Career Talk

Job-Hunting in a Tight Market

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By Mary Morris Heiberger and Julie Miller Vick

Question: I'm worried that the job market is going to be tight this year. It looks like there aren't many openings in my field. I want to do everything I can to identify every possible position for which I'm qualified. How do I do that?

Julie: In addition to the usual vicissitudes of the academic job market, this may be a particularly difficult year in many fields. As state revenues fall, legislatures re-evaluate their commitments to higher education. Meanwhile, private institutions struggle to hold down tuition given the economic downturn. But keep in mind: While a large number of faculty searches are announced in the fall, openings come out all year long. So it's too early to reach conclusions about the whole recruiting cycle, particularly since institutions may now be waiting to see how economic conditions resolve themselves before posting positions.

Mary: You are wise to want to be thorough about identifying possible openings. Regularly check the national job listings such as those found in The Chronicle and in the publications and Web sites of scholarly associations. But you also need to go beyond these sources.

If your work is at all interdisciplinary, more than one association may have job listings that would fit with your background. Look for the organizations that publish journals you use in your research. Ask people in your field and your own department where they publicize their job listings. Search in Gale's Encyclopedia of Associations, which may be available online through your campus library. If not, it will almost certainly have a print copy.

Julie: Use other electronic sources. Scholarly discussion groups are primarily devoted to discussing issues in the field but sometimes include job announcements. In addition to hearing about jobs, you can establish some good "name recognition" by posting thoughtful messages. If someone on a search committee reacts to your name favorably, your materials may get a closer look. Two good sources for identifying discussion groups are CataList, and Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists. You can also check with your scholarly association.

Mary: Another approach that can be time-consuming but informative is to check the Web sites of individual colleges and universities, easily accessible through either of the following Web sites, American Universities or Community College Web. A large and growing number of institutions list tenure-track positions on their own Web sites, either in an institutional employment section or on departmental Web sites. Checking job listings at individual campuses is particularly useful when you have geographic constraints that limit the number of institutions you can consider.

If institutions that particularly interest you post their jobs online, bookmark them and take a quick look every week to see whether new jobs have been listed. Even if a national ad will be used to advertise a position, there's a good chance it will appear on the Web site first, so you may get a bit more notice.

Julie: If you are a U.S. citizen who feels adventuresome or are a foreign citizen, you may want to consider jobs outside the United States. As a starting point for making contacts abroad, you can look at General Education Online, an excellent collection of the Web sites of universities worldwide. However, keep in mind that once you work abroad, it often proves difficult to return to a good job in your home country. Although we don't have room in this column to address the many challenges of changing countries during your career, we would suggest you not go this route without taking a long view.

Mary: Despite all these electronic resources, old-fashioned, person-to-person networking continues to be an effective shortcut to finding information. Make sure that everyone you know in your field knows about your search, your goals, and your qualifications so that they will think of you as they hear about openings. Keep them up to date on your accomplishments throughout the course of the year.

Julie: If you take all of these suggestions, you can be fairly sure you won't miss out on learning about openings. But it's also important to have a well-thought-out backup plan just in case you don't get a job offer on this cycle. That plan would depend on your situation and your field, but it could include continuing with your present employer, landing a postdoc, teaching as an adjunct, or working full time in another field, preferably one that gives you some time outside work to continue building a publication record.

Mary: If you've already been on the market for several cycles, with disappointing results, and don't see much in the way of job listings in this one, you may want to consider whether you're at a point of diminishing returns. If you've really done everything you can over at least a few cycles and are discouraged about prospects in higher education, perhaps it's time to think seriously about moving to another field where your talents can be better used. We'll tackle the thorny issue of how to decide if it's time to change direction in our next column.

If you've recently made such a change, particularly after years of teaching off the tenure track, we'd like to hear from you so that we can share your experience, anonymously of course, in that column.