Wednesday, December 5, 2007

I Made a Lot of Mistakes, In My Mind, In My Mind








another ass prof said...

I'm sure it's difficult to see from your vantage, but the hiring committee is not the only group with power. You also have power.

You talk like you blew that interview, but it sounds to me like both sides figured out that you weren't the best fit for that school.

There was a time when I felt very bad about not getting certain jobs because I felt that I was blowing the interviews. But I wasn't blowing the interviews. I was weeding myself out. In hindsight, I told them who I was, and my fit there probably wouldn't have worked very well.

Some SLAs are looking for philosophy teachers, plain and simple. If they think you have even a balanced orientation toward your research, they may be concerned about your imminent departure or your dissatisfaction with the teaching load. That won't suit their needs; and it probably won't suit yours either.

If you can possibly get into this frame of mind, remember that you're also in the business of selecting schools. Even though it's a brutal buyer's market, as a seller, you still have some say in how you pitch yourself and where you end up. Believe it, or not.

(btw: it's 'complement', not 'compliment'; and 'further', not 'farther')

Inside the Philosophy Factory said...

While I actually believe that answer -- and, being at a teaching school -- I have to in order to stay sane... the key to it is to give some specific examples about times where that actually HAS happened.

So, if I were going to give the answer, it would be something like... "Well, a current discussion in my field is about _____________, which came up in class last week. -- Later, one of my students read _______ in a new way, which lead me in a new direction for the paper I was writing. Also, when the paper is relevant to classwork, I have my students read and discuss papers I have in development. It helps me to see the weaknesses in my paper as well as to show them the process of writing a philosophy paper for publication. In fact, my honors ethics class last year read three drafts of my paper on Ross... a few of their comments were so helpful that I feel it only fair to give them credit.

Honestly, if I'd been listening to your answer, I'd think -- yea -- wait until you get into our classrooms, teaching our little asshats and see if you have the energy left to do anything but drink and watch the Food network.

Anonymous said...

ah, the Food network. Anybody attend the APA mini-conference last spring on philosophy of wine? Try offering that, ITPF.

Well, probably it'd have to be 'philosophy of cheap beer' to generate widespread interest. But it's worth a shot.

Anonymous said...

Following up on "another ass prof" above, it seems worth stating clearly the unpleasant truth that most job seekers cannot afford to follow his or her advice. I say that as "another ass" myself: lots of interviews, lots of 'self-weeding' (in ass's image), left me very glad I didn't get pursued by many of the schools whose interviews I 'blew' in the way the poster describes. But that's a thought I can think only because I did have those opportunities and did wind up with a job I could think was better. The sad truth is that my earlier perspective was more adequate to the reality of the task: in each case, I rightly wanted that job, since I couldn't be sure of another.






Anonymous said...

sufjan stevens

Anonymous said...

Regarding another ass[.] prof's comments: in theory I agree, but you leave out an important point: some people do publish a lot at teaching schools with heavy loads, enjoy them and stick around. If they had been interviewed as you describe, they wouldn't have been hired because their peers can't manage to keep up good research agendas while teaching, but that doesn't mean other people can't. So it's unfortunate when a search committee says to a candidate, who might be very interested in a position and think he'd fit in, "we don't think you'd be happy here". The search committee should worry about whether he'll get good student evals, be a good colleague, etc., and let the candidate figure out whether he'll be happy.

Regarding ITPF's comments: it's too much to expect all of these at once. But last year I taught a heavy load at a mid-level state school, and am currently working on a paper that came out of my intro class. So such things do happen.

But the spirit of both your posts is dead on, even if you overstate the case.

Anon 1:58 said...

In general, I think "be yourself" is good advice. But I understand the reality and pressures of the job market too. In any case, I think it's a big mistake to present yourself as someone you *wouldn't* want to be for the duration of the tenure track. What if you get the job and have to *be* the prof you wouldn't want to be in order to get tenure? I hear that's not a happy way to go.

