How Do Departments Decide Whom to Interview at the APA?

A reader calls my attention to this posting which purports to be by a faculty member at a school ranked between 13 and 35 in the last PGR.  (It may well be by a faculty member, I have no real basis for judging.)  This anonymous faculty member writes:

I’m at a Leiterespectable department that has aspirations of being Leiterrific. Our deadline was last week, and we’ve received hundreds of applications. We’ll be holding a series of meetings over the next month to come up with a list of a dozen or so candidates that we want to interview at the APA. The first step is to rule out all but 50 or so of the applications. Each file will get looked at by more than one committee member. We’re responsible like that. But on what basis do you think that we will rule out all but 50 or so of the applications? I’ll give you a clue: it doesn’t involve reading any writing samples. It’s not that we’re not required to read any writing samples. Nor is it that some irresponsible committee members won’t read writing samples. It’s that we’re all encouraged not to read any part of any candidate's writing sample at this stage.

That’s right, boys and girls. I know you’ve been slaving away at your writing samples for months now. I just wanted to tell you that, if other departments are anything like ours, chances are that most of the departments that reject you will reject you without reading your work.

Unfortunately, the post does not specify the criteria the search committee does rely upon.  I take it that at most departments faced with several hundred applications, most dossiers are, in fact, put to one side without reading the written work.  But the sorting principles at this early stage are hardly unreasonable ones.  A minority of the dossiers are probably put to one side based on pedigree, i.e., they come from a department that the hiring department does not view as providing credible training in philosophy (that may or may not correspond to the PGR results, it depends on the hiring department, but there is probably some rough correlation).  For the remainder, members of the search committee will at least look at the CV, read the dissertation abstract, and, most importantly, read the letters of reference.  Assuming the CV and abstract make the candidate a good fit for the position, what the letters say and who they are from is probably most crucial at this stage, and will determine which dossiers will get detailed scrutiny in the final round (i.e., whose writing samples will be read with care).  Contrary to what the anonymous faculty member implies, the reason to work hard on your writing sample is because it will now play a huge role in deciding who among the, say, fifty candidates that get scrutinized will actually get one of the ten or fifteen interview slots at the APA.

The anonymous poster, above, is a bit too flip about all this, and makes it sound more unreasonable than it in fact is (maybe it is in fact quite unreasonable at that person's department, but I doubt it).  It's also worth emphasizing that the preceding may not characterize the hiring process at a liberal arts college or a university emphasizing undergraduate teaching and the like.  These programs will surely also be taking into account pedigree and letters, but the pedigree that matters may be the pedigree with which the department has had good experience, and, especially if it is a small department, there will be as much or greater interest in things like collegiality, responsibility, teaching competence, and so on, than simply research excellence, which tends to drive hiring at departments in research universities.

I am opening comments, subject to two ground rules:  (1)  those purporting to describe departmental hiring practices will have to post under their actual names, or the post will not be approved; (2) grad students and job seekers may post questions or comments anonymously, though these will be approved based on relevance and content.  Post only once; comments may take awhile to appear.

Comments

[Mike DePaul]

Just wanted to mention another reason for a good writing sample.

Once the candidates for APA interviews are selected, it is a good bet that those doing the interviews at the convention will read writing samples with care. And it is likely that some of the discussion at the interview will center on issues from the writing sample. Hence, a good writing sample can play a significant role, directly and indirectly, in moving a candidate from the APA interview stage to the campus interview stage.

Also, although there is a strong tendency for what happens at an APA interview to swamp all other evidence, it is still the case that the writing sample will provide a very significant source of evidence for those faculty members who do not participate in a convention interview. It could end up being a key element in resurrecting a candidacy after a mediocre performance in an APA interview.

[anonymous grad]

I'm the reader who pointed out this post to Brian. I'm on the job market this year and have to say I've been more than a bit disconcerted and depressed by some of the comments from purported faculty members over at the Philosophy Job Market Blog.

The preliminary criteria that Brian lists above for assessing a job applicant's dossier sound sensible, but judging from the issues that have been raised at the PJM blog, these criteria are far from standard. (If you visit the blog, you'll find a second thread raging on at the moment that's worth checking out as well.)

With respect to Brian's criteria in particular, I'm interested in learning how hiring committees go about deciding which departments provide "credible training in philosophy." Is there some common stock of wisdom out there that I was unaware of when applying to grad school? What use do hiring committees make of the PGR in making these pedigree decisions? Do committees place greater weight on the PGR's overall rankings or the specialty rankings for the AOS/AOC they're looking to hire in? - there's wide variance between these rankings in many cases. Or is the most important indicator here the pedigree of the job applicant's advisor/referees?

Any responses to these questions and Brian's comments would be much appreciated at this nerve-racking time. And thanks very much, Brian, for starting up this conversation.

[Brian Leiter]

I will try to post a longer answer later, and hopefully others will weigh in. But two points, briefly, now: (1) a lot of the claims being made over at the other blog, in the threads in question, strike me as being of dubious reliability, and (2) philosophers and departments tend to have their own views, formed from experience, about which departments produce credible graduates and which don't. Remember that the PGR aggregates judgments, but that doesn't mean those who made the individual judgments will revise them in light of the aggregate results. I suspect the influence of the PGR is much more modest compared to the experience of philosophers on search committees. To the extent it seems otherwise that's because the PGR adequately captures widely shared professional judgments.

[anonymous]

I have a question and here seems as good a place to ask it as any. I'm not yet on the job market but will be in a year or so.

I'm at a very good institution that is very well respected by others in my field, but which doesn't have an international reputation to match (particularly in the US). Given this, despite its being the best place for me to be, I don't have confidence that my institutional affiliation alone will suffice to put me on an interview list.

