🗺️ The Job Market Campaign

“Ce fut au milieu de ces pensées généreuses, et dans cette disposition d’esprit, qu’il traversa l’Hellespont.” (“It was amidst these generous thoughts and with this mindset that he crossed the Hellespont.”)
– Maurice Druon, Alexandre le Grand (1958)

Last fall, I went on the academic job market and applied for tenure-track faculty positions primarily in Statistics. I’m happy to report I received multiple offers and accepted a position at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver 🇨🇦

I’ve benefited a lot from the guidance of mentors and peers, and the occasional blog post. A blog post is no substitute for the advice of a seasoned academic, still it may provide unexpected tips and it can make the job search feel like a less lonely endeavor. With that in mind, I’ll contribute my brick to the edifice and describe my personal experience.

Summary of tips

• Set abstract goals—e.g. conduct impactful research, educate the next generation—as opposed to fixating on a particular school or location.
• Don’t go on the job market just to try it out (the “dip your toe” approach).
• Wait until the end of the summer to start working on application material.
• Only apply to places where you might accept an offer.
• Keep your application material short and informative for the recruiting committee.
• Use the same CV, research statement and teaching statement for every institution.
• It’s ok to use a generic cover letter. However, if there is something that makes you particularly excited about one school, this is the place to mention it.
• The job talk is the most important part of the on-site interview, so put in the time to prepare it and do a few practice runs with an audience. Then put in more time. Be a perfectionist!
• In your job talk, privilege clarity. Resist to urge to impress with technical details—unless you can make them intelligible! People outside your particular subfield should understand what you’re doing and where you’re going.
• During the job talk, encourage people to ask questions. It will make things more interesting for your audience and for you.
• The job market campaign is long. Take care of yourself: exercise, travel with good books, and have people with whom you can discuss your journey.

When should the job search begin?

I like to call the job search the job market campaign. Because it will take up a lot of your time and energy. It’ll be the proverbial full-time job. And so, here are two advice I received and I’m happy to pass on:

• Don’t apply on a year just to try it out and see what happens. Some people argue it doesn’t hurt to try and you might get lucky. But it does hurt. It takes up your time and eats up your mental bandwidth. In my view, there is no point dipping your toe in the job market. If there is an exceptional opportunity, pursue it, otherwise, wait until the end of your PhD or postdoc.
• If applications are due in the fall, wait until the end of the summer to work on your application material. Because once you do, it’ll be very hard to focus on anything else and the presumably important work you’re doing. I waited until October. In September, I finished a paper and attended a conference I was co-organizing.

Don’t get me wrong: you still need to lay the groundwork before hand. That means doing research, attending conferences, advertising that you will be applying for positions (that takes courage but do it; you want to hear about opportunities.) And working out who your three/four letter writers will be—keep in mind that some institutions require someone to write about your teaching.

Another good piece of advice is start acting like a professor (this is pretty much the one thing I remember from reading The Professor is in when I was a PhD student). That can mean several things but essentially: take charge. Organize conference sessions, invite seminar speakers, lead your research.

Where do you apply?

Here’s some wisdom from my advisor: only apply if there is a chance you would accept an offer. Otherwise, you’re wasting their time and your time. That said, you should keep an open-mind. The chance of accepting the offer need not be high. Think about your hard constraints and your soft constraints. For example, a hard constraint might be living with a significant other. A soft constraint might be: you prefer a city to a small town. If something doesn’t meet your soft constraints, that shouldn’t prevent you from applying to an otherwise good department.

The other thing is that you’ll learn a lot about yourself while you’re applying: as you visit universities, as you (fingers crossed!) consider multiple offers, as your personal situation evolves, heck even as geopolitics change… You’ll learn what your priorities are as you go through the process.

I first made a list based on universities I was a familiar with, mostly because I knew at least one good professor there. If I was in good terms with that professor, I would reach out to ask them about the job opening and whether they thought I would be a good fit. (Often, I had already had this conversation with the professor at a conference or seminar.)

Then, I added research universities in locations that I liked and where I could imagine myself living. I looked at listings such as asa career, imstat jobs, and statistics jobs.

Once I compiled the list, I went over it with my letter writers and got some additional recommendations. Then I put together a big XL sheet, wrote down deadlines, and unconventional requirements.

I applied to about 50 places. Some people think it’s not enough, others that it’s too much. I was applying to different countries, so that increased the number of places I was willing to consider. What’s more, many institutions require the same documents, so you can streamline the process.

