gig.

Although I had conducted 2 job searches in 2 large cities, I was not entirely prepared for my academic job search; I wanted to do it the "corporate" way, sending a resume in blind, making cold call, etc.  It was just *so* different from my other experiences.  Fortunately, I had a good advisor who talked me off that ledge (and then the collective wisdom of the Forum) to help in Academic Job Search #2.

[kedves]

Thank you, Dellaroux, but I need to correct the impression that the idea for the question was mine.  Prephd raised it in on another thread.  I should have made that clear.

I have wondered about it, too, not only with the job search but with regard to expectations for work, workplaces, coworkers.  Some things about academic jobs and life are distinctive, but some are widespread among all sorts of jobs.

I had another career for 9 years in non-profit fund-raising, volunteer programs, publications, and grant-writing before grad school.  I liked it, and it was well-paid work (better than I have now), but I got bored.   I can't say it prepared me for the academic job search, probably the contrary because I've never interviewed for a job for which I didn't get an offer--so rejection is new.  It did prepare me for the ins and outs of working with other people, public speaking, and some other aspects of my current job (pleasing the chair!).

[prephd]

Nope. I worked all through high school and college (full-time most of the time, though without benefits). Then worked full-time for 5 years after college (again without benefits). Went back to grad school, got the MA, conducted *exhaustive* search and ended up with the Feds (which is a whole 'nother ball o' wax when it comes to the job search). Have been minimally dabbling in searching since then, but this will be my first real run on the academic market.

[the_honey_badger]

I've always had to work.  Before returning to school I was in accounting for 12 years and through undergrad and my MA, I worked nights in a laboratory.  So, I had the experience to pay attention during my doctorate (plus reading the CHE, Lingua Franca, and on-line sources) to get a sense of what was expected in the wider profession and how it compared to what I saw at my own institution.  I knew how to "go to work" and realized that while academia wasn't a 'wonderland' in many ways, it beat the hell out of many "real world" jobs I'd had.

What I was surprised by was the number of very bright and even experienced fellow students who got stubborn ideas in their heads about the way it *should be* and proceeded to go out on the academic market insisting that anything less than their imaginary ideal was evil, or wrong, or beneath them.  Most of them ended up very bitter whether they landed a t-t or not---but nothing could match their notion of how things "should be" and I see it here all too often.  I'm not sure its only a product of no-prior-work experience.

[voxprincipalis]

What I was surprised by was the number of very bright and even experienced fellow students who got stubborn ideas in their heads about the way it *should be* and proceeded to go out on the academic market insisting that anything less than their imaginary ideal was evil, or wrong, or beneath them.

Which of course we get here all the time.

Perhaps I am being overly naive, or my expectations are too high (!), but I don't see ... well, let me just sit on that for a little while longer and see how the conversation develops. I might be out in left field.

VP

[madhatter]

Halfway through grad school, I decided I wanted to work in industry instead of academia. I conducted two unsuccessful job searches as an ABD student before landing a full-time job in industry. My second job search was also in industry, but landed me in a hybrid industry-academic position. My third job search was for both academic and industry and resulted in an academic job. My fourth job search was academia-focused and resulted (eventually) in my current academic position. Whew.

[oldfullprof]

I worked full time as a licensed psychiatric technician for 10 years while I got my BA and MA.  The day after I left my first grad program ABD (I didn't finish), I had two jobs, one as a full-time crisis intervention counselor, and one teaching economics at night (my MA was in Social Science.)  Later, I became the director of several psychiatric hospital admission departments, then the marketing director of a psychiatric hospital.  I lost this job in 92, right as began my second PhD program, which I finished. 

[qrypt]

My first job, before grad school, was in publishing/journalism.  I lasted six months, hated it.  Then I lived for a while as a busker (street musician) in Very Large City.  Much better than the job. 

What did you play?! And did you have a monkey?

My foray into the real world before grad school was much less interesting

Guitar (+singing); no monkey -- a monkey would have probably brought even more police trouble than I got. 

It was lucrative, and fun for awhile.  But you learn which songs bring the most money and then play them over and over.  I really don't need to hear The Boxer ever again...