I'm even less confident because my superstar supervisor recently died. While those now supervising me are hugely capable and very wonderful, their names don't carry the weight of my former supervisor. Furthermore, this is the second time in five years that this has happened to me: 2 of the 3 people with whom I have worked most closely, and who were highly respected 'names' and who would have written my references if able, died tragically young.

Clearly this presents me with an obstacle when going onto the job market, but what steps can I take to overcome it? Obviously I need to cultivate some new contacts, but how honest can I be about my motives? I don't want to play the sympathy card (that strikes me as cynical and rather ghoulish), but at the same time I feel like I've been unlucky enough to be deserving of some extra help.

[Eric Schwitzgebel]

In my experience (in a similarly "Leiter-respectable" department), the different people on search committees march to different drummers, and furthermore different searches are treated differently (e.g., a narrowly targeted search vs. a broad search). For pretty much any non-insane view about how to winnow applications, there will be some faculty member somewhere who holds that view. And if any faculty member likes your application, for whatever reason, you'll make the first cut.

If I were advised to ignore writing samples, I would ignore that advice. Of course, I can't carefully read 150 writing samples, but I'll usually at least dip in quickly to get a sense of whether it seems interesting and well-written.

Welcome to the crap-shoot!

[Clayton Littlejohn]

I am very interested in knowing how people use information about the rank of a candidate's department in the process of eliminating candidates from consideration. For graduate students from middle, low, or unranked programs, it would be nice to know what strategies to pursue to overcome the obstacles they will face on the market or whether there are any reasonable strategies for overcoming this obstacle. If there is a significant percentage of philosophers that use rankings to exclude candidates from consideration (or exclude the ones that have not managed to publish in Mind, J Phil, and Phil Review before finishing a dissertation), it would be good to know that before it is too late.

[jonathan weinberg]

With all the work that has been done on "thin slicing" in cognition, it would be interesting to see some work done on ratings of a pool candidates where one group of evaluators is instructed to consider the writing sample in its entirety; and another group of evaluators is given just the first page, or maybe the first and last paragraphs; and a third group of evaluators who are not provided the writing sample at all. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the results were all very highly correllated, at least in terms of making initial short-lists of preferred interviewees.

N.B. This is an empirical conjecture, not a report of any extant practices I know of -- I'm certainly not saying that we do anything like this here at IU!

[Anonymous]

I had five APA interviews last year, all with research intensive, but not Leiterrific, departments. I got the strong impression, in three of those interviews, that no one had read my writing sample. I hadn't expected this, given that I had been told that writing samples were very important.

(In interviews with the other two schools, it was clear they had read my writing sample closely and I was very grateful for this. In both cases comments were made that really helped me improve the work later.)

[worried grad]

I too will be on the market in a couple of years and I just wanted to clarify the main concern here. The worry isn't that committees aren't able to read all writing samples carefully. I think most anyone will appreciate that this isn't practical and that other selection criteria must be employed in winnowing down a group of applicants for interviews. The worry is that the selection criteria that *are* used seem arbitrary and in some cases morally reprehensible. Here are some choice comments posted on the other blog attributed to other inside men/women:

"...most search committee members would exclude someone from a non-Leiterrific department with three publications in Phil Studies in favor of someone in a Leiterrific department with no publications."

"As another inside man (at a Leiterrespectable department) I know what my colleagues (and, I must admit, I) use as selection criteria. We will interview 12 candidates (including as many women as possible to make the administration happy). We will treat them respectfully but in most cases we do not intend to hire the interviewed candidates. Why not? Well, because we usually know in advance who we want to hire. If friends at Leiterrific department A say that their student Carl is the best student on the market, then we will want to hire Carl. We will want to hire Carl for three reasons: 1) we secretly hope our friends at Leiterrific department A will soon offer us a job if we take their advice seriously, 2) it will look better on our department web page if most to all faculty members graduated from Leiterrific schools, and 3) we don't think blind refereed publications really matter. Those who are going to make it big are invited to contribute to volumes, invited to publish their dissertations with OUP, invited to give talks at Leiterrific departments, etc. Blind refereed publications are o.k. but as articles tend to be refereed by people at lower-ranked non-Leiterrific departments, we don't really take them too seriously, unless (perhaps) it's JP or PR (not that JP is blind refereed)."

Prof. Leiter remarks that some of these claims sound dubious. That's heartening, and the selection criteria he mentions sound more reasonable, but the fact remains that many who have posted on the other blog attest to the above--sometimes quite non-chalantly--as common practice. If this is indeed the case, I thought I was entering a different profession.

[Brian Leiter]

The first comment--"...most search committee members would exclude someone from a non-Leiterrific department with three publications in Phil Studies in favor of someone in a Leiterrific department with no publications"--strikes me as total bullshit. Someone from a top department with outstanding letters will get interviewed even without publications. But someone from a less distinguished program with an extraordinary publication record (per hypothesis here) and a file consistent with that (i.e., strong letters etc.) will also get interviewed.

I've participated in several searches in Philosophy here over the years, and never once can I recall going into interviews for a rookie position knowing who we were going to hire. So the second comment also strikes me as not entirely credible. The interviews often have a very powerful impact. (Of course, there is a psychology literature suggesting that interviews do not provide pertinent information, but whether that is true or not, there is no doubt the interviews have a significant impact on the outcome.)

[John Turri]

Worried Grad,

The comments you posted from "another inside man" over at PJMB were almost certainly intended as hyperbolic sarcasm. I really, really very strongly doubt that anyone is motivated by those considerations (other than, perhaps, in some cases, the bit about interviewing women for the disreputable reason mentioned).

