- Spring Quarter Before Applying for jobs - Started to ask questions
- What are the mechanics of applying for jobs?
- Deadlines: The first applications are due in early November
- Letters of recommendation: Give your letter-writers a full month to write the letter and remind them often. Letters are put on file the faculty support person. Just tell them where to send them and it is done for you at the department's expense.
- Teaching statement: See my other post about this one.
- Research statement: This is less important for a teaching job, but it must still be passable. Your advisor would be more helpful than me.
- What sort of job do I want? (This was easy for me -- I would much rather teach than do research, and if I could avoid mandatory research it would be even better.)
- Where am I willing to go? What sorts of situations may influence my decisions? (If I had a choice between a teaching job at a 4-year university in the middle of Arkansas or a teaching job at a community college in California, which one would I take? What if the California job paid less? Other issues to consider include family and dating relationships.)
- Summer Before Applying for Jobs
- Started writing drafts of my teaching statement
- Devoted extra time to my dissertation work so that I would be able to focus on the job application process.
- Continued to reflect on the questions above -- I think it's important to be reflecting on what you're doing (or about to do) at all times. It helps to gain perspective and insight.
- Worked on an informational webpage for prospective employers. I wanted a place where I would have more room to provide information without cluttering up the application itself. I don't know whether this had any benefit, but I feel like it didn't hurt anything.
- Late September - Early October (Beginning of the Fall Quarter)
- Secured four letter writers (I only needed three for most of my applications)
- Wrote up a generic cover letter to serve as a starting point for writing cover letters for specific schools
- Looked online for job postings
- Organized the information in a spreadsheet
- Researched the institutions
- Signed up for the Employment Center at the AMS-MAA National Conference (A resource I ended up not using very much... but that's another story)
- Late October - Early November (Middle of the Fall Quarter)
- Wrote Cover Letters
- Sent out my first batch of applications
- Updated the spreadsheet of job postings
- Late November
- Wrote more Cover Letters
- Sent out two more batches of applications
- Followed up on the first batch of applications
- Updated the spreadsheet of job postings
- December
- Followed up on the second and third batches of applications
- Wait and pray...
- Early January
- Attended the Meetings
- Semi-participated in the Employment Center
- Attended Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Talks
- Attended MAA mini-course in directing undergraduate research
- Got a two phone interviews
- Got a few rejection letters
- Late January
- Got a lot of rejection letters
- Prepared for on-campus interviews
- Mostly preparing two teaching talks
- Some time spent researching the institutions
- Early February
- Went for on campus interviews (I'll try to do this in a separate post)
- Started to schedule another on campus interview
- Late February
- Received an offer from my first choice and took it
- Canceled the third campus interview
Monday, May 14, 2007
My Experience on the Teaching Market
This is the third of what will end up being either four or five posts in preparing myself for the "Finding Jobs in Academia" panel (tomorrow). This one is just going to be a simple timeline of events as I applied for jobs. I might come back later to fill in some details.
