I only started this blog in 2009, and what I didn't realize until 2010 was that a whole bunch of super useful TT search advice-related posts were written in 2007 and 2008 by some of your favorite faculty bloggers. What better place to put all that great advice together than a blog about finding a TT job?
Below is what immediately came to mind. Read it. Learn it. It should keep you busy for a while, but this is by no means exhaustive--I'll keep updating as I come across more, so if you know of a post that you think belongs here, by all means put a link in the comments and I'll add it in. And for pete's sake, don't be shy about letting me know about a post you've written yourself!
Best of luck to everyone on the TT job market!
TT Job Search Advice from Around the Blogosphere
General advice before applying
Sciencegeist
Your CV
Physioprof
DrDrA (Blue Lab Coats)
Zen Faulkes
GEARS
The Application Package
DrDrA (Blue Lab Coats)
Zen Faulkes (Research Statement)
Zen Faulkes (Teaching Statement, Part 1)
Zen Faulkes (Teaching Statement, Part 2)
Gerty-Z
Prodigal Academic
MattMight
Physioprof (Research Statement)
GEARS
Dr O
Interviewing (phone)
Prof-like Substance
Dr 24 hours
Interviewing (campus visit)
Physioprof
DrDrA
Gerty-Z
Prodigal Academic (job seeker perspective)
Prodigal Academic (hiring committee perspective)
Prodigal Academic (being a student vs. colleague)
Prodigal Academic (quick tips)
MattMight
Prof-Like Substance (dinner)
Miko (questions for YOU to ask the search committee)
GEARS (part 1, 2, and 3)
Dr O
Jake
Cackle of Rad
The job talk
Physioprof
DrDrA
MattMight
Hermitage (general talk advice)
Yours Truly (also general talk advice)
The chalk talk
Physioprof
DrDrA
Gerty-Z
Negotiating an offer
Physioprof
DrDrA (part 1)
DrDrA (part 2)
Prodigal Academic
JuniorProf
MattMight
Prof-Like Substance
GEARS
Dr Becca (that's me!)
Brandon Findlay
Also, all of DrDrA's excellent and detailed posts on the faculty search can be found here.
Another update: Ken Hanson on the Chemistry Blog has a great soup-to-nuts post, on everything from understanding the timing of the search cycle, all the way down to negotiating.
Dr Becca has a new job (NJ) as a tenure-track assistant professor in the neurosciences at New Job University (NJU), located in New Job City (NJC). She is still fumbling, just making a little more money doing it.
Bookmarking. Might be useful in a couple o' years! Thanks.
This is awesome!!! I am going to link this on my K99 forum!
Thanks for doing this!
Super idea!
Awesome stuff, thanks a bunch!
This is friggin fantastic, pure genius.
I am got the dream got at a Tier 1 institution. It is what I expected but in reality it sucks. want to find a way out. Be careful what you wish for.
Identify what you hate, what you thought you would love and see if a different type of institution would fit you better.
You would think I should love it here actually. I think its a combination of worrying about grants, science not going as fast as I want it to, dealing with annoying staff at my institution, not much help from other faculty versus what I had been told there would be, grad students not working as hard as I think they should (don't people work weekend anymore?)
I think it may just come down to being overwhelmed with stuff to do and not enough time to do it.
It is amazing how fast you can get nothing done.
I had so much love and energy for the Science when I was a grad student and post-doc. Being the PI is just a very different business, with business being the important word.
Alas, I won't go anywhere until the startup runs out or the grants don't come in.
I used to love coming into lab everyday. I was the person you hated in your department who always had some really cool idea or experiment to talk about. Not sure how to get that back.
The sadder part is that almost everyone I went to grad school with (which was a top tiered grad school) is out of academic science. I know of no other people from my class with TT appointments. A few are at teaching colleges with small labs but thats it. But we all left grad school talking about how we were going to conquer the world with our kick ass labs and I totally believed that we were capable of it and going to really do it. Strange how reality kicks in.
But I was a lucky one and even got the TT job.
Hmmm.
sounds like you need to SaqueUppeTM......
I read your post on your site. You do understand the situation I am in more or less. I had an so-so grad school experience, some troubles along the way but I overcame them and was lucky enough to have a great PI. Post-doc came pretty easy and landed in a great lab, lots of money and lots of fun. I did get to see what it was like to run the lab probably more that most post-docs actually, so I knew what I was getting myself into. There is no doubt I knew what this job entailed.
I think the hardest part for me is that it turned into a job rather than a hobby. I think you can get the difference. I also got to see more of the behind the scenes hiring and firing decisions that get made at a departmental level and realize how pretty arbitrary and bewildering they are.
But indeed, as the data comes across my desk, papers get finished and grants get awarded, I hope my outlook changes.
Until then, I will sit in my cold office, pound out grant applications and push forward.
Until then, I will sit in my cold office, pound out grant applications and push forward.
