Example Blog Post: Steps to Navigating the Academic Job Market (as a First Time Applicant)

A panel from Junji Ito's 1998-1999 manga classic, Uzumaki (うずまき)

Steps to Navigating the Academic Job Market (as a First Time Applicant)

Essay by: Stephanie Chang

Step 0.5: 5+ years of buildup in preparation of going on the market. As a graduate student, you are led to believe that going on the job market is the culmination, the apex, of your time in school. And while it technically only comes at the end of your graduate school career, it is an ever present, metastasizing, formidable shadow there with you from the beginning, haunting and dictating every move you make as a student. It’s coming. Be prepared. But can you ever really be?

Step 1: Mounting dread. The (increasing) years of being in school, the instability of the market, family matters, structural failures, global crises, aging, guilt – “alright, let’s get you set up to start applying to jobs come fall?” my advisor gently nudges, trying to ease me into the process, but everything is already overwhelmingly overwhelming. I’m not sure if anybody ever feels ready when they go on the job market, but I suppose you just have to eventually commit. “It’s time,” you tell yourself, rather arbitrarily in some ways.

Step 2: Material preparation. A crucial step. Academic job applications are full on dossiers, and prospective job market contenders need to be ready to present, at minimum, a CV, a cover letter, a teaching statement, a research statement, a diversity statement, and a writing sample. You pour over the same words again and again and again and again and again, getting as many pairs of eyes on the documents as possible, yet you still feel utterly defeated and unsure. Too much, not enough. Exhaustion intermingles with dread, a strange combination.

Step 2.25: You are forced to really self-scrutinize, maybe in ways you have never done before, as you must envision yourself as a marketable entity. You feel slimy thinking this way. Is it possible to forge a feminist ethics to navigating the job market? More on this later.

Step 2.5: Gather letters of recommendation. I don’t know what it is about asking for letters of recommendation, but it is one of the most difficult parts of the process for me. Genuine tip #1: for people going on the job market, make sure to provide yourself as much time as possible for this step. Ask early, provide your recommenders with whatever they need, and hammer out the details to give yourself a sense of peace.

Step 3 (on repeat): Avoidance, for as long as you possibly can.

Step 4: Time to compile a list of prospective schools and opportunities. Perhaps this should be a moment of excitement when all your dreams can now be envisioned as a possible reality. Truthfully, seeing what was to be my 2021-2022 job market experience visually laid out was both helpful and overwhelming. Helpful in the sense that I needed to confront what had to be done, but overwhelming because. Just because. Dread returns.

Genuine tip #2: Use a spreadsheet to compile your list of prospective job opportunities and organize your columns as such: the job type (tenure-track/ post-doc/ adjunct/ lecturer/ other), the institution, the department, due date, and required application materials. The structure of the spreadsheet really helps as this is a document in flux; it will change and it will grow. Try not to dwell too much on that last bit.

Step 5: Fall is officially here! You know what that means; it’s time to actually apply. Begin setting up accounts on the many application portals, keep track of your passwords!, and learn to navigate the technological side of applying. I am an over-checker, and I would pour over these applications again and again and again and again and again and again and again just to make sure everything was properly uploaded, emails were notated correctly, and everything was spelled right. At first, it’s a terrifying experience (I felt like I was sending away a piece of my heart and soul with every job application), but then you realize just how much more you have left to do. You begin to attempt to set up some boundaries.

Step 6: It’s a month in. By this point, you’ve probably sent in around 10-15 applications, worn out, but somewhat getting a hang of the process. You have a well-trodden profile on Interfolio (genuine tip #3: if you have the means, pay for an Interfolio membership. This will unlock an LOR management service that allows you to store and send out letters to any institution. This will make your life a lot easier, especially when it comes to last minute applications.)

Step 7:  The rejections begin to roll in. The first couple really sting. I feel like a major failure (unhelpful words resonating in my brain: I will never get a job, I will never amount to anything, etc. etc.), extraordinarily frustrated that all that time spent in completing these applications has not paid off. Questions around work and labor, both in terms of what it means to work in academia and what it means to put in this kind of grueling labor to get to do said work, trouble me.

By the way, the job market ruins fall. Halloween lovers, brace yourself, there is no time to rejoice in the season.

Step 8: You get your first interview. And it is thrilling and horrifying. Emotions go up and down as you try to process this landmark moment. This may or may not lead to a campus visit; in my case, it did. Navigating a campus visit during a pandemic (one week right before the Delta variant really hits) is dicey at best but you are surprised to find that the host department is extremely warm and welcoming. You cherish the opportunity to get to know a town, program, campus, and group of students that you probably wouldn’t have met otherwise (as well as the ability to travel for the first time in 1.5 years.)

Through this process, be warned: time moves very strangely. And quickly.

Step 9: You get your first job offer. Admittedly, this came fast, much sooner than expected. You feel speechless, a bit confused as to how this happens. You are thrust into your first negotiation process, and through this, you feel equal parts a child, adult, empowered individual, and foolish dunce. You eventually identify your needs and that this is the time to stick up for yourself. Unfortunately, the negotiations do not go your way, and you turn down the offer. You feel powerful making the decision and try to keep the regret and fear at bay.

