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| https://shaneomara.wordpress.com/2014/04/16/what-use-are-phds-what-future-do-they-have/ |
Most graduate
students starting at research-intensive universities state that their career
goal is to become a tenured faculty member at a research-intensive university;
yet the fraction that ultimately do become faculty members is very low (less than 1% by some estimates - see above figure). This transition from doe-eyed starting
graduate student to hardened, one might say wizened, veteran fleeing to
non-academic pursuits can be traumatic (see a particularly angst-ridden example here). One of the greatest bottlenecks in this
process occurs for postdocs trying to get a faculty position, which occurs at a
rate of about 10% in the Life Sciences (see graph below). In hopes of assisting the
dedicated and motivated people who wish to make it through this bottleneck with
the fewest possible scars and in the best possible position, I will now
generate a couple of posts on “How To Get a Faculty Position.” These posts
follow almost sequentially from my earlier “How To” posts.
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| http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/02/how-many-phds-actually-get-to-become-college-professors/273434/ |
Given that blog
posts do not increase the total number of faculty positions in existence (Now
that would be a really useful post), they can at best influence the particular
people who make it through the bottleneck. One might cynically view this attempted
help as unhelpful because, for everyone it helps (someone who might not have
gotten a position without the post), it hurts someone else (someone who would
have gotten a position if the other people hadn’t read the post). I prefer to
view the attempt more positively: perhaps this post will help everyone cast
themselves in the best possible light and thereby help the best individuals to
the best possible positions. From an evolutionary perspective, perhaps we could
say that this post might help to optimize the assortative pairing of
individuals and positions based on merit.
My advice
on “How to get a faculty position” will proceed in three posts, which I will write
in the weeks/months to come. Each is quite different from the others. This
first post is likely to be the most obvious one (with a few surprises), and the
novel suggestions will increase through subsequent posts. Importantly, my comments apply most directly to research institutions and North America, although many of them will apply more generally.
1. Getting the interview.
2. Succeeding in the interview
3. Guaranteeing success
Getting the interview
Your job
application package will consist of (give-or-take) a cover letter, your CV, letters
of recommendation, a research statement, a teaching statement, and your
extra-package profile (the people you know and your internet presence). By far
the most important part of this package is your CV, with (in my opinion) your
extra-package profile often being second-most important.
Probably
the most important aspect of your research statement is to portray a
research program, rather than a list
of projects or topics. Most members of a hiring committee want to see that you
have the potential be the world leader in some particular area of science,
which will normally require a multi-pronged approach to a single important and
broad topic. Thus – to the extent possible – weave together a narrative (with
subheadings) that first introduces an important research topic (cute baby!),
then outlines how your past research informed that topic and how new research
is critical (a werewolf!), and then describes how you have a series of projects
(use subheadings) that all address those research needs (silver bullets!). Here
is my post on the baby-werewolf-silver bullet approach to writing. An additional
point is that your statement should be modest in length, at least in terms of text
(I would guess max two pages and ideally less), but with cool images and
figures that provide nice sign posts and breaks from reading. Remember that –
at this first stage – search committee members are reading very quickly and you
need to keep and maintain their attention.
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| Baby - Werewolf - Silver Bullet. |
Teaching
statements tend to
be blah blah blah BS, and I doubt many committees at research-intensive
universities weight them much – unless they show evidence of teaching excellence, such as awards. Thus, keep your teaching statement focused and
simple. First describe your teaching approach. In some ways, this is just a
necessary hoop to jump through as everyone says the same blah blah blah about
active learning and engaging students and integrating research, etc. However,
you can stand out if you cleverly highlight really unique aspects of your
teaching, such as through links to videos of you teaching in a unique way (see example below) or through screen captures of
webpages or twitter feeds or whatever. As an additional point, I suggest you
don’t list a huge number of courses that you could potentially teach at the
university you are applying to. This looks rather desperate and most
research-intensive universities won’t want you to teach too much. Instead, say
something like “I would be happy contributing to the core biology curriculum
and field courses, and I would be excited to develop my own upper-level course
on ….”
Comment from Steve
Heard: You are absolutely right about the common blah-blah, but I
think these are valued more than you suggest except at the biggest research
universities. For me what makes the difference is concrete experience and
plans. Everyone says they want lecturers to be dynamic. A good
statement adds "and I'll accomplish that by doing X, which I did in my
course or which I saw Dr. X do in a course when I sat in to learn from her
award-winning teaching". Few statements I see do this. And you don't
have to actually have teaching experience to do it; you can say something
concrete you've observed and admired, and why.
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| An example of how you can make your teaching profile interesting: YOUTUBE |
Your CV is by far the most important part
of your application, and the most important part of your CV is your
publications. Thus, the primary determinant of getting a job interview has
nothing to do with how you write your
application but rather with the work that you have already done. Previous posts in this How To
series should help with bolstering your academic record. Here I will
instead provide a few tips on how to convert your accomplishments into a CV
that brings your best work to the fore in a situation where committee members
are doing a very quick triage and then later deliberation of a “long list” of
suitable candidates.
The key
elements of your CV are typical: experience, awards, publications, grants,
teaching, reviewing, editorial work, and so on. Here I will concentrate more on
details in how you order and construct some of these elements. (1) Get your publications
up front in your CV – these are the most important things for most universities
(you can also have a short list of courses before the publications –
course details can appear later if you like). (2) Underline your name in the
author list as some committee members want to assess your first- (and sometimes
last-) authored contributions and these guideposts really help them. (3) Put
“in press” papers in normal chronological order (most recent first) with the
rest of your publications. (4). For the above papers, I would separate “full
journal papers” (or something like that) from “notes/comments/responses/reviews/book
chapters” by putting the latter in a separate section after the full papers.
