The Initial Search

International air travelAlthough many people assume you have to move to Timbuktu in order to land an academic job in your field, that’s only part of the story. Make sure to exhaust all the methods for looking for a position in your field close to home if that’s where your preference would keep you. Although there are no guarantees, there are some ways to look for positions in your field without having to prepare to uproot your entire life. Here are some tips:

  1. The jobs section of The Chronicle of Higher Education is a good place to start when looking for academic job positions. You can enter keywords, look by geographic area, etc., and many universities and colleges advertise positions here
  2. HigherEdJobs is another common place for academic job listings
  3. Indeed is another venue for academic job listings
  4. Use various venues to search, and when all else fails, go straight to the Human Resources pages of universities and colleges in any given geographic area. There is no one list that aggregates all university positions, so it never hurts to go right to the websites of colleges and universities
  5. It’s important to note that there are three levels of professorships: Assistant, Associate, and Full Professor. If you’re not tenured, you’re going to be looking for Assistant Professor positions. Be wary of calls that are “open rank” — while you never know, and it’s not a bad idea to cast the net wide, open rank calls are looking to fill the position at any of the professor levels, and you might be up against candidates who have significantly more experience if you’re just starting out.
  6. Know the type of institution to which you’re applying. Universities and colleges generally fall into one of two categories: teaching institutions and “big R” or “Research I” institutions. Teaching institutions don’t always have graduate or doctoral programs, and the emphasis is on teaching. Research I institutions generally have a lighter teaching load, and the emphasis is more heavily oriented toward producing research.
  7. You can get a ballpark, and in some cases a very accurate, idea of salaries offered at the institutions to which you’re applying via Google. You might already know that academia is generally not a lucrative field, but there is some variation between institutions and it’s a good idea to know what you’re getting yourself into before you apply. Some public institutions are required to post salaries or have union contract salary schedules available online. You can also try looking at Glassdoor or other websites that track salaries.

Once you’ve started finding positions that you find interesting, it’s not a bad idea to create a spreadsheet to start keeping track of what’s required of each application.

Then it’s time to start working on the application.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *