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How to Draft a Want Ad

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By John Schmitt

The Chronicle has been kind enough to feature advice articles for job seekers on how to draft application letters and C.V.'s, and how candidates can best position themselves for jobs.

But today's academic job market is not entirely a buyer's market. That is, the burden of proving worth should not be entirely on the candidate. It should be shared by the institution seeking to fill a valuable faculty, administrative, or executive position.

Some thought should go into how the position is advertised and how the college is portrayed within a particular position announcement. After all, the employer is asking the potential employee to entrust his or her many years of postsecondary education (and 10 years of deferred BMW ownership because of student-loan obligations) to an ethereal promise of tenure.

The first rule for the drafter of the want ad is Think Large. Take noteof the fact that most top-tier colleges buy less space than it takes to advertise a good used car. A typical ad for a top-tier institution reads: "Mega State University seeks assistant professor of economics, specialty in pre-wampum period. Send packets to Dean Clyde S. Dale, P.O. Box 6, MegaStation, AT 99099. No calls. EEO/AA."

What else remains to be said? Nothing. Complete, concise, and cheaper than a pop-up ad on ProfessorsAreUs.com.

Now, let us examine the typical "less than top tier" ad: "Minnow State Teachers College seeks instructor/assistant/associate professor willing to help extend the learning-centered environment provided on our rustic, 14.7-acre campus located in the rolling delta of the Little Crabgrass River Valley (etc. for four more paragraphs).

"Our newest faculty member will provide our nearly 700 students with the knowledge of new media that will lead them into the 21st century (etc. for three more paragraphs).

"Persons interested in applying should send a recent résumé, official transcripts of all class work (kindergarten through graduate school), nine reference letters, proposed syllabi, proof of teaching effectiveness, copies of their 10 most-recently published academic works, and a completed official university application form to: Mike R. Phone, 111 Plowshare Hall, Little Midgetville, Illiana. Minnow State is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer. Women and minority members are encouraged to apply."

Where to start? How about at the end? Of course you are an Equal Opportunity Employer. Everyone knows that. If you weren't, people would be reading about your civil-rights litigation in The Chronicle. Everyone knows that women and minorities should apply, so why not just use the abbreviations and save some space?

Also, who exactly is Mike R. Phone? Is he the provost? The associate vice president for hiring, firing, and vacation scheduling? Is he a professor, doctor, or Nobel laureate? What is Mike going to think of receiving 85 letters addressed "Dear Mike"?

Now for the meat of the thing. Why should an applicant fill out your official form if she is sending you her entire life history in book form? What else can you possibly learn? And why does your official application form contain the statement, "'See résumé' is not a sufficient answer to the following questions"? Believe it or not, it is impossible to transfer all the information from a six-page résumé onto a three-page application form, especially since the only typewriters still in existence are 1924 Remingtons.

Now, seriously, "reference letters"? Has any person in charge of hiring ever seen a negative reference letter? What person with six or eight years of higher education is so dim as to ask persons he doesn't trust implicitly to write reference letters?

What does a negative reference letter say? Consider this: "Dear Mike, God knows why this klutz asked me to write a letter on his behalf. He's been around the grad school so long, I thought he was furniture. But in all honesty, he did get his dissertation through. Something about comic books and the Internet. If personal hygiene is not a big thing at MSTC, you should hire him. Please. Sincerely, Professor Hannah Youngman."

Instead of putting the applicant and the letter writer through the burden of collecting, writing, and rewriting the reference letters, why not call some of the people the applicant lists as references?

And why require "official" transcripts? Those things cost money. Wouldn't an unofficial copy do until you actually are close to offering the job to someone?

Next rule: Be Specific. What are the "new media"? A historian or anthropologist might say the goatskin drum is a "new medium," given the time span of human existence. If you mean the World Wide Web, say it. If you mean Internet II, say it. If you mean overhead projectors and movies with sound, say it.

Proof of teaching effectiveness? Again, why not call one of the people the applicant has worked with? After all, do you really want to work your way through 85 sets of student evaluations based largely on whether the applicant was so abusive as to actually require homework assignments?

And the last rule: Go Easy On The Campus Pride. Everyone is very happy that you are proud of your campus and student body. You should be. And feel free to tell people all about it -- on your Web site.

Remember, job applicants, no matter how desperate, are interested in only four items:

1. What's the job?

2. What's the pay?
3. How's the weather?
4. How far is it to the nearest big city?

Given these rules, we can now rewrite the Minnow State ad as follows:

"Minnow State seeks tenure-track applicant to teach Web and magazine design on a Studebaker computer platform. Small student body, small campus 200 miles from St. Louis. Pay range in mid-$30's. Fondness for spiders a plus. Allergies a problem. Send materials to Dr. Michael R. Phone, Search Chair, MSTC Box 119, Little Midgetville, IL, 01010. EEO/AA. "

There you have it. All the necessary information in a nutshell. You will love it. The applicants will love it, and Mike will love it.