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[snowbound]

Shrubbery, you could try to postpone your defense until the fall, like a week before you have to mail job letters.  Your committee may not like it; their job is to get you finished without undue delay.  But it may be best for you. It gives you another semester of income from TA-ing or whatever, and means that you're not unemployed when you're on the market. 

Your committee was misguided to tell you not to worry about publishing right now.  That was standard advice when the job market was better and the main problem was promising students never getting their diss completed, and hanging on forever as ABD.  The problem now is that the promising students who get their diss done still can't find a job.  So there are intense competitive pressures to professionalize earlier and earlier.  It's gratifying that your committee has such confidence in your terrific diss, but this year's experience indicates that its terrific-ness is less immediately obvious to SCs.  A well-placed article or two will encourage SCs to take a closer look at the diss.   It can take months and months to get an article accepted--which is all the more reason to set aside time now to get a couple of articles out, rather than keep to a defense timetable that doesn't necessarily correspond to your practical needs.

[alleyoxenfree]

Just a few words of warning about taking a college staff job and expecting to adjunct at the same place - it is not something encouraged here.  Staff members who teach do not get paid extra for teaching a class.  It just becomes a case of "other duties as assigned" that is part of every staff job description.  And if they do teach, any prep or grading has to be done outside of office hours and that can eat up your time for writing and research. Also, those staff who do teach do not tend to have hourly jobs because you would be over qualified with a PhD, they are mostly salaried and the hours of those jobs are often more than 40 hours per week and not limited to an 8:00 to 5:00 schedule.  Any job candidate for staff positions in our office who indicated an interest in teaching classes had their application moved to the bottom of the pile because past experience has been that such employees shirked some of their admin responsibilities in favor of the teaching and that means your colleagues in the office have to take up the slack.  Taking a college staff job and thinking you will have ample time to publish is probably delusional.

There are some jobs which are hybrids of administration and teaching but they are just as hard to get as tenure track jobs.  If you do decide to add one adjunct course, it will probably have to be at a different school.  It is best to keep your "job while you wait for tenure track opportunities" and your adjunct teaching as separate as possible.  And by the way, jobs are hard to find in staff positions even when the economy is good and many staff were laid off last year and a hiring freeze is still in place. I am not saying you shouldn't look for college staff positions, but just like tenure track positions, they don't grow on trees.  

One area that might make sense for a job is in the area of institutional research because your degree would be a benefit.   Or a position that is a ten month appointment may work and then you could teach some courses over the summer while off from the other position.  Again, these positions are limited.  

As far as attending academic conferences while working on a college staff, if the conference happens during the school year, sometimes you are not allowed to take vacation during certain periods so it may not be possible if the conference falls at a busy time.   At least this is the case at the SLACs where I have worked.  But as always, your mileage may vary.  

I am sorry that this sounds so negative but I think you should have a picture of some of the possible challenges to having a college staff position and hoping to publish on the side.  A job where you can leave at 5:00 PM and not think about work until you show up for work again the next morning might make more sense.  A part time job would give you time to do research and writing but is not likely to lift you above your grad school living arrangements.  On the other hand, the benefit of a college staff position will mean you have access to libraries and other resources.   And while it shouldn't be as bad as having to cobble together multiple adjunct positions and commute between them daily, I think it would still be quite exhausting to take any full time position and publish.  I just didn't want anyone to assume it will be easy, but you have to have an income and this is still one way to stay in the game while you wait for your TT opportunity to open up. Be realistic and prepared for the challenge and you can make it work.  

My stats for this, for six months' worth of administrative applications in several areas:

Applied: 57 jobs
Interviews: 5
Job offers: 1, which I could not accept because start date was non-negotiable and I had ongoing employment
Pending: 1 active, two dozen in indeterminate process - some of these are pending from Sept.-Oct. because of freezes at the universities just now ending.

[seniorscholar]

Publish

I posted this in another thread, but it bears repeating. A friend directs a Humanities Center at a mid-range university. This center offers one (one) postdoc in any humanities field per year: typical humanities postdoc with decent income and benefits, teaching one course, writing the rest of the time.

For this one one-year position there were more than 600 applicants. Director therefore began the process of narrowing the field before the whole committee had to read 600 applications (with writing samples) by tossing out **every application that did not show the applicant had at least one article published or in press with a reputable journal**

If your dissertation is as good as your advisers believe, get two chapters revised and out to journals as quickly as you can. And then start working on revising the whole thing as a book. This may improve your chances on the market next year.

[shrubbery]

Thank you for the advice, Snowbound and Seniorscholar.  I'll be taking it. 

[silas]

One thing to consider, if you're mobile, is looking further afield for jobs.  Our department (humanities field) has recently had a fair streak of luck placing candidates with lots of teaching experience but with only very modest publication records at universities in Australia and NZ.  Many North American candidates have loads more teaching experience than those trained in either of the countries in question and for many fields an American PhD is still the gold standard.  If your degree is from a school with name recognition, this is doubly true. This gives you a huge advantage and lets your current credentials do more for you.  It's not a free pass on the publishing, but it's a creative alternative.

For what it's worth, the advantages of these positions also make them very attractive: the tenure process is more akin to a formal performance review in a "real world" job, faculty tend to be unionized (which means better benefits and salaries that usually far outpace those of schools in the US), and the governments of these two countries are investing money in higher education rather than slashing budgets.  The application process, while a bit different, is also a lot more straightforward.