(5) AFTER the above, put your “in review” and “in revision” papers in a
separate section. (6) AFTER this last, you can put “in prep” papers in a
separate section. In reality, I would only list such potential papers if don’t
have many papers in the other sections. Overall, listing in prep papers just
makes you look like you aren’t confident in the strength and quantity of you
actual papers and, of course, committee members know that “in prep” papers are
a dime a dozen, that some won’t ever be published, and that, even if they are
published, it might take a long time and often won’t be in the form they are
listed anyway.
The last
point just made in the above paragraph was my first hint to the importance of not puffing up your CV
with hot air. When you do this, it is always clear to the readers, it makes
it harder for them to find the key stuff, and it makes them view you as
unconfident about your own CV. An additional point along these lines will
initially seem counter-intuitive: you
might not want to list ALL of your papers on some applications. That is, if
you have a decent number of papers, then you might want to leave off the really
minor, peripheral ones unless they have particular relevance to the position or
university or search committee members. Having a lot of minor papers in your CV
can (1) make your good papers less obvious, (2) imply that you “waste your
time” on minor papers, (3) be interpreted by some to suggest you chase “minimum
publishable units”, and so on. Thus, if you have ten papers in “good” journals
and two in the Open Journal of the
Southwest Alabama Natural History Society, then your CV might look better
without the latter. Omitting some papers isn’t misleading as nothing legally or
even morally compels you to list everything you have published in your CV. (Also,
all your publications will be evident online anyway.) If such omissions stress
you out, you can simply title your publication section as “Relevant
Publications.”
A few other
points about CV presentation: (1) Just
before your list of publications, perhaps include a very short executive
summary listing the number of papers published, your total number of
citations (Google Scholar and Web of Science), and your h-index (Google Scholar
and Web of Science). For a fast-reading committee member, this summary acts
like an abstract telling them they should look further. (2) Make sure to list
major and prestigious awards and research grants (with dollar amounts) that you
have obtained – these (if short) can go before your publications. Note that for
research grants, you can list awards you wrote even if you weren’t listed as a
PI (sometimes grads or postdocs write grants for PIs), although you need to
make this distinction clear. Also, if you do have some prestigious awards and
major grants, it is probably not helpful to list the minor ones. This advice
falls into the same “hot air” category as puffing up your list of
papers, with all of the same attendant problems. (3) If some papers have
received particular attention (media, citations, F1000), you can note this
after the paper in the list of publications. (4) Do list things like talks
given, posters presented, and journals reviewed for; but these are of
relatively minor importance, so put them toward the end of the CV. An exception
would be any keynote addresses, which (as long as there aren’t too many) can also
be listed before the publications.
If you
wish to see my CV, which includes some (but not all) of these elements, you can
look here. Of course it is important to remember that
the elements of the CV should be tailored to the type of job you are applying
for. For instance, teaching experience and awards should be given more emphasis
for a teaching-focused university.
The cover
letter is the one thing that, apart from your publication list, will be
read by everyone (or nearly everyone) on the committee. Thus, make it a SHORT (certainly
no more than one page) executive summary of the key points: state your general
research area (baby-werewolf-silver bullet), state any major awards, state your
number of papers and note some of the best journals) and citations and h index,
give your dollar amounts for grants, and list teaching interests. Importantly,
don’t give a huge list of people who you think you could collaborate with in
the department. This makes you seem desperate for approval and the people you
mention might read it and think “Huh, I don’t see myself collaborating with
this person.” Moreover, it will again (hot air) diminish any comments you make about
very clear likely collaborations within the department. Instead, say something
like “I can see immediate collaborative opportunities with PROFESSOR 1 and
PROFESSOR 2 and I am excited about the possibility of exploring other potential
collaborations within the department and university.” Of course, cover letters
can get tiresome after you write a bunch of them, which might lead you to
drastic actions such as this, which led to the below.
Letters of recommendation are essentially a check on what you are asserting about yourself. Thus, their most important role is to “not fuck up your application” by saying something bad about you. By this I mean that a great letter of recommendation can move you slightly in a ranking of applicants, but a bad letter can kill you even if you have a great CV. Thus, you need to make sure you are getting good letters of recommendation, which can start by (when in doubt) asking your letter writers “would you be able to write me a good letter of recommendation”. Of course, most letter writers won’t want to say that they will write you a bad letter, so you can instead more subtly ask them who they think would be your optimal letter writers. That way, they can recommend someone else “who is more suitable” without implying they would write a bad letter. It does help to have a big-name person write the letter but some big-name people are so busy, and have seen so many good people, that they might write a very short or less-than-enthusiastic letter. Thus, only ask big-name people who you have actively collaborated with. Alternatively, you can ask for a letter of recommendation from your Mom, excerpt below.
Your extra-application
profile can be very important in two main arenas. First, you can sometimes
have a real champion within the search committee who knows you; someone who has
seen you present something or has had a beer with you in the pub at a
conference. The key point here goes back to early How To posts that commented
on the value of networking. In short, talk to visiting speakers and people at
conferences, give lots of talks at conferences and lab groups, collaborate with
lots of people, and so on. Also blogging
and tweeting and the like can really help your profile as long as it doesn’t
come at the expense of your research. Second, probably every candidate who
makes the long list (usually folks with a good publication record given their
career state) will be scrutinized by all (or most) of the committee members for
their online profile. Thus, you really want to have a good website and you
really really want to have a profile on Google Scholar, which provides a
completely objective summary of your contributions.
I am sure I
have missed a bunch of other stuff and I am also sure that some of my suggestions won’t
be optimal for all positions, including some teaching-focused universities.
However, my experience on job search committees suggests that the above points
can help present your application in the best light and thus increase your
chances of an interview. Once you get the interview, an entirely different set
of guidelines applies, and that will be the focus of the next post.