[John S. Wilkins]

What do overseas applicants have to do? For instance, will you be notified that you are to be interviewed, and if so, do you have to fly to America to interview?

This entire process is rather opaque to foreigners.

[Sandy Goldberg]

Brian L has guilted me into this (with the title of a recent post, regarding "stepping up").

My two-cent opinion -- I am confident it is not worth more than that -- is that when one is on the market, one ought to worry only about what is in one's control. Where one went to school, who one's advisor was -- by the time you are on the market, for all practical this is not in your control, and so you should no longer worry about it. (Those who might consider these things are those not yet in grad school, or those who have not yet chosen an advisor; but even there I think other considerations typically trump. Such as: pursue the interests that sustain you philosophically, not what will maximize your chance to get a job.)

What is in one's control? One's writing sample, one's CV, one's presentation of the disrt material, and to some degree one's choice of some of the letter writers. (Your disrt director has to be a letter writer, as do two or three of the people on your committee, and the person responsible for writing a teaching letter; but there is the question regarding whom else, if anyone, to include among the writers.) I think it is worth underscoring what Brian himself noted, that there are differences between each hiring committee, and perhaps some systematic differences between hiring committees at research universities and 4-year colleges. Having been on both sorts of committee, I can attest to differences in how we pursued -- although I would not generalize on the basis my very limited experience.

One other thing I have to add, risking the appearance of being too Polyanna-esque. My sense is that hiring committees are full of people who recall all too well what it's like to have been on the other side. Most are really trying to do the best job with limited resources and clear time pressures. The job of the applicant, I would think, is to call attention to yourself in a way that is sensitive to the fact that your audience faces these constraints.

[anonymous grad]

John - maybe there was some hyberbole in those remarks from "another inside man" quoted by worried grad. But the exaggerated parts weren't obvious to me, nor apparently to many others in that thread judging from the responses. Another purported insider claims that these comments "hit[] the ball out of the park." Someone else considers them "a fairly accurate diagnosis of how people think." Such disagreement over the tone of these comments suggests that there's at least some acceptance of their substance. And that's still worrying.

Anyway, let's not quarrel about matters of tone. We're interested in separating the fact from the fiction. Part of the reason the line between the two has become rather blurred in the other blog is that there's no way of verifying whether these worrisome practices are as prevalent as they seem. So Sandy: in the currency exchange of the blogosphere, your two cents are worth their weight in gold. I wish others would be as generous.

[John Turri]

Anon 9:17,

I don't want to clutter up this thread pursuing this, so I'll make this brief and let the matter rest.

There are people posting over at PJMB who are, for whatever reason, saying false things apt to elicit more anxiety from the already-overly-anxious. People on search committees are time-strapped and have their biases, to be sure. But they are not helplessly delusional, evil, or mercilessly petty, as you would have to be in order to: 1) think that your dept. hiring, say, a Princeton Ph.D. will help get you hired at Princeton, 2) make decisions based on webpage aesthetics, or 3) disregard a publication in Mind/PPR/Nous/Ethics/etc. because you suspect that philosophers from non-elite programs might have refereed the manuscript.

No, the advantage conferred by pedigree has its roots elsewhere.

I've participated in one search at a small liberal arts college. That's not much experience, and I encourage you to discount my remarks as you see fit in light of that fact. But I don't think much experience is needed to come to the opinion I've expressed here.

[Brian Leiter]

I just want to note that I concur with Professor Turri. There's a lot of nonsense being posted at PJMB.

[Timothy Bays]

A few comments. First, I want to second Brian's "total bullshit" from a ways back. The claim that, in the first round of cuts, a reader would automatically prefer a candidate with no publications from a higher-ranked department over a candidate with some (good) publications from a lower-ranked department doesn't fit my own experience very well. Certainly my own department has interviewed *many* well-published candidates from less-highly ranked schools, and we've passed over a lot of candidates from highly-ranked schools. Of course, in some cases a "pedigreed" candidate will beat out a well-published candidate, but when that happens it's not just (or even primarily) a matter of rankings --- perhaps the pedigreed candidate has much better letters, or they look like they would better fill a particular gap in which we need coverage, or we think that their writing samples are better than the other candidate's publications. But these are things that come out in a serious reading of the files --- it's not just a matter of the two candidates' graduate programs.

Second, it might be helpful to say something about how I, at least, actually do go about reading files. My process isn't universal, but I don't think it's all that unusual either. So, suppose we're doing an open-area junior search. Then on an initial pass through the files, I'm going to look at the following.

1. CV. Here I want to know where the candidate did their degree and whether they have published anything (and, if so, where they've published it). I also want to get a general feel for what the candidate likes to work on --- e.g., by looking at their papers and their works in progress.
2. Dissertation abstract or research description --- again, I'm primarily trying to get a feel for what kinds of things the candidate likes to work on, though I'm also looking at whether a candidate can explain their project(s) clearly and compellingly.
3. Letters. Here I'm looking for two things -- a general picture of what kinds of topics a candidate seems to work on and a qualitative evaluation of the candidate. On the latter front, I'm particularly looking for letters which make pretty explicit comparative judgments --- e.g., "this candidate is one of the best n candidates we've put out in the last m years" or "looking at our recent graduates, I'd say that this candidate is a little better than A and B, but not quite as good as C."

In looking at this stuff, I'll be asking the following kinds of questions:

1. Does the candidate really work in the areas I'm supposed to be evaluating (logic and closely related areas)? So, a file may be tagged as, say, metaphysics and logic (based on the listed AOSs), but a quick skim of 1-3 makes it clear that it's really mostly a metaphysics file. In that case, I'll make sure that it's also got a metaphysics tag on it, and then put it aside for the metaphysicians to read (if the publications or letters are unusually strong, I may drop a note to one of the metaphysics readers just to make sure it doesn't fall between the cracks, but I won't myself take it to the next level).

