How to get a faculty job
November 5, 2013 7:45 PM   Subscribe

"Many times you will be marched through laboratories, presumably to ogle shiny machines. Ogle them. Ogle them like it is the last glimpse of human civilization you will ever get." How to get a faculty job (PDF) in the life sciences. (Via Hope Jahren Sure Can Write.)
posted by en forme de poire (27 comments total) 28 users marked this as a favorite
 
This is so true it's scary.
posted by overhauser at 7:53 PM on November 5, 2013


....and it's getting worse!
posted by peterkingson1 at 7:55 PM on November 5, 2013


As to rule 15, at least don't drink so much that you make awkward drunken passes at department staff, like some poor (not made an offer to) idiot did when his interview coincided with the departmental Christmas party. Turns out admins have a lot of sway with the department head, and don't really think some postdoc in a cheap suit leering at them is a compliment, even if he is from Harvard.
posted by 445supermag at 8:01 PM on November 5, 2013 [7 favorites]


Really, the only thing less attractive to me than the faculty interview process is the prospect of staying in grad school forever.
posted by pemberkins at 8:08 PM on November 5, 2013 [5 favorites]


Sent this to one of my professorial friends and I've been getting LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT GETTING HIRED stories since so I'm gonna say yes, accurate.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 8:13 PM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]


In a further confirmation of the accuracy of this guide, I actually just went to a seminar about faculty interviews this morning, and they specifically mentioned that you will not have any time at all to pee.
posted by en forme de poire at 8:34 PM on November 5, 2013


I liked how it was focused on the practicalities of the situation, rather than big-picture gloom and doom. Even if the job market is crappy, that's no excuse to move your chances from slim to none by getting sloshed at dinner.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:35 PM on November 5, 2013


My advice: don't bring a cell phone/tablet. A lot of faculty hate the things, and hearing one ring or buzz can awaken a host of negative associations and subconscious loathing. If you have to have it, turn it off, and definitely don't bring it out and mess around with it while any one else is around, even if they are currently in the midst of a long period of silence.
posted by TreeRooster at 8:50 PM on November 5, 2013


Guh, I don't need this for a while. What I need now is "how to write a cover letter". (Also I'm not in the life sciences, but I think many of these are more general).
posted by nat at 9:50 PM on November 5, 2013


"illegal questions"

It is not illegal for an interviewer to ask you about your marital status, race, etc. What is illegal is for an employer to use your answers to make an employment decision. So wise interviewers do not ask in the first place.
posted by LarryC at 11:50 PM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]


I'll tell you what's fun, getting a migraine half way through the first day or a two day on-site post-doc interview. The kind that gives weird neurological symptoms making you really stupid for a few hours before the pain blessedly kicks in. Not that the pain is blessed as such, just that then it all makes sense. Fortunately there was no dinner for that interview and I made it to bed soon after the pain started (followed by a few hours of crying since I had no painkillers with me) and I felt better the next day. And I still managed to get the job. But they all think I'm a lot stupider and less well read than I am so I'm left feeling like I have a lot to prove.

And god yeah, everyone asked all kinds of personal questions about my life and age and family. I kind of feel like they were justified given I moved to a different country without my husband to take the job but it was disconcerting for sure.

But other than the migraine, this document actually fits really well with my experience with the exception that I wasn't going for a faculty job (just research post-doc jobs) and I'm not in the USA. So yeah, good advice and nice post!
posted by shelleycat at 1:39 AM on November 6, 2013


Now I'm reading the blog in the second link of the post and damn, it's good.
posted by shelleycat at 2:10 AM on November 6, 2013 [1 favorite]


It is not illegal for an interviewer to ask you about your marital status, race, etc

I've been in meetings where the university's lawyers told us it was illegal. This probably varies by state. I never ask those questions, but yeah, I'm aware that many people do.
posted by escabeche at 5:45 AM on November 6, 2013 [1 favorite]


Another equally germane voice on this (depressing) topic*, with less LOLspeak aimed at de yout'.


*Depresssing=treatment of women in science, not the hillarious guide to being interviewed
posted by lalochezia at 5:51 AM on November 6, 2013


I clicked the blog link before the PDF and yeah, I really like Hope Jahren's voice. That first blog post about sexual harassment in science is worth the front page alone: fantastic, funny, deeply poignant and smart as f*ck:

The worst part is not when his wife and his employees come to you and say please don’t do this to us. Our mortgage, our children, our paychecks are at stake. When they ask you if you care about anything besides yourself. When they tell you the full story, which you never wanted to know. That there’s a rotten root of sickness and betrayal underneath it all. That this is your big chance to be the bigger person and walk away, proving that you are actually more compassionate than you seem. This is not the worst part. Although that part is pretty damn bad.

The worst part is not when you see it happen all over again to a woman young enough to be your daughter. What is the right thing to tell her? That twenty years ago you remember holding tight to the idea that twenty years from now it would be different. That grief and surprise are two different things, one you will feel forever, and the other you will never feel again. That she should let this harden her towards the field, and soften her towards those she loves. To be careful who you trust, and don’t trust any one too much, or for too long. Trust them until you don’t. This is not the worst part. But it is sufficiently bad...

The worst part is the pivot. The click. When the switch flips. When you press down, turn the child-proof cap, and the thing breaks in your hands. When it dawns on you that this isn’t an interview, it’s a date. That there’s no study group, it’s a date. That this isn’t office hours, it’s a date. That it’s not a promotion, it’s a date. That it’s not a field trip, it’s a date. It’s a weird f*cked up date and you had no idea, you dumbass. You’re just as stupid as he thinks you are...Sucker.