Phil Fodder said...


You are right about 'compliment' and 'complement' (though I like the idea of my research expressing esteem for my teaching! :) )but not about 'further' and 'farther'...they are used interchangably for describing spatial or metaphorical distance, and I take it that is what was being described PGS typed 'the farther I got into [the answer]...". The two only come apart when there is no notion of distance involved (e.g. 'we need to further develop the hiring process')...oh yeah, and, I agree with the sentiments expressed in the post.

On a seperate note, has anyone else wondered if maybe not everyone who is on the phil job market is using/updating the job wiki? I mean, if you don't see that a certain school has any APA interviews listed is that a reliable indicator that that school has not contacted anyone for an interview?

Anonymous said...

Are you kidding? Of course "not everyone" who is on the job market is updating the wiki. Like any other completely voluntary collective action problem, surely it is only a minority of job-seekers who bother to update the wiki. (And surely even fewer feel it necessary to add a "ditto" than feel it necessary to be the first to say a school has contacted them.) At my school, the people on the market hardly even read the wiki (and have only vague aquaintance with the existence of this blog). Indeed, the placement director tells them not to look at the wiki so as not to add any unnecessary stress. And they are far too busy to spend any time on this horserace stuff.

Whether the percent of job-seekers who participate in the wiki is 10% or 45% or even 65%, I am sure it is not, say, 90%. And in any case, since departments may contact people in batches or cycles, the fact that one or more people have been contacted is no reason to think you will definitely not be contacted.

Another ass prof said...

From the American Heritage® Book of English Usage:

§ 121. farther / further
Is it the further you get in your trip, the farther you get in your book or the other way around? Many writers since the Middle English period have used farther and further interchangeably. A relatively recent rule, however, states that farther should be reserved for physical distance and further for nonphysical, metaphorical advancement. Thus 74 percent of the Usage Panel prefers farther in the sentence If you are planning to drive any farther than Ukiah, you’d better carry chains, whereas 64 percent prefers further in the sentence We won’t be able to answer these questions until we are further along in our research. In many cases, however, it is hard to see the difference. If we speak of a statement that is far from the truth, for example, we should also allow the use of farther in a sentence such as Nothing could be farther from the truth. But Nothing could be further from the truth is so common that it has become a fixed expression.

(btw: It's 'separate', not 'seperate')

Anonymous said...

Well, the logic behind dittoing was that we could get some data on the rate at which candidates are contacted for interviews. It's the same logic, by the way, that this blog follows in soliciting anecdotal evidence from members of search committees: namely, that small and poorly collected samples can provide some useful information, even if it's not clear how to interpret it. (This logic is what Leiter has criticized on his blog regarding PJMB, by the way.) Assuming a charitable view of most posters' intentions, the logic would indicate that more data points yield more reliable knowledge, ceteris paribus.

I've been skeptical that many departments contact in batches: I think most try to get their peas in a row early and quickly, then move on to other things, like grading final exams. But I could be wrong. Can anyone on search committees give us the reasoning behind contacting three people per week for four weeks, rather than 12 people in one week?

Also, can anyone on search committees tell us how many times they try to get in touch with hard-to-find candidates (or how long they wait for a response to email), and what happens when a candidate is MIA? Is there a point where you go to the next candidate on your list; or do you wait until interview time and if someone is MIA at that point, you just interview 11 candidates rather than 12?

Anonymous said...

Who on earth would go MIA right now?

Phil Fodder said...

"(btw: It's 'separate', not 'seperate')"

That's just spelling; the lowest form of Human knowledge...

"From the American Heritage® Book of English Usage:"

That may be a new rule of usage (I doubt it though, that quote is from 1996 and the panel was split on it then...) but the words are defined as synonomous and so that usage may violate some developing norm but it is not semantically other owrds, that 74% of the muckity-mucks on the Usage Pannel think X about some usage of 'farther' doesn't merit correcting someone for using the word according to its dictionary meaning...I realise ( :) )that this is off the topic of the post, but I couldn't resist!!