2. Is their anything special to move the file to the next level? Good publications would certainly do this, but so would particularly strong letters. It's on the letters front where I want to know where a candidate did their graduate work. All other things being equal, letters saying that a candidate is "one of the best 2 we've put out in the last 3 years" are going to count for more coming from a higher-ranked department than from a (much) lower-ranked department. That doesn't mean that letters from a less highly-ranked department don't help at this stage --- they're absolutely vital. It just means that the comparative judgments are going to have to be a good bit stronger (crudely, n needs to go down and m needs to go up in the quote from #3 above).

3. Do the candidate's projects contribute anything special to what we've already got going on. E.g., all other things being equal, a candidate whose work closely overlaps with that of my colleague across the hall is going to need better publications and/or letters than a candidate who would fill a significant gap in our program.

Once I'm done with 1-3, then the pile is usually cut to the point where I can start taking a more in-depth look at the files that are left --- e.g., start reading the writing samples pretty seriously and start thinking about how the details of a candidate's research projects would fit into the local area group. But the above is what happens in my initial read through.

[Mark van Roojen]

Brian is right to point out the silliness of the comments that are his target. Perhaps they were meant as satire but in any case they seem obviously false as generalizations about most searches.

Sandy's comments are really good advice, especially the main point about working on what you can control. I remember all too well the stress of the job market. It is all to easy to start obsessing about what you can't control. I think the cynical comments of the other thread needlessly fuel the understandable stress.

One thing to remember is that almost all of us on the other side of the process are generalizing from a small sample. Anyone who says most search committee members will disregard 3 strong publications for ... [fill in the blank as you like] is at best wildly overgeneralizing from a sorry past experience and probably just expressing a rather sad view about human nature in general. How would a person get in a position to know this sort of thing anyway?

This is not to say that there will be irrationalities and unfortunate but unavoidable shortcuts in any process of selection. But they are unlikely to be uniform from place to place, and most search committee members at even half decent departments are looking for a colleague who will serve their institution well. Different people on a committee will likely weight different features of a file and of a candidate differently. You can reasonably assume that the first sort through a pile of 300 applications will use various relatively coarse-grained ways of narrowing the field down. But even in one department, different committee members will often use different tricks to manage the information.

Anyway, on to some generalities based on my own limited but hopefully not too uncharacteristic experience.

Writing samples may come into play in different ways. They ought always to play a role in the later stages of narrowing things down, but they may be helpful even before that. On the first cut I sometimes found it helpful to have a look at select writing samples before I made a decision based on the rest of the evidence. In a file with strong recommendations from familiar names I would be unlikely to look at the sample before putting the file a stack for further consideration. But for someone with strong letters from people I know less about, I might well have a look at the sample to get a read on what the letters meant. Though there is no time for a careful reading at this stage (you can do the math for considering 300 files in a few weeks), the sample may still play some role here if the rest of the file is strong.

Factors which show that a candidate gets attention from people without a responsibility to look out for that person weighs heavily with me. Publications in good refereed journals provide evidence that a somewhat impartial person thinks well of the author's work. A strong and detailed letter from someone not at their home institution shows that they are doing something right to draw that sort of attention.

An interesting and well-thought out project as evidenced either by a detailed letter from an advisor, or by the dissertation abstract in the dossier might also make me want to look more closely at a file.

These things all play a role early on, while a more thorough look at the writing sample gets more weight later in the process. At least in my department, later stages are not just settled by an algorithm. We each take a shot at arguing for particular candidates that we think the others have ignored. In order to do that well we have to be familiar enough with what's good about a file to make a case. So in general the judgements at this later stage will be more responsive to the totality of the evidence than those made more quickly early on.

One thing to keep in mind is just that people have to be able to get a quick snapshot of what is worthwhile about a candidate pretty quickly to be able to make a quick sort in the early rounds of winnowing. So you want to make things easy to process visually and to organize information where people expect to find it. Otherwise it will go unnoticed early on and the file might not reach a later stage at which it can be given more thorough consideration.

[Keith DeRose]

Generally, I think the letters of recommendation play the biggest role in getting down to a short list. (By "short list" I don't mean the list of candidates to be interviewed. I mean a list prior to, and larger than, the list of candidates to be interviewed. It's the list of candidates who survive the initial stage of trying to get down to the interview list. Generally, they're the candidates whose files the whole hiring committee will look at before deciding on the final interview list.) I've never heard of evaluators being encouraged not to read writing samples. But judging writing samples is an extremely labor-intensive way of reaching an evaluation. It's not just the time -- but time definitely is a factor, given how many files one is typically assigned to read -- but the amount of careful attention needed to reach a reliable evaluation. It gets very wearing as one tries to get through a gigantic pile of dossiers. The letters are much easier to process. I think most evaluators use the rest of the dossiers -- especially the letters -- to try to get a good idea of the candidates' chances before getting to the writing samples. Most then do at least some reading of all the writing samples. But the hope is that, by having a pretty good idea already, one won't have to work quite as hard at the sample. In a lot of cases, one knows as one gets to the writing sample that a candidate has almost no chance of getting to the short list, and that it will take a really great writing sample to overcome that. And it's often pretty easy to determine that the writing sample won't accomplish that. (For instance, it often becomes clear early on that the sample isn't even attempting anything that ambitious, and so can't really get the job done.) In fact, it would be quite strange (though it does occasionally happen) that a writing sample is really terrific, though there's nothing in the rest of dossier that alerts the evaluator to that fact. If a candidate has a terrific piece of work, won't the letter writers be saying so? So, if there isn't anything in the rest of the dossier to indicate that the candidate has written terrific papers, one can be fairly confident that the writing sample will be only so good. I always take a decent look at the sample anyway (as I think most initial evaluators do), but I'm unlikely to read very closely from beginning to end when I have ample evidence that the candidate isn't going to make it, anyway.