Her follow-up, "Five Reasons Why You Liked My Post," is almost as good. The blog title and later posts seem to have settled on a character that's a bit too distancing for my taste - I mean, I get she believes in a god, but today's post doesn't explain why beyond a simplistic "Science often requires me to believe things that I cannot see." Still, she's a sharp, funny addition to my science blogger reading. Thanks for the pointer, en forme de poire.
posted by mediareport at 6:47 AM on November 6, 2013 [3 favorites]


The marital status thing can be a real problem for universities, because they really have to know if they need to find a job for your spouse. My grad advisor told me how the department got all the way to the end of the hiring process before they knew that guy wouldn't accept if they didn't also find a job for his wife (not possible in this case). So they gave up and made an offer to their second choice, but it was now late enough that he had already accepted another offer. So, a bunch of money spend on plane tickets, and no hire.
posted by 445supermag at 6:54 AM on November 6, 2013


"Science often requires me to believe things that I cannot see."

Yes, that is weak. It proves that anything at all exists, for one thing.
posted by thelonius at 6:59 AM on November 6, 2013 [1 favorite]


It is not illegal for an interviewer to ask you about your marital status, race, etc. What is illegal is for an employer to use your answers to make an employment decision. So wise interviewers do not ask in the first place.

It might not be illegal in your state, LarryC, but I'm almost certain that even asking those questions is indeed illegal in at least some U.S. states.
posted by mediareport at 7:00 AM on November 6, 2013


Resist the urge to shove shoe covers in your purse when you think your host is not
looking. This is the kind of thing that a lab person will not forgive.


True. And don't worry. When you're hired you will have access to all the shoe covers you want.

It is not illegal for an interviewer to ask you about your marital status, race, etc. What is illegal is for an employer to use your answers to make an employment decision. So wise interviewers do not ask in the first place.


True. And - you can't prove it when they do discriminate, which they do All The Time. Also, who is this "wise interviewer"? I have had all sorts of weird things come up in interviews including a lab tech leering at me and saying how pretty I was. Ugh. There's "the rules" and then there's "dumbass things people do anyway." Few people are actually trained in giving interviews, and at one company I was more heavily grilled by the HR team (men) than I was by the tech team (also men). So it goes.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 7:13 AM on November 6, 2013


The marital status thing can be a real problem for universities, because they really have to know if they need to find a job for your spouse. My grad advisor told me how the department got all the way to the end of the hiring process before they knew that guy wouldn't accept if they didn't also find a job for his wife (not possible in this case).

Yeah, this has become a standard part of the process. We see two-body issues in at least half of our attempted hires. Particularly for senior positions, it seems any offer you make will be for two jobs.

But you still shouldn't ask about marital status. There are things you can ask, though, such as "what would we need to do for you in order for you to accept this position". At this point, the wise applicant should put his or her cards on the table.
posted by mr_roboto at 9:49 AM on November 6, 2013


...they really have to know if they need to find a job for your spouse.

Really? People make that a condition of employment? I work in .edu IT and I wouldn't ever dare to dream of a demand like that.
posted by wenestvedt at 9:52 AM on November 6, 2013


It's a major consideration in faculty hiring.
posted by mr_roboto at 10:03 AM on November 6, 2013 [1 favorite]


Yeah, asking about spousal hiring is totally standard in the academic job search. It sounds fucked up, but unlike many industries it's so difficult for two people to find an academic job within an hour's commute of each other (let alone at the same institution) that otherwise you would never be able to recruit anyone who was married to another academic.

The other related thing is that academic couples often have problems with being at slightly different phases of their career. For most industries it doesn't really matter for hiring whether you leave your previous job after three years or four, but in academia if you have to go on the job market early in order to follow your spouse to the other end of the country, you're kind of screwed because your publication record is going to tend to be thinner than all the people who got those extra years in their postdoc to finish their Nature papers. This is sort of a corrective against that as well.

In practice, sometimes people end up having to take, e.g., a weird bespoke position that's not tenure-track at their partner's preferred institution, while they would've quite possibly been a powerhouse in their own right if granted the same amount of time. I actually know both men and women in that situation but since women tend to be the younger partner in hetero relationships by around 2 years, I think it probably hits them worse on average.
posted by en forme de poire at 11:09 AM on November 6, 2013 [1 favorite]


I used to suggest a bathroom break to anyone interviewing in every lab I've ever worked in.
posted by sciencegeek at 2:39 PM on November 6, 2013


The marital status thing can be a real problem for universities, because they really have to know if they need to find a job for your spouse.

Speaking as a tenured prof who does hiring, it's not that we have to know -- it's that we want to know. Of course we do, it serves our purposes! But it should be up to the candidate to tell us, or not, as they think best. Yes, the situation you describe is a problem for a deparment. But it's a problem for a tenure-track candidate if everyone knows they're married to a French lit professor and nobody even interviews them because who has a position in French Lit? But somehow when the dean has already signed off on a TT position for that person, it often magically becomes the case that Something Can Be Done.

So yes -- both sides have problems. But the problem the department faces if we fail to hire for a position is much smaller than the problem the candidate faces if they don't get a job. So we live with our problems.
posted by escabeche at 2:48 PM on November 6, 2013 [1 favorite]


So on the one hand I'm doing it right by marrying someone not in academia and with an internationally transferable IT career. Except on the other hand we now live about eight hours apart in different countries. Hmm.
posted by shelleycat at 12:48 AM on November 7, 2013


shelleycat, that sucks. Hope you guys are able to work out being closer together soon.
posted by en forme de poire at 12:27 AM on November 8, 2013


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