Anonymous said...

Should I start sweating that I don't have any job interviews yet?

undetached rabbit parts said...

I think it is a little early to get too worried (I don't have any interviews yet either). One encouraging sign for me is that no interviews for jobs in my main AOS have been scheduled (at least according to the wiki). A lot of the jobs in which interviews have been scheduled are for open positions, i.e. positions that you are competing with everyone for. Common sense says that these are harder to get than positions in any specific AOS.

On the other hand, interviews have been scheduled for several jobs that I thought were in my range, which doesn't bode well for the rest of my applications.

juniorperson said...

My experience as a member of a Search Committee (for both viusiting positions and a TT position at an R1 Department) is that candidates are contacted all at once. I have no idea why anyone would "stagger" doing this. Perhaps, though, candidates could be divided up amoung search committee members, with each four of them contacting three? But this way of doing things strikes me as odd, too.

wikimonger said...

Why are all the West Coast depts lagging behind their east coast/mid-west counterparts in scheduling interviews?

Anonymous said...

I have a burning question that I'm sure many have at this point in the process: does being contacted early mean that you are preferred by the school contacting you? There are a few ways of discerning that you are one of the first ones contacted. 1) You are the first to post on the wiki (perhaps another good reason to have 'ditto' data on the wiki); 2) when asked to set-up a time with the interviewers, you have prime choice of times to meet (e.g., "Morning or afternoon, its up to you?")

Anonymous said...

To clarify my post at 10:52, by 'being contacted early,' I mean being the first to be contacted among others by a given school. I don't mean being contacted by a given school earlier than a different school.

Anonymous said...

Anon 10:52,

From what I've read on the Chronicle Forums on this matter, this probably means nothing. People are just on a list and they call the first person on the list. The list is not an order of preference. It might be alphabetical. Does your last name start with an A?

undetached rabbit parts said...


I noticed that too. I wonder if many of them aren't going to do APA interviews (too far to go), which maybe throws the time line off etc? I'm guessing, I have no idea. Maybe the sample size is so small right now (so few schools have scheduled interviews) that it is just a coincidence?

Anonymous said...

Anon 10:52: "Does your last name start with an A?" Good question, in fact my last name begins with a letter that is near the end of the alphabet (last 25% of the alphabet). You comment about there being a list that interviewers go down which is randomly ordered seems reasonable though. It could just be the order that they were piled from a pile or something. I have heard that oftentime interviews have a certain order of preference for their candidates. I'm not sure if this would translate into giving them pick of the times to meet or not.

Bobcat said...

Schools that have contacted people now are, in many cases, self-consciously doing it early. I know one search committee person who told me that her/his search committee was contacting people so as to reduce the likelihood that people would turn down an interview with them owing to the surfeit of interviews they already have scheduled. (Note: who ARE these people who have to turn down interviews? Has anyone ever met one? I graduated from a top 5 program and have taken classes at two other top 5 programs and I believe I've only ever met one such person.)

As for worrying about not having any interviews yet, I wouldn't start worrying until December 14. I bet next week will be a big week for scheduling interviews.

Also, if you don't have a Ph.D. in hand yet and don't get any interviews, I wouldn't worry too much. I've been told by an authority on the job market that nowadays having a Ph.D. in hand is practically a prerequisite for getting an interview.

Anonymous said...

Anon. 10:52,

You are right that SCs probably have an idea of who the strongest candidate is. But, again from what I read on the chronicle forums, this doesn't translate into who gets called first.

undetached rabbit part said...


Our placement director told me the same thing. The evidence from my department supports it too: people have been getting jobs, but always a year after they finish (i.e. only after they get the Ph.D.).

Anonymous said...

Minor correction ... My impression is that what matters is that the dissertation has been submitted. Whether one has defended it and actually has the diploma in hand is -- from all that I've seen and heard -- not terribly important.

Anonymous said...

