The Job Market: Shifts in the Schedule?
With the increased use of video calls in place of first-round conference interviews, as well as the inauguration of the January scheduling of the Eastern Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association, some philosophers on the market are curious about how this has been affecting the timing of the process. We discussed some aspects of this back in August, but now that we are in the thick of it, it would be helpful to have an update.
In the past, most (but not all) schools interviewing at the APA had by now contacted their selected candidates. Has the move to a later APA meeting delayed the process? Have some schools not yet selected or contacted candidates for first-round interviews? Or have schools interviewed via video earlier? Or…?
The job wiki is not especially helpful in figuring this out (at least without comparisons to previous years), and its accuracy is questionable. The information isn’t vetted. Further, I know that some departments explicitly ask candidates not to share on the wiki that they’ve been selected for an interview or camps visit. (Why?)
In short, if things have changed, let us know how.
We (Old Dominion) have not yet contacted people for first-round interviews, and won’t until early January. We wish that we had, but the departure of two people at once left us short-handed and some of the people on the search committee (like me) already had such significant service loads that it hasn’t been possible to move faster.
More places seem to be going straight to on-campus interviews without first-round ones. This may have something to do with it. (Though it’s unclear to me why it would take longer, but perhaps the thought is that this buys committees more time before they are forced to schedule things?)
I know what’s happening in four searches, and they are all over the place. Two have already done first-round skype interviews, and at least one of those has already reached a final decision on fly-outs. Another one of the four has scheduled first-round skype interviews for late January, after they return from the break. And the other is skipping interviews altogether.
The American system never ceases to amaze (I escaped it before I was on the job market, thankfully). Here at Durham (England), we’re looking to hire for next fall, but the job adverts probably won’t even be posted before May.
” Here at Durham (England), we’re looking to hire for next fall, but the job adverts probably won’t even be posted before May.”
Well, one possible practical problem with a schedule like that is that it likely makes it impossible, or at least very difficult, for anyone needing a work visa (any non-EU citizen, I suppose) to start in the fall. It also certainly makes it harder for anyone with a partner who might need to change jobs, or with kids, and so on. Now, people deal with problems like this in the non-academic world all the time, so it’s not that this is _especially_ egregious, but it certainly seems far from ideal if you want to get a full range of candidates and to treat people as well as you (meaning the university, of course) may.
The only job interview I ever had in England was in early December; for a job starting the following Fall. And I know several English (and at least one Scottish) department on similar timetables this year.
The timeline Justin is discussing isn’t unique to America.
Does anyone else think people using the UK system demanding applicants drop everything with very short notice to probably fly internationally on a totally inflexible day have a TON of room to shame the “American” system on this one?
There’s no reason a UK job shouldn’t advertise the expected interview dates at time of advertisement; certainly that’s what we’ve done for the job we (Balliol/Oxford) advertised recently.
At my institution, we moved to only-Skype first-round interviews this year and finalized and scheduled on-campus visits last week. In comparison to our last hiring season (last year), on-campuses are happening at the same time, but last year we did a mix of Skype and Eastern APA interviews, so the on-campus list was finalized later.