[alleyoxenfree]

One thing to consider, if you're mobile, is looking further afield for jobs.  Our department (humanities field) has recently had a fair streak of luck placing candidates with lots of teaching experience but with only very modest publication records at universities in Australia and NZ.  Many North American candidates have loads more teaching experience than those trained in either of the countries in question and for many fields an American PhD is still the gold standard.  If your degree is from a school with name recognition, this is doubly true. This gives you a huge advantage and lets your current credentials do more for you.  It's not a free pass on the publishing, but it's a creative alternative.

For what it's worth, the advantages of these positions also make them very attractive: the tenure process is more akin to a formal performance review in a "real world" job, faculty tend to be unionized (which means better benefits and salaries that usually far outpace those of schools in the US), and the governments of these two countries are investing money in higher education rather than slashing budgets.  The application process, while a bit different, is also a lot more straightforward.

Where are you finding such postings?  I see only very occasional ones at the Chronicle.

[bent_abd]

This has been a very enlightening discussion indeed, and a pertinent one given how many of us are soon to be in this situation.  I honestly thought there would be more negative comments about staff (or regular) jobs.  But the balance has actually shifted in favor of: take whatever job you have to take to pay the bills.  Adjunct no more than one course a semester.  Publish, publish, publish.

Granted, notaprof mentioned a few drawbacks which should be addressed before someone jumps into a potentially lifeblood-sucking situation.  But if someone does their homework before taking a full-time job, it could be a good way to wait out this dry spell.  Example - a 6am-10pm, 6-day a week investment banking job might not be a good idea for someone hoping to land on the TT in two years time.  But a relatively laid back, bureaucratic job (at a college or in the government) could be good idea.  It certainly pays better than adjuncting.

One last question, that I think relates to all of "us," ie OP, shubbery, and myself: do we all agree that VAP is a whole other ballgame?  I mean, a 2/2 or 3/3 load with a decent salary and conference travel money is almost as good as a prestigious postdoc, no?  And since these positions are just now being posted, isn't hope (however dim) still alive for us?

[systeme_d_]

Oh yes, Bent_abd, a VAP is a whole different ballgame.

Take a VAP above any of the other options.  VAPs can get you places.  In many humanities fields, it's the most direct route to TT employment.  

(Not necessarily at the same university, of course.  Don't fall into the trap of thinking that VAPing makes you "the lock" on a TT position if one comes up in the department.)

[msparticularity]

Yup, a VAP is actually preferable to a postdoc in many, many fields--and for a lot of universities. While postdocs are quite normal in the sciences, and do exist to some degree in other fields, they are perceived (accurately?) as being All About Research. This is nice in the sense that it lets one build up a research portfolio, but it tells a hiring department next to nothing about ability to juggle research, teaching and service. A VAP, by contrast, is a dress rehearsal.

My own department's experience indicates that people who had VAPs or similar nonTT jobs can slide right into TT life easily and smoothly. People coming right out of grad school and/or who have only had a research position struggle. (Also, admittedly, we're not set up to nurture and mentor new young faculty.)

[snowbound]

In the past ten years or so, our dept (in the humanities) has filled about half of the TT openings with people who were VAP-ing for us.  (That's probably not typical of other institutions.)  Some VAP positions are just to fill one-year absences, of course--like when someone's off on a sabbatical or whatever--but some are to fill vacancies while a full job search is organized.  If you find yourself with a choice of two VAP positions, the reason for the position could be a deciding factor for you.  Being the VAP is certainly not a "lock" on the TT opening, but it does practically guarantee that you will at least be considered for the position.  The SC will at least be aware of you and think about whether they should short-list you.  And that puts you ahead of the game, compared to most of the 182 other applicants!

Even if no TT job is in the offing (or there is but you don't get it), you can get a letter from the Chair that gives a different view of you--a view of you as a faculty member--than referees from your grad school (to whom you are basically a student).
 

[silas]

The jobs in places like the UK tend to get posted on jobs.ac.uk.  Some of the Australian and NZ jobs get posted there as well, but they tend to pop up most often on the professional associations' websites.  FYI.

[doctormom]

As one who has held both a postdoc in the humanities and a VAP for multiple years, I agree that landing a VAP is your best road to a tt job.  You will sound like a colleague and not a grad student when you interview; you will be able to talk about your reasons for planning courses in certain ways, and you'll be able to rattle off texts that work in various courses at various levels.  You'll be able to ask for a recommendation from a colleague who has observed you teach and interact with students.  You may have gained some service experience.

To follow up on what snowbound says, however, the tt job may very well not be at the same institution.  The tt job offer that I finally accepted for next fall was from an institution in a different state.  I did not have any delusions of being viable for tt searches being conducted at the places where I held VAPs because their histories showed that insiders did not have an edge.  While I was a VAP, then, I worked to be a valuable and cheerful colleague, to collect positive evaluations, to ask for a letter, to make a decent income, to publish, and to know when to leave.  That worked for me even in this economy, and since I know that there are many others who have far greater achievements than I do, I believe that it's the teaching experience that prompted the invitation to interview.

VAPs may be more difficult to land this year than in past years, but some are being posted already in my discipline.  Good luck!