I've got one interview scheduled so far, and I know I was the first person they contacted because they told me so. My name is near the end of the alphabet. I don't think I can draw any conclusions from this (otherwise I think I'm a long shot for the position), but I'm telling myself that it's a good sign because quite frankly I need a good sign right about now.

Anon. 1:58 said...

I think Dec 14 is a bit early to start worrying. I've been contacted after that date several times, and once as late as Dec 20.

Anonymous said...

There's a simple reason why my department schedules interviews batch by batch: we can only agree on who should be interviewed one batch at a time. So we schedule the interviewees everyone agrees on first, then read more and deliberate more, then schedule the next group, then do it again for perhaps one more round. Those in the first group are not necessarily the top candidates; they're simply the ones it's easiest to agree should be interviewed (usually based partly on area considerations). Extremely strong candidates can wind up in the final group, if we have to debate area issues.

Anonymous said...

I have four interviews scheduled so far, and I'm skeptical of there being any rhyme or reason to the order in which candidates were contacted. For those charged with organizing these things, it is difficult enough to aggregate the scheduling needs/conflicts/preferences of all candidates; it'd be nearly impossible, I suspect, to do so only by contacting candidates in some particular order -- any order.

Stranger things have happened, of course, but ...

Anonymous said...

My professors have said not to be worried about not being contacted yet. One professor, who ended up getting several of the top job offers in his year, said that he was contacted by some jobs for interviews as late as Christmas Eve. And also, we can notice that it's still a minority of jobs that have contacted people for interviews. It is after all professors that have to read through all these files, and at this time of semester, they've got just as many ways of procrastinating this job as we do, and they don't have the stress pressing them to do this quickly.

As for the number of people updating this - I've noticed that out of the 60 jobs that I applied for (and 30 that have actually acknowledged applications), there's only about four or five that I was the first one to put the acknowledgment data in for. And this is with me checking almost every single day! So there must be a decent number of people doing this.

For a more detailed estimate, notice that most of the jobs that already have interviews have 2 to 4 total mentions of interviews (ie, first mention plus 1 to 3 dittos). Since I doubt that many places are interviewing more than around 12, this suggests that probably around 1/5 of people are entering interviews and dittos. Probably a slightly higher percentage (say 1/4) are entering interviews, but perhaps not dittos. Therefore, if a school has already contacted 12 people about interviews, the chances that no one would have posted it are (3/4)^12, or around 3%.

Long story short, this means that it's very unlikely that there's a job out there that's already contacted all their interviewees and yet hasn't shown up. So we don't have to worry much about that.

Unless there are jobs that contact a much smaller number of people, and perhaps in particular a type of people that are unlikely to update the wiki.

wikimonger said...

Anon. with 4 interviews,

That's a lot of interviews so far! Way to go! Inquiry minds want to know. Do you have a PhD in hand? Is this your first year on the market? What is your field? and What is the rank of your dept? Top 10, Top 5, Top 20, Top 30,...?

Of course feel free to decline the questions.

wikimonger said...

I meant to say:

"*Inquiring* minds"

BB said...

Thanks, Wikimonger.

I’m a bit surprised by it myself. At the risk of sounding ungrateful, thought, I should mention that only one of those four was anywhere close to the top of my list to begin with.

Anyway, concerning your questions, my dissertation is in but not yet defended (possibly confirming a point made earlier). I'm inclined not to specify my particular field, but sufficed to say it’s in one of the “core” areas. My department is very highly ranked, though it’s outside of the US.

Small sample size here though (n=1), so it's difficult to know how instrumental any of that was.


Anonymous said...


They're out there. I teach at a Leiter top 20 place, and we've had several candidates turn us down over the last, say, 5 years. The ones who do it tend to be *very, very* strong candidates indeed --- and they've all wound up with very nice jobs in the end.

Anonymous said...