It's when the rest of the dossier seems to put a candidate right on the borderline between making the short list and not making it that the writing sample is looked at very closely even in the opening stage of winnowing down.

I think applicants' view of the process may be skewed a bit by the fact that they never see the letters. The letters represent your department's judgment of the work you've done in your years in your program, and also your promise for the future. So, it's not surprising that they would play a large role. (I don't know whether it would be good if more of the decision was based on a single piece of writing.) It's also worth noting that many of the writing samples will be outside of the dossier reader's areas of greatest expertise (often departments are trying to hire in an area precisely b/c they don't presently have anyone, or more than just one person, working there already), while, typically, dissertation advisers (and often other letter writers too) know the area quite well. So, even when the writing sample is read carefully, it's often most effective when it is complimenting what's said in some of the letters. Many good letters explain why the candidates' work is good and important in ways that makes sense to a non-specialist in the area. The evaluator then turns to writing sample itself to determine whether what they're being sold by the recommenders is plausible.

But the writing sample is still crucial. I've just been talking about the initial stage. In the final stage of arriving at the list of candidates to be interviewed, the writing samples play a large role, and are inspected very carefully. So, though you can easily be rejected without anyone reading your sample extremely carefully, you typically can't successfully get to the interview list without your sample standing up to quite close scrutiny.

[Bryan Frances]

I’m currently going through job applications. I did it for three hours today. For what it’s worth, here’s how I START the process, looking to fill a research-oriented position (please note that it’s a lot like what Brian describes):

I go through the job applications in two stages. First, I look at CVs and letters of recommendation. That’s ALL I look at; I ignore cover letters, teaching portfolios, writing samples, everything else. The first thing I’m looking for is whether they fit the job description. That may seem obvious, but roughly (really roughly) 5-15% of the applications can be dismissed with nothing but a few seconds glance at the first page of the CV. Assuming the candidate passes the job description test, I’m looking for something to impress me. Almost always, just two factors matter at this point: great letters, and great publications. By a ‘great letter’ I mean a letter saying that this person is one of the best students at so-and-so’s department the last five or ten years, say. That would count for something if the applicant was coming from some place like the University of Minnesota for instance. Or, if they’re coming from some place like Rutgers or NYU, then a letter saying that the applicant is among the best of the last few years counts as a great letter. By a ‘great publication’ I mean a full-length publication in Phil Studies for instance. I don’t really care too much about book reviews or publications in obscure journals that don’t print essays that move the leading edge of the discipline.

This will eliminate another 60% or so of the applications. I haven’t even looked at writing samples! Does this make me evil?

We’re down to around 30% of the applications. But it might be down to only 10% if it’s a bad year. It varies a lot. If I have just 15 or 20 or 25 applications left at this point, then I’ll carefully read everything in the remaining applications. But suppose I have 40 or 50 applications left at this point. I don’t want to carefully read 50 writing samples and THEN try to rank them, to get a top-10 list for the APA interviews. I would do it if I had a light teaching load, but I don’t. So I’ll go through the 50 applications and try to pick out the 15 or 20 or 25 that seem to have the BEST letters/publications. Now the hardest part comes: reading the rest of the materials with real care and thoroughness.

[Carrie Jenkins]

I can only speak for the UK, and have limited experience even there, but for what it's worth it has generally seemed to me that pedigree (especially the nuances of US departmental rankings, which plenty of UK folks just don't really know much about) is of less central importance here than it seems to be in the US. Being from Oxbridge certainly helps here, perhaps more than it should, but I suspect many committees wouldn't really know how to compare (say) USC with UC Davis, or Yale with NYU. Publications always seemed to be very important in making the inital cut, but then that was in a UK facing an imminent RAE.

[Jamie Dreier]

First, I'll just agree with John Turri, Brian L., et al., on the fact that the horror stories are ridiculous. When a search committee is trying to decide on a person whom we may well be spending the rest of our lives working with, it would be nuts to be concerned with how the new hire's alma mater will look on our web site, for instance.

Second, I don't think anyone has answered John Wilkins' question.
There are generally interviews at the APA Eastern Division meetings (at the very end of the calendar year). If you are seriously on the US job market, you would probably come for those meetings to do a few interviews, but I think most places would not penalize you for failing to make that trip.
Then there are campus interviews, maybe three or four "fly backs" for each job. The search committees will pay for these, as a general rule, though some might balk at bringing you in from Australia.

Brian, do you have somewhere a little guide for aliens explaining how the US philosophy meat market works?

[Steven Gross]

Just to disambiguate one bit in Jamie Dreier's post for John Wilkins' benefit: The department might fly-back perhaps 3 or 4 candidates (not: any one candidate might need to visit campus several times). Probably obvious, but just in case ....

[jon kvanvig]

I agree that the comments at PJMB are irresponsible. What is true is that there are lots of factors that play a role in determining who gets interviewed, and many of them do not have to do with research, teaching, and collegiality issues. So lots of the comments there are a function of noticing some such factor, and then generalizing from its occasional presence. If such factors form the core of the practice at an institution, the likelihood of ending up with untenurable hires increases. There are departments for which this isn't an issue, but only a handful. At the rest, hiring well is part of a plan to enhance the quality of the department, and you can't do that by depending entirely or even predominantly on factors other than the ones Brian mentioned above.

