Tips for a Massive Academic Job Search
By Ellen Spertus
Introduction
I can't believe that finishing my dissertation will be nearly as challenging as applying for over a hundred academic and research positions, spending seven weeks on the road, juggling offers with different expiration dates, solving the two-body problem, and negotiating a contract, which is how I've spent the spring of 1997. This document is meant as advice for other graduate students based on my experience and stories I've heard. I've made an effort to point to and not duplicate information available elsewhere. The best exhaustive site on the PhD experience is Phds.org.
The primary purpose of a job search is to find the best possible job. This can be divided into two components: determining what your ideal job is and convincing others to give you that position. When I began my search, I didn't know if I wanted to be at a research lab, a research university, or a liberal arts college. I wasn't even sure what academic department I was most interested in. My job search was as much about finding out what I wanted as convincing others to hire me.
This document will be most useful to female computer scientists whose partner is in computer science and also looking for a job, although most of it should be relevant to any doctoral candidate seeking a job. Parts of it will be relevant to search committee chairs wishing to be hospitable to job-seekers.
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