Anon 12:50, I'm having trouble with your math (though I like your conclusion, and would be very happy if you were right). I've got the components: a quarter of the interviewees can be expected to post to the wiki, so 3/4 won't. If that was the odds that one individual wouldn't, you'd raise it to the 12 for 12 candidates. But 3/4 isn't the odds that an individual won't post, for that you'd need the likelihood that someone who normally posts wouldn't in some particular case -- and I don't think we've got any way to estimate that.

Anonymous said...

Turning down an interview is not a big deal, I've done it - if you beleive you are not a good match - why waste your time.

Now, the interesting part, after I turned a dept dowm, I get a call from the chair 3 mons later - they don't like anyone who they have brought in, and they'd like to fly me out, shoiw me around interview me becuase we really do want someone for to strt next fall and the current crop just doesn't cut - what a way to get a job.

capn crunch said...

I worry about ITPF's original comment in response to the question "which do you see as your primary focus - research or teaching?" (12/5 8:38PM)

Some profs at a teaching university could be offended by such a response because it appears that you not only emphasize research but exploit students' abilities in the process. I can imagine some prof thinking, "So, you would use our students for your research ends. Ugh!"

I definitely don't agree with the hypothetical assessment, but I can see where someone could say it. This is especially true of profs at a teaching univ who are extremely sensitive about the research/teaching divide.

The answer to this question needs to be carefully crafted, and I can't do it justice (as you'll see in a few sentences).

Why not say: "[one of the following preambles:] I'm just finishing grad school / I received my PhD X years ago / I've only taught X classes, and I haven't established a primary focus. My answer to the question today would be [and say one or the other:] teaching/research for x, y, and z reasons. This doesn't mean that research/teaching is unimportant, but as someone new to the profession I have room to develop my research/teaching portfolio."

You might want to turn it on them at that point and ask what they would have said if they were in your shoes. Of course you'd have to ask it more eloquently than that.

Anonymous said...


That would go over real well with me - next on line with phd please step forward to interview.

Anonymous said...

Have anyone else heard the view that the magic number of APA interiews is nine? Nine interviews probably means three on-campuses interviews, which means one job offer. How many do you think you need to reach the golden ring?

Anonymous said...

Magic 8-ball might be more helpful.

Anonymous said...

Anon 7:10 writes:


I've heard this, but it is based on BS reasoning. The actual number is much lower.

It assumes that everyone would accept any and every job if offered. It ignores the fact that most who are interviewed (including, presumably, you) have more than one interview and thus could not take every job interviewed for. Many many jobs do not go to the institution's favorite interviewee.

It also ignores the signal that having more interviews indicates that you are probably a more attractive candidate (i.e., someone with 4 interviews is much more than twice as likely to get at least one offer than someone with 2).

From anecdotal evidence, it seems that folks with 4-5 interviews are probably slightly odds-on to get an offer, and that it is a teeny tiny minority that gets as many as 9 interviews.

winsberg said...

anon 12:38

What you say does not seem right to me. First, if you assume that interviews are "independent trials" offering you, in each case, a 1/12 chance of getting a job, then 9 would hardly be a "magic number"--unless you think magic number means the one that gives an even chance. Because that's what 9 independent trials at 1/12 chance gives you: just about an even 6.4chance.

So, yes, you are right that the 'independent trials' model is not a good model, but its not that model that says nine is the magic number.

As for anecdotal evidence, it suggests to me that that lots of people get four APA interviews and end up empty handed. I dont know if its the majority, but its not even close to uncommmon. I would probably peg a "magic number" --which to me means the number of APA interviews you have to have to feel like the game is yours to lose--around 7.

And people with 9 interviews are not a "teeny tiny minority".

Figure that typically, 750 people come to APA to interview for about 300 jobs. Assume that each job interviews 12 people and you get that the average number is 4.8 interviews.

Now even forget for a moment if those two numbers (750, 300) are right are not. Suppose they are--then the "average" candidate does not get a job (from the APA east pool), only the 60th percentile candidates and above does.