Step 9.25: The rejections continue to roll in. Thankfully, you notice a marked difference in your reaction to these rejections: you don’t seem to be too bothered by them anymore, if anything, you are thankful for the closure. At one point, the rejections elicit only one response: confusion. “Dear Stephanie, We regret to inform you…” – What is this? When did I apply for this position? Why am I getting this email? Do I know you? (Clicks out of window.) The skin thickens by the day.

Step 9.5: Commiserating time! You eventually begin to realize you are not unique in your experiences. And that’s a powerful thing: nothing I say here is particularly revelatory or unique to me. Rather, I am pretty sure that my trajectory is relatively par for the course.

Genuine tip #4: When you are on the job market, you must build community and find solace in others. It is an isolating experience, and you should try your best to make it less so. Find folks (like my fellow repairers!) to cheer you on, provide an audience when needed, talk through contracts and industry standards, de-invisibilize work, pay, and the limitations of academia, and ponder alternatives as you begin to gather some new perspectives.

Step 9.75: Spring is officially here – you know what that means; time to thoroughly question the entirety of your (academic) existence! Trying to renegotiate the meaning of my graduate experiences in the face of the job market is jarring. Lately, I have chosen to view my time as a graduate student not as one that results in me getting a job per se. Rather, I approach it as a step crucial to my political training and formation.

During my time in grad school, I was introduced to Lynn Fujiwara and Shireen Roshanravan’s 2017 anthology, Asian American Feminisms and Woman of Color Politics. In it, they conceptualize Asian American feminism as a site to forge “cross-racial feminist coalitions” that “historically emerge(d) at the intersection of the 1960s U.S. civil rights, antiwar, gay and women’s liberation movements.”[1]

Furthermore, they urge that organizing under the mantle of Asian American feminism requires one to consider the positionality of the Asian American subject. In other words, we must be “critically conscious of the multiple valences of power that we occupy and/or resist”[2] in order to “confront and negotiate limits… the limits of our own perspectives, knowledges, and locations in relation.”[3]

Limitation – this is what it means to go on the academic job market for me. Applying, getting a job, the validation and disappointment that comes with the process should be limited as you draw boundaries between the job market and yourself. You are not the job market.

Step 10: The first dream job rejection. A friend is unintentionally brutal in her response, as she says: “Awww. Well, on to the next one!” The flippancy makes me spiral – the “next one”? What “next one”? Will there be a “next one”? Where am I going to muster the energy for the “next one”? No more, please. Wait, no more?

Step 10.5: You watch Master, a brutal 2022 horror movie set in the hallowed halls of academia. The film tells the terrifying and heartbreaking story of a newly minted Black dean, Gail, and a newly admitted Black student, Jasmine, trying to survive at an Ivy League university. Life is vicious for these two individuals as they are forced to contend with violent regimes of white supremacist respectability permeating the entirety of campus. The film ends brutally with Jasmine’s suicide, as the viewers, alongside Gail, grapple with (and ultimately refuse) the ways the university relies on Black death to persist.

This is a sobering film, and it comes to me at a very particular moment in the job application process. This industry is rife with violent exploitation on multiple levels – how might one get through it relatively unscathed, and more importantly, how do I make sure that my involvement in academia doesn’t come at the cost of others?

I don’t think I have an answer.

An interesting aside: horror has always been a genre that scrutinized academics. Films such as Burn, Witch, Burn (1962), Midsommar (2019), Candyman (1992), The Evil Dead (1981), Re-Animator (1985), The Haunting (1963) and The Legend of Hell House (1973)ruminate on the destructiveness that is academia, and how knowledge making – and especially knowledge seeking – for the sake of career advancement and stability in such a vicious institution will ultimately result in copious amounts of horror, on multiple levels. Something for you to consider.

Step 11: It’s almost May, the school year is almost over, yet the job market marches on. After 45-50 applications, interviews, multiple campus visits, prepping numerous teaching demos and job talks, I am beyond emotionally spent. Exhausted and trepid, I am, maybe most of all, so over being evaluated. I’m sick of looking at my CV, revising my cover letter and rehearsing my words. Being assessed in such unforgiving ways.

Despite it all, I’ve come to believe that I am capable of achieving a fulfilling future, academia-involved or not. But should I end up working in this field, my boundaries will come first.

Genuine tip #5: If being in academia is in your cards, I insist that most (if not all) of you must remain un-incorporable, unknowable, and illegible to the system. Maybe this is too naïve and idealistic in some ways but envisioning an“illiberal humanity” (as Kandice Chuh states) that “refuses to collapse into (the) fold”[4] is necessary to working in this industry. That being said…how exactly does one go about doing this?

My ultimate hope for this whole process? That I can step away from this “first cycle” job search with an unapologetic sense of ambivalence, unbothered by whether or not I land a job in academia, somewhat excited about a future laced with the unknown.

[1] Lynn Fujiwara and Shireen Roshanravan, “Introduction,” in Asian American Feminisms and Woman of Color Politics, ed. Lynn Fujiwara and Shireen Roshanravan (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2018), 17.

[2] Lynn Fujiwara, “Multiplicity, Women of Color Politics, and an Asian American Feminist Praxis,” in Asian American Feminisms and Women of Color Politics ed. Lynn Fujiwara and Shireen Roshanravan, (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2018), 261.

[3] Fujiwara and Roshanravan, 261.

[4] Kandice Chuh, The Difference Aesthetics Makes: On the Humanities “After Man.” Durham: Duke University Press, 2019, 4.