Instead of making remarks about the profession as a whole, however, I'll just say what I've observed on com mittees I've chaired, served on, or appointed. In these cases, pedigree is viewed as something that fades to insignificance within 10 years (those still emphasizing or relying on theirs after that point have simply failed to develop a reputation of their own), in accord with Dick Foley, a wise and knowledgeable man about such things if there ever was one, has always insisted on: highly ranked departments attract overall higher quality groups of students, but the best people at lower-ranked institutions are, to a quite general degree, every bit as good as the best people at the best places. So we look for signs apart from pedigree. We look for (in no particular order) relevance of credentials to the job ad, efficiency in finishing one's degree, publications at top journals (publishing elsewhere is discounted almost entirely), underrepresented group status, a dissertation director who is one of the leading figures in the area of the dissertation (so, for example, for an epistemology search, if you were a Dretske student from Duke, you'll pass this test just as much as will a Sosa student from Rutgers in spite of the difference in ranking between Rutgers and Duke), and letters that include high praise of a comparative sort relative to other students in the program (unless of course the letter is from someone known to make such things up). Writing samples play the strongest role after getting through this first cut, and since the practice I favor bypasses convention interviews, the writing sample is the most important factor in the dossier in determining who, among those who make the first cut, is brought to campus. (I should also note that there is a non-dossier factor at work at this stage as well: I always call lots of people about candidates before anyone is invited to campus.)

Of course, there is still plenty of room in this process for non-rational factors, both known and unknown, to play a role. Nobody is free of bias or the temptation to act out of self-interest by currying favor with various people and departments when deciding whom to interview. But it takes incredible selective focus to conclude that these latter factors are the engine that drives the hiring machine, or even that these factors play the dominant role in the practice. And for those convinced that such is occurring at their institution or department, they have an institutional obligation to report the matter and do all they can to stop it. It is telling, I think, that we don't hear reports of such efforts.

[Brad C]

ANU has some information about going on the US market here:

http://philosophy.anu.edu.au/job2.php

[Eric Schliesser]

Many more experienced folks have mentioned how important a writing sample is once has survived initial cuts in the applicant pool. But in addition, I would like to emphasize that writing samples can help make a difference on the margins if a) job interview or b) on campus visit didn't go so smoothly. Everybody knows that nerves can get in the way of an impressive performance. There are many in the discipline that think written arguments should matter more than in-person impressions. Writing samples can be used as effective tie-breakers.
On the issue of non US applicants: many foreigners applying to the US job market have to overcome some cultural barriers--they and their advisors often don't know how to "sell" themselves; this can range from having badly organized CVs, letters that are 'too honest', to offering (say) self-effacing comments during the interview. (By now American search committees are pretty good at reading UK letters of recommendation, especially from Oxbridge.) Even US PhD programs vary in quality in preparing their students for the job-market, and foreign applicants definitely need to draw on all the resources they can get (i.e., find folk with experience in US market to help prepare them for all the stages of the process).

[Rookie]

Thanks to all of who have provided a glimpse behind the curtain. By contrast with the mania underway at PJMB, these sober insights are refreshing and useful.

I wonder if any current/former search committee members might comment on any of the following questions:

(a) When (if at all) are candidate's websites reviewed? Is the examination just ad hoc or are committee members generally encouraged to examine these in detail? What role do they play in committee member's evaluations? In a similar vein, and picking up on one of Brian's recent threads, do committee members typically "Google" candidates?

(b) What weight (if any) is given to candidate's plans for future work?

(c) How are those in visiting/adjunct/other positions perceived? Is it assumed -- incorrectly -- that these folks have attempted and failed to secure TT jobs previously? And in any case, are such gigs generally seen as a boon (one hears things about some candidates being more "seasoned" than others), or is this past work immaterial, or ...?

[Eddy Nahmias]

I have not read all the posts above, but here are two quick thoughts:

1) My own experience on (and sometimes chairing) hiring committees at three different departments (Duke, FSU, and GSU) is that, faced with 100-400 applicants, it is impossible to read the writing samples of most of them. Other factors must serve as "triage." But as Brian suggests, these factors are not unfair to consider--CV and publications, letters, PhD training, research area and project, teaching experience, etc. (e.g., you can weed out a lot of applicants just because they have "misapplied"--wrong area or rank). After getting the list down (to 30-80), I look at writing samples, and then I (and most members of the APA interview committees I've been on) carefully read the samples of the 8-12 people we interview. So, a good writing sample is necessary to get on campus but it is not sufficient to get an APA interview (because it may not be read).

2) At meetings I help run for students applying to grad school or for jobs, I always say to treat it like Blackjack (or Craps). In these games (unlike Roulette or slot machines), while there is a large element of luck and chance, you can and should also know how to play the game so you maximize your chances of winning. Better players tend to do better, especially over the long run. But there is much beyond your control. Conversely, it is the responsibility of hiring committees to do everything possible to minimize the role of luck and maximize the chances that quality merits success.

[PhD on market]

I'd like to comment on two points. First, I agree with the claim that search committees are generally not "helplessly delusional, evil, or mercilessly petty". But I do have a concern that seem worth mentioning. I work in three areas (between AOS and AOC) that are of the form "philosophy of X", in which I believe particular knowledge or training in X is important or even vital. I can't out myself here, so I'll give two similar examples: philosophy of physics and philosophy of law. Now, someone without scientific education can do well in general philosophy of physics, but certain important areas of philosophy of physics require real training in physics, and generally there's a recognition of this in the job market. I suspect it's the same with phil of law, though Brian or others can correct me if I'm wrong with that example.

