“Chin up; you’re awesome.”
Hi everyone!
I’m Hannah, an evolutionary ecologist and self-proclaimed “amateur immunologist” who studies bats (the flying mammals, not brown adipose tissue or basophil activation tests). I am currently enjoying what my friend refers to as my “lame duck postdoc”. I applied for faculty jobs last fall (2018) and was lucky enough to be offered a position as an Assistant Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Tulane University. I start in summer 2020 and am rapidly bouncing between feelings of excitement, confidence that I have good ideas that I’m eager to pursue, and confusion about why anyone (me included) thought this was a good idea.
I wanted to share some thoughts about the faculty application process in case it is helpful to anyone out there going through the job search. Full disclosure: I am an N of 1 and only actually applied to four schools so feel free to take what’s helpful and disregard the rest.
So without further ado, five things I learned in my academic job search that might help you too:
1. Apply before you’re ready. It’s tempting to say “Oh, I’ll apply after I get this paper out.” Or “I’m not competitive right now.” You may not have the same CV as other candidates but chances are you underestimate how great you are and you don’t know what the committee is looking for (see point 5). Putting together your research statement and other materials is a great way to help you focus on your goals and clarify what you can and should be doing now to make sure you’re set up for the professor you want to be. And once you’ve written all that down, why not send it in? Worst case scenario, you have greater clarity and a full draft of materials to go to next year. Plus, it’s a lot less stressful to apply for faculty positions when you don’t feel like you’re being pushed off the cliff at the end of your postdoc and any given job posting usually only comes up once.
2. Only apply to places you’d actually want to go to. This might be kind of obvious but you’re applying to an institution that will be your home for the next six years and maybe your career. You may not know before applying whether you would want to be there and that’s fine but if you know you would absolutely never live in a cold place, don’t apply to the University of Minnesota. It’s much harder to say no to a school if it’s your only offer, making it more likely you’ll end up in a situation that’s not right for you. (I do know people who have said no to places that weren’t right for them, though, only to end up at a great place for them the year later so if this is you, be strong and trust your gut!)
3. Be flexible but focused in your research statement. Everyone has many more interests than they will describe in their research statement. If you’re like me, you find most things interesting and you have a lot of ideas. It’s important to show your future school that you’re flexible and broadly interested but you know what your first and second priorities are. I structured my research proposal to outline two main research arcs, devoting roughly a page to each and structuring the page as I would a summary of a grant proposal. I then alluded to other interesting threads I might continue as they related to previous work or as potential future directions for the two main research foci.
4. Act like a colleague. This is a good approach to take even when you are a graduate student or a postdoc, but especially as a prospective faculty member. This encompasses two main things. First, be confident in your goals, strengths and what you can add to the department. Treat your potential future colleagues as peers, not superiors. And second, be the person you would want to work with – make it clear that you will be collaborative, helpful, and generally someone people want to be around.
5. No one (usually not even the search committee) knows exactly what the search committee is looking for/you’re awesome. Usually job searches are posted under some broad category (e.g. biologist) or slightly less broad category (e.g. microbial ecologist). A lot of people could fit the job criteria well and often the committee may have preferences that aren’t in the job description. A lot of times the committees don’t know what they’re looking for until they see the candidates. You can be the absolute best researcher to ever live on the subject of G-protein coupled receptors. It’s not going to matter at all if what the department really wants is someone who works on butterfly behavior. The sad fact is that everybody who gets a faculty job is qualified and not everyone who is qualified gets a job. So, know whether or not your first (or second or third) search is successful is not really a comment on you. For the record, three of the schools I applied to wanted nothing to do with me (two never even bothered to send me a formal rejection) and the fourth one hired me. Chin up; you’re awesome.