So, in other words, if my estimate is off, and the ratio of jobs to candidates is close to 3-1 than 5-2, the average number of interviews will go up, but you will need a number even higher than the average to get a job.

Anonymous said...

winsberg says:

"First, if you assume that interviews are "independent trials" offering you, in each case, a 1/12 chance of getting a job...."

This reasoning would only make sense if candidates could walk away with multiple jobs. But they can't. So even on a simplistic independent chance model, the odds are significantly better than 1/12 per job (as many jobs will wind up making offers to numbers 2 or 3 on their lists).

Also, while dividing the total interview stock by the number of interviewees will give you a mean number of interviews per candidate, it hardly gives you the typical number of interviews per candidate. Just as with income, there is a lower bound (zero, or one, depending how you look at it) but no upper bound, and so the median will be well below the mean. And this disparity grows when we add the fact that interview offers are not really independent.

If you're sitting at the mean in terms of the number of interviews you have, you're significantly ahead of the median candidate.

Anonymous said...

Notice I wasn't saying that the independent trials model was a good one, just pointing out to the previous poster that it doesn't yield a magic number of 9.

Your point about means and medians is of course correct. I would think, though, that the number of interviews is much closer to being normally distributed than income.

And also, one cant have it both ways: it cant be that a teeny tiny minority have more than 9 interviews, and that these "very wealthy" are pulling the mean way above the median. Again, this is not like wealth in that there are some extremely wealthy people (its that fact--rather than the clip-off at zero--that makes income no where near normally distributed), but no one even has the time to schedule more than 20 interviews into the the APA.

I doubt, in other words, that there is that much difference between mean and median in this case. But still, the point is well taken.

Anonymous said...

So ... what's the magic number then?

Anon 1:58 said...

The magic number (X) is easy to determine. If your X is higher than my X, you win:

X = (how well your parents did with you) + (your native intellectual skills) + (your native social skills) + (how hard you studied) + (how well your interviews go) + (number of interviews) + (number of other candidates in your AOS) + (number of other candidates in your AOS from schools better than yours) + (good/bad hair day) + (whether someone cut you off on the way to the interview) + (whether the interview room is too hot, noisy, crowded, etc.) + (interviewer A's peculiarities/interests) + (interviewer B's peculiarities/interests) + ... (interviewer N's ...) and so on.

Anon 1:58 said...

Uh...short answer? If you get your foot in the door, all bets are off -- you've got a shot.

Liberal Arts Prof said...

One set of numbers (not mine, but first-hand knowledge):

APA Interviews = 18
Campus Interviews (T-T) = 2
Job Offers (T-T) = 1

Pretty big drop-off between APA and campus. So person looked much better on paper than they performed at the APA. But, they ended up getting a job, so all is well that ends well.

And yes, they were running around like a chicken without a head at the conference, probably impacting their interviewing effectiveness!

Anonymous said...

18 interviews for 1 offer?!?! That's not encouraging news ... yeesh.

Anonymous said...

18 interviews is incredible! Are there any relevant factors that helped that person get so many APAs (affirmative action, highly ranked school, AOS).

wikimonger said...


This makes one think that perhaps taking this many interviews is not conducive to success. But how could one resist?

Liberal Arts Prof said...


Yes, three biggies: AA & AA & a third I won't add for fear of busting their anonymity.

Might have been given an APA by some places just to satisfy AA/Dean, but that is pure speculation.

Afterwards they regretted not turning down a few interviews, but as they come in it is hard to think that way.

Anonymous said...

Liberal arts prof said:


So we're talking here about a minority applicant who's also a member of Alcoholics Anonymous? Can't be too many of them around, surely. I think you blew their cover, liberal arts prof.

Liberal Arts Prof said...

Sadly, No.

Very few Friends of Bill in this profession. In fact, I know not a one.

Anonymous said...

liberal arts prof:

are you being facetious? I'm not FoB -- well, you know what i mean -- but I know two personally who are in this profession.