Now, in my particular philosophies of X, training among philosophers who work in these areas rarely includes any real training in X, and I believe it shows in the quality of research and teaching. I've got a graduate degree in X in addition to good philosophical training, but I don't get interviews for those jobs. Maybe there's something idiosyncratically wrong with me, I don't know, but I do believe it's fair to suggest that many people who work in philosophy of X don't want anyone to show they're actually a poser.

So this would be at least one situation where the market is systematically unfair or unjust, even if it still doesn't reach the standard of "helplessly delusional, evil, or mercilessly petty". It's frustrating.

Second, a comment in response to Bryan Frances' statement that he starts just with CV and letters. I put a lot of work into my cover letters and tailor every one for individual schools, because I see that as my chance to defend things that might not come out elsewhere in my application. So your strategy puts candidates like myself (for example, people with unusual but strong backgrounds, who might not fit preconceived expectations) at a distinct disadvantage. That's not to say you're wrong: I understand your strategy. But maybe looking at cover letters would make sense when you see a candidate who's application seems out-of-place just on the surface? I think my CV ends up in the circular file for this reason at some schools, when a look at my cover letter would get me at least a second look, and maybe a chance to defend myself in person at the APA. I can't be the only one in such a position.

[David Hunter]

I'll echo Carrie in that there are some interesting differences between what is being said about the US market and my (albeit limited) experiences of the UK and NZ job market.

Here in the UK my experience is that the first cut is based on job description, which largely boils down to PhD, teaching experience and of course (with the most weight) publications. Pedigree might be a tie breaker but nothing more. Letters, I'm told by many people are no longer even read until after the candidate has been chosen on the principle that letters are basically fluff that sings the praises of every candidate, and so only need to be checked to ensure that they don't say whatever you do,don't hire this person...

In NZ the process was much the same, it was really can they do the job, then what publications and where?

[Craig Hanson]

I'm a relatively new Ph.D., and was fortunate enough to secure reasonably-gainful full-time employment in this tough job market. I had no desire to work in a ranked Ph.D. program, and, at least for now, wouldn't want to. So my comments pertain to someone wanting to get a job at a small/medium-sized institution that they may or may not have ever heard of before.

We ran an open position last year that ended up not being funded. We received quite a few applications. It wasn't the 200+ that others in this thread have mentioned. But the number was pretty large.

I read every word of every application - writing sample, CV, cover letter, and so on. When you are a small growing department, a bad hire could be devastating. It wouldn't merely be that you end up working with someone you don't like, but it also could spell disaster for the viability of the department itself.

Only speaking for myself, here is what I did and did not pay attention to:

1. I didn't care whether you came from a top-ranked program. We received a few applications from top-10 programs, and those applicants were great. But my short list of preferred people only included one candidate from the top-10, and a couple from much farther down in the rankings.
2. I didn't care whether you were an American. One person on our short list applied from Europe (not UK), and I was impressed with that applicant's file. They made my final list. That said, we also received some applications from Europe from pretty good programs, but which were so far outside my own expertise that I had a difficult time evaluating them. They didn't make my final list.
3. I really cared about whether or not the applicant could teach. I read student evaluations carefully. What I was looking for was something in the order of "professor X was really hard, but the class was interesting". That said, some insitutions' evaluation tools appear to be so patently horrible that they ended up doing nothing for the applicant's file. Anyone who had personally developed courses had a leg up in the process.
4. I didn't care whether the applicant had been adjuncting. But I know that this stigmatizes applicants at many places. One applicant that made my final list had clearly been adjuncting for two years while trying to get a full-time job. His/her file was wonderful, and I ranked that person as number 2 on my list (right behind a top-10 applicant). We would have been very fortunate to have hired that person.
5. I was really surprised about the number of applicants for the job that had next to no business applying for a position teaching philosophy. I had heard about this before, but wasn't prepared to see it first hand. If you had a Ph.D. that was actually in philosophy, and not in a completely fringe sub-discipline, you made the first easy cut. If you took yourself to be a philosopher because you studied the philosophy of education in an education department, your resume hit the trash bin. If you took yourself to be a philosopher because you studied rhetoric in a communications Ph.D. program, your resume hit the bin even faster.
6. Letters of recommendation mattered. Ones that made specific statements were especially important. In one instance, though, the letter-writer was both arrogant and obnoxious. Because I happened to know what likely motivated the letter-writer to be so patently cruel, I was able to ignore it. But I can't imagine what others on other committees must have thought of it.
7. In terms of the specialties of the applicant, we were open for anything. Whomever got the job (and I'd bet this is true of the majority of jobs in philosophy) had to be prepared to teach in a lot of areas, not just one's own specialty. True, if the applicant had the exact specialties of others in our department, that would have been hard to justify. But we didn't face that problem.
8. I remain more impressed than ever about how talented people are in our field, from top to bottom, after going through this process.

[Timothy Bays]

In response to Rookie's questions:

a. The only reason I'd go to a candidate's website would be to look for more writing samples --- e.g., if the letters described a paper that sounded really interesting, but that paper wasn't sent as an initial writing sample. (If there wasn't a website, I'd just e-mail the candidate and ask for a copy of the paper --- so a website isn't necessary here.) I have never Googled a candidate.

b. A candidate's plan for future work tells me something about how to classify that candidate for area purposes. Suppose, for instance, that a candidate has written a dissertation on mathematical ontology. Then I want to know whether they plan on branching out to other topics in the philosophy of mathematics or to other topics in metaphysics. That will make a big difference on whether I want to spend a logic/phil math line on the hire (though, of course, the metaphysicians looking at the file may well make the opposite judgement about spending their metaphysics lines).

c. I don't think temporary positions make that much of a difference, unless they're seen as really prestigious --- e.g., the Harvard Society of Fellows. Certainly I would not want to dismiss a file just because the candidate had been on a string of visiting positions --- the job market is way too tough to use that as a screening mechanism. Where visiting positions might start to hurt a candidate would be when either:

1. The candidate has been out of graduate school for 3-4 years and hasn't gotten anything published (or accepted for publication). Fairly or not, that's going to be a red flag.

or

2. I didn't like the file when I saw it last year, and there's nothing to indicate a major change this year --- so unless the letters scream "this candidate has made a huge breakthrough in the last year, and their writing sample is *dramatically* better than the version you looked at last year," I'm unlikely to reread a writing sample that I've already had a look at (at least in the initial rounds of screening).

