The search for an academic job is often a ludicrous process. Countless applicants for any given position. Rounds of interviews. The need to pack up and move wherever a position might take you. You’d think, given the process, humble professors like me would make a killing. We don’t. My salary is public information in the state of Iowa. It’s nothing to brag about. We get by (barely), but I’m not getting rich in my pursuit of more humane schools and societies.
The pursuit of academic jobs is top of mind this week because I’m co-chairing a search. The campus visits happened over the last few weeks. The process was as exhausting for me as it was for the candidates. Trips to the airport. Breakfasts, lunches, and dinners. Meeting after meeting. All on top of my normal job. It was quite a few weeks.
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I’m bound by ethical obligations not to divulge any information about the campus visits. Ethical obligations and HR. I’m a professor of great integrity, so you won’t get any details from me.
I’ve gone on any number of campus visits in my career. And by any number I mean seven. UW Platteville. Penn State Altoona. Utah State University. UW River Falls. University of South Florida. Purdue University. The University of Iowa. That’s quite a list. And that doesn’t include the countless Zoom interviews I’ve participated in that didn’t lead to campus visits. I’ve been around the block a few times.
You’d think professors were applying for jobs that paid millions of dollars. CEO’s have less intense screening processes. Well, I suppose I imagine they do. I have no idea how CEO’s are interviewed. I am no titan of industry, no venture capitalist or slick executive. I’m but a humble educator who has spent too many days visiting college campuses in search of gainful employment.
I feel for candidates that travel across the country in search of a faculty position. I did my best, over the last few weeks, to be caring, kind, and compassionate to those who came to Iowa. Honest to a fault. I have such empathy for folks who put themselves out there and endure the academic interview process in hope of a more humane future.
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I’ve become more and more convinced that hiring processes in academia are more random and subjective than anything else. Idiosyncratic experiences that are often dictated by whims, politics, and a strange confluence of impossible-to-predict happenings and coincidences. Put differently, when folks don’t get interviews, campus visits, or job offers, I think it often has less to do with their capacity or value and more to do with the way the wind happened to be blowing that morning. This is all very poetic.
I think much of the advice folks are given about the academic job search process is silly. If a blog promises to unlock the secrets to securing an job as a professor, I suggest you read with caution. There is no set of best practices that works across institutions, across contexts, or people. Things are less rational than that. Things are more complicated than that. I don’t know. This is what I think, anyway.
I’m grateful for my job at the University of Iowa. The last three years have been really difficult. Acclimating to a new place. And yet I’m happy here. Iowa City is a gorgeous midwestern college town. I have a great job. I have no desire to set off across the country in search of a different position. I’m happy to be here. Lucky insomuch as hiring processes can be so random. I felt that happiness as I guided a wonderful collection of candidates through their visits over the last few weeks.
Samuel Jaye Tanner 