Application material

The standard requirements are: a CV, a cover letter, a research statement, a teaching statement, sometimes a diversity statement, and at least three letters of recommendation.

Here are some recommendations:

• Keep it informative. No need for generic statements that any applicant can write, i.e. “we live in a golden age of Computational Statistics…”. (For most people, this means deleting the first paragraph of the cover letter and research statement.) You want the admissions committee to learn about what distinguishes you.
• Find the place that imposes the shortest length constraint on each document and use that as your template. It turned out my four-page research statement was just as good as my five-page one, and writing shorter statements is often more effective.
• I used the same CV, research, teaching and diversity statements for almost every institution I applied to. Sometimes I would tweak the teaching statement depending on whether I was applying to a stats or CS program.
• The research statement should send a clear message to a reader who only reads the first paragraph and one who only reads the first page. If someone is motivated to read the whole thing, great. Make sure you talk about your work and your future work over the coming years. (Let’s be honest, you won’t stick to your five-year plan but people expect you to have a direction…)
• Ask peers who recently landed positions if they could share their material with you. It will give you a compass.
• General writing advice: you’re writing for your reader. Make it as easy as possible for them, make sure there always have all the information they need to understand what you’re saying, what you’re showing in a figure, etc.

Regarding the cover letter, I received two contradictory advice, which I’m compelled to share:

• Nobody reads the cover letter so put as little effort into it as possible. Really, all you need is: “Dear committee, enclosed is my application. Sincerely, Charles Margossian.” 😂
• The cover letter is the one place where you get to talk about the institution you’re applying to. You shouldn’t sell yourself (the rest of your application already does that). You should explain why you would accept an offer, if you got one.

I really like this last advice. I find it considerate. However, given the volume of places I was applying to, I couldn’t do it for every university. But they were a handful of places, where I felt a particular affinity and I wrote down why. (In the end, I got interviews at both places that received a custom cover letter and ones that got a generic letter.)

Final advice: proof-read, read your statements out loud, and have two/three friends or colleagues proof-read your application. I was incredibly lucky in that respect. I had great writers read my material with patience and kindness. If you ask for more feedback, you’ll start getting contradicting advice. And also: no advice is sacred. Write in your own voice.

The job talk

If you’re fortunate enough, you’ll get interviews and you’ll need to hold a seminar. There are a lot of advice on how to give a good talk and often academics blatantly disregard them. I believe that, as a community, we should all invest more time into preparing good talks. Think about how much better conferences would be! But until that happens, you have an opportunity to distinguish yourself as a competent speaker 🎉

To me, the most valuable resource has been this lecture by Patrick Winston. I would try and implement every piece of advice, at least as an exercise. You can then adjust to your style.

Beyond that:

• Privilege clarity. I realize sometimes it feels like we need to impress our audience and convince them that our work is super hard and non-trivial, especially for a job talk. But in the end, you want the audience to be on board with you and feel like they’re taking something away from your presentation, other than “this is not my field or this went too fast for me”. Trust that the audience values your work: they’re mostly professors who liked your application enough to invite you. Some of the coolest feedback I got during interviews was: “this wasn’t my field but I understood everything you were doing and I always knew where you were going.” Also, remember there will be graduate students in the audience: make it worth their time!
• Your title should be short but informative. It should give the committee an easy way to label you. I didn’t do an outstanding job here, but my job talk was titled “Markov chain Monte Carlo and Variational Inference in the age of parallel computation”. Ok, so I’m the MCMC and VI guy who cares about modern hardware.
• Be a perfectionist. There shouldn’t be any slide or figure that can be improved in an obvious way. Put in the hours.
• Don’t use beamer: keynote or google slides.
• Practice your talk a few times and get feedback. I did a few practices on my own, one practice at my institution, and one at my alma matter. Suffer through the feedback. Use it. Again, put in the hours.
• Pause. Control your tempo. Silence builds suspense and gives the audience a chance to catch their breath.
• If you give your talk several times, you might lose the enthusiasm you initially had. It can be good to freshen up the talk. In my case, I invited people to ask questions during the talk. This made for more lively conversations. (You should know your material well enough to engage in these discussions.)
• Beware that, while most questions will be genuine, you’ll occasionally get the “let me grill the candidate” question. Do your best, but I wouldn’t worry too much about it. It’s more important to answer the curiosity-driven questions.