Heh. Good for you. Look, it really does get better. For awhile anyway. And then some more hell rains down. Then it gets better again. Then it sucks.
It's life.
A lot of the comments here (and on DrugMonkey's blog) seem to be "tough! deal with it!"
I'd have a different message for _alreadyTTandhateit_ - give it some time. I know that sometimes it seems like just when you figure out how to handle things, they switch them up on you. My advice is to push on through the dark days and see if some good days come out on the other side. Once you've had a few good days, you can survive the bad ones. (And there will be both.) If you have friends who've been PI for a little while, (not a long while, old fogeys tend to forget), ask them about the early depressing years and how they got out of them.
The rewards of being a PI are different from being a grad student or a postdoc. There's nothing really like when your grad student who you've been pulling and pushing and nudging who made you tear your hair out in frustration suddenly catches on and does some great work. There's nothing really like when your student comes in with a breakthrough that you think is crazy (aso you start throwing control experiments at it and it turns out to be right. There's nothing really like that first major publication where you get to say "that's mine. that's my lab that did that."
If you push on through and the good days don't come, then yeah, get out. But realize that there are going to be bad days and good days. And yeah, university hiring practices are a little arcane. Just wait until you're on study section and you see how the grant scores are decided. (DrugMonkey's play is a lot more realistic than you think.) The trick is to do some good science in spite of the bad days.
Anyway, good luck!
Until then, I will sit in my cold office, pound out grant applications and push forward.
Hang in there, it does get better. I promise.
And buy a small electric heater.
It cetainly enhanced my enjoyment of all the time spent in the office .
[...] lookit at the fresh dramaz on the intertubes. While the topic of PIs flailing to find their footing is scintillating, it is not [...]
Hi, thanks for putting this together! Could you also link to this wiki, that has a compilation of rumors and responses to applications?
http://academicjobs.wikia.com/wiki/Academic_Jobs_Wiki
the more people that use it, the better it is
[...] just in case you wanted more…Dr. Becca has an awesome TT job search advice aggregator that I can’t believe I missed. Like this:LikeBe the first to like this [...]
[...] how to get it. I found wonderful resources via some of my awesome tweeps and fellow bloggers (see here, it's excellent, regardless of your position in the TT ladder, seriously). Throughout the years [...]
[...] TT job search advice aggregator [...]
[...] TT job search advice aggregator [...]
[...] do! She’s a wonderful member of the community, and she’s done so much for it, like the Tenure Track Advice Aggregator. Donations will be kept anonymous, unless you’d like to be identified, and are made with a [...]
[...] who are wading for the first time into the deep end. (The most comprehensive perhaps being DocBecca's aggregator). I thought I'd add a few notes about what it's like to join in the annual tradition of fretting [...]
[...] including an hour-long scheduled presentation by me. The Job Talk. As usual, over on the Tenure Track Job Search Advice Aggregator, Doc Becca has linked to many people writing about how to give a good academic talk. I’ll be [...]
[...] And at this point I’m basically cribbing from Doc Becca’s Awesome Job Search Advice Aggregator. [...]
[...] unwise to go into a phone interview without having prepared. There is a lot of interview advice on Dr. Becca's job advice aggregator, but fresh from the search committee (SC) side of phone interviewing I've posted some suggestions [...]
[...] unwise to go into a phone interview without having prepared. There is a lot of interview advice on Dr. Becca’s job advice aggregator, but fresh from the search committee (SC) side of phone interviewing I’ve posted some [...]
[...] Still want a professor job anyway? ‘Tis the (late) season for TT job applications, so make sure you’ve been to Doc Becca’s advice aggregator: http://scientopia.org/blogs/drbecca/tt-job-search-advice-aggregator/ [...]
This is still so very good! I have friend transitioning from clinical work to academic job. Thanks so much.
Whelp, finding this earlier could have saved me some time.
For the list:
Advice on the Postdoc Path (advice on setting up a "story" for search committees, as well as determining what type of researcher you are)
Academia and the Art of Haggling (negotiating an offer)
[...] together some background for the final Winter Reading Series post (yet to come), I stumbled across an excellent list of advice for those searching for tenure-track assistant professorships, put together by Dr Becca of Fumbling [...]
[...] write this post with the naked ambition of being linked in @doc_becca‘s Tenure-Track advice aggregator. But also to impart the little bit of wisdom that I can based on my own experiences as a Tenure [...]
[...] my experience on search committees (and there is lots more advice here, here, here and especially here) is that a very simple set of calculations is done in the first pass: what year did you get your [...]
Also for the list: Kenneth Hanson was recently hired by FSU as an assistant prof, and wrote about the process in some detail (8 parts). Intro here
[...] If you’re looking for a tenure-track job and have already seen this, you should check out the TT Job search aggregator, which I covered a few months [...]
Hi there! This post could not be written any better!
Going through this article reminds me of my previous roommate!
He constantly kept preaching about this. I'll send this post to him. Pretty sure he will have a good read. I appreciate you for sharing!