The interviews

Part of the on-campus visit will be one-on-one interviews. I don’t have too much advice here. Did I know everyone who was going to interview me? No. In fact, the job search made me realize I didn’t know the vast majority of people in my field.

Most professors prepare the interview and have a set of topics they want to discuss. When that happens, roll with that. The chair will usually cover the big topics (funding, tenure, etc.). Professors you knew beforehand and young faculty are people who can give you the inside-scoop.

If you’re interviewing in the winter, bring some cough drops. You and your interviewer might need them.

I had one or two tough interviews and one or two what-should-we-tak-about awkward meetings. But overall, interviews were straightforward and pleasant. People were nice, interesting and interested.

I also really liked the dinner. Yes, don’t get drunk, don’t be a slob, this is still part of the interview, blah blah blah. But relax. Be yourself. If you don’t BS them, they won’t BS you. They want to know if you would be a good colleague to hang out with. Everyone at this table wants to have a pleasant dinner. I’d think of it as a small celebration: both you and them put in a lot of hard work for the interview. As a reward you get a three-course meal and a glass or two of wine. (I don’t know if they do it for every candidate or just because I’m French, but I was consistently asked to pick a wine for the table, so maybe I have some elementary notions of wine pairing.)

Well-being

The job market campaign is long. If you’re like me, you’ll mostly stop doing anything else at work to focus on it. Still: your colleagues will ask for your help on a project, you’ll get a damming review that requires a response… and more than that, life won’t stop. You’ll probably be going through your own set of personal challenges.

Of course, the market itself will be trying. For some time, I wondered why I wasn’t hearing from some places. Then I freaked out about scheduling interviews scattered across the world. I questioned whether I had the right priorities: should I move back to Europe to be close to family? Should I stay in New York where I had lived for eight years? Should I…?

When I got my first job offer, I broke down crying. Not tears of joy. I had just finished a full day interview and was prepping a “future job talk” for my next university visit (I really procrastinated on that one and stayed up until 2 am). I was completely depleted. Of course, I was happy about the offer itself. But not relieved: the offer came with an exploding deadline and it seemed likely I would have to turn it down. At that point, I experienced total mental overload. Also, I was sad, because I always imagined that I would be surrounded by people I love to celebrate, if I one day I got a faculty job offer. Not alone in a hotel, exhausted and preparing the next interview.

In a both good and bad way, the job market campaign keeps you busy and forces you to move forward. Traveling gives me a lot of peace: this is where I meditate, look out of the window, and sometimes chat with other travelers (who will find it super exciting that you’re trying to become a professor).

Here’s my last set of advice. This one is more personal, so obviously only take what’s useful for you:

• Take good books with you. For me, it was Alexandre, le grand by Maurice Druon: a fictionalized account of Alexander the great, narrated by his seer, and so with an emphasis on the religious aspect of his journey. Captivating and emboldening. And then, the complete work of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, who mostly wrote about the early days of aviation. Poetic, meditative, and filled with nostalgia. Something to appease the mind amidst the turmoil of traveling.
• Exercise: go on long walks, run around the campuses you’re visiting, work out at the gym of your hotel. Clear your mind. Blast that music. Motivate yourself. Each interview is a marathon and you’ll want to rise to the occasion.
• Have a few close ones with whom you can speak. Tell them what’s going on. No one will fully get it, because no one will at once understand your academic, personal and emotional aspirations. That’s ok. Even if someone doesn’t fully get it, they’re still rooting for you. Thank you to those who were there for me and put up with a few months of insanity.

Perspectives

The outcome of the job search does not define you. A lot of it is outside of your control and this seems more true today than before. After I received my offers, many university began hiring freezes. This meant that some of the offers I turned down did not go to the next candidate, as would’ve been the case in a less chaotic year.

When I signed my offer at UBC, a colleague wrote to me: “Well deserved, but the process doesn’t always work the way it should, so glad to hear that it worked out.”

Some of the best researchers I know did not get faculty positions and still went on to do influential work.

And here’s one more small set of fun facts: the first time I applied to grad school, I got no offers. I was the only one in my PhD cohort to fail their qualifying exam at the end of my first year, meaning I had to take it again. At the end of the PhD I applied to a few universities for professor positions and got zero interviews (the toe dipping I don’t recommend). When I applied this year, I attended seven in-person interviews, which resulted in five offers.