[Jason Stanley]

One uniform experience of all of us reading files is that we are reading a huge amount of files at the end of a semester, while grading papers and tending to our own undergraduates and graduate students. If there are sins that we make during this time, they are the kind of sins that result from overwork, rather than malacious intent. Furthermore, the process is one that starts from hundreds of applications, and ultimately yields one successful applicant. In virtually every search with which I have been involved, there were more deserving applicants than interview spots, more deserving applicants than job talks, and certainly more deserving applicants than one could hire (this was especially evident in the 1990s, but is also certainly still true today). One therefore has to pick 12 candidates to interview from 20 or more that are all obviously promising, and that will result in some arbitrary decisions. But my experience at the three different institutions I have taught has always been that everyone involved tries to be as fair as possible, given the situation.

As the thread makes clear, conceptions of how to make these decisions vary, not the least because departments vary in how they divide files. If it's a situation in which everyone on the committee has to read each file, it's not possible to read all the writing samples carefully in the first round (when one is making a cut from 300+ candidates to say 60). On the other hand, if the first round reading is divided between the committee members, then committee members at departments I have been in do tend to read all the writing samples carefully that they are responsible for (I have been in both kinds of departments). As someone has previously noted, writing samples (and indeed all written work) become extremely important as the process drags on. If there are ties for the first round, it's easy to put all the relevant candidates in the next round, but in deciding who to interview when there are too many qualified candidates (which is always the case), detailed comparison of written work is almost always the deciding factor.

[Rookie]

A big thanks to Timothy Bays for his replies to my questions. I welcome any further perspectives.

In the meantime, though, I have one more question, if it's okay with Brian. My question concerns the future work I mentioned. Very few ads explicitly request research statements outlining future work, and many of us have been advised to send only the materials requested. I wonder, though, whether it's expected that candidates submit such statements, and thus whether those of us who neglected to include them in our applications should send them after the fact.

[Michael Kremer]

I don't have a lot to add here at this point.

But I think two points are worth making.

(1) In my experience (as Bryan Frances has indicated) we in philosophy tend to ignore cover letters. I think pouring a lot of energy into individualized cover letters is simply a waste of effort and a poor allocation of finite job applicant's resources. I think that we philosophers differ from other humanities types in this regard. My experience is, however, limited, and I stand open to correction on this.

(2) No one has said much about a dissertation abstract to be included with the CV. This is one thing that may get read in a first round, since it can be relatively short. I recommend putting a lot of work into that.

(3) On writing samples, I think it is especially important to begin and end well (of course the rest should be excellent too). This is because in a first round, as others have mentioned, I might have time to take a peek at each writing sample, and I'm most likely to peek at the beginning or end. I should come away from that wanting to read more rather than feeling bored. This isn't a request for anything unusual, just a good, clear, interesting intro and conclusion.

(4) Publications don't always impress us. We all know that there's a lot that's published that's not that good. If you publish mediocre work it will hurt you in the end, when it gets read. Don't publish for the sake of a line on your CV.

(5) Looking beyond the specific question about how departments select candidates to interview -- job candidates should already be thinking about the opening "spiel" for any APA interview -- many interviews will begin with an open-ended question asking you to speak for a few minutes about your work. Prepare an answer that will elicit questions you are prepared to discuss. Practice your answer until you can deliver it smoothly -- not as if reciting from memory. If you can't do this, you're not ready to go on the market.

[another worried grad]

I'd like to hear from more professors like Craig Hanson. What is the selection process like at primarily undergraduate or teaching institutions, say, a Cal State.

[Manyul Im]

To address Rookie's last question: I've been involved in several search committees and it does make a difference what your future research plans are--mostly because it's a natural part of describing your research. The best place to put those statements depends on how you organize your dossier. Put it either in your cover letter, if that is where you primarily describe your research interests in narrative form, or on the separate sheet that you send in your dossier that addresses your research interests in narrative form. It's always good for the search committee to know how your interests are focused for future work. It also provides a leg up on candidates who don't provide such information, by showing that you are enthusiastic about your research and "have plans." It's of course best if the future research is connected to, builds on, or otherwise seamlessly coheres with the work you've done so far. "Now for something completely different..." works in comedy, but not on your cv. If you've already sent in your material, but are pretty sure they haven't started reviewing it yet, just send in a "Narrative Description of Research Project" and have whoever is managing the files--usually an administrative assistant--slip it in as an addendum. It'll get read.

Some general advice, especially for rookies, for when you get interviews: You are what you are, philosophically speaking; be the best "yourself" that you can be. Most committees will figure you out and if you fit the parameters of what they're looking for, you'll get another phone call. Beyond that, if you're like me, try to say a bit more than you normally do; committees don't like to have to pry you open like an oyster.

Best of luck.

[James Dreier]

I almost never read a cover letter. (If others think this is a mistake, do say so!)

I have never looked at a candidate's web site. I believe we (searchers) have to guard against getting information that is largely irrelevant, since despite our best intentions irrelevant information will tend to affect our decisions, and mostly for the worse.

[Becko Copenhaver]

To another worried grad: If you are planning to apply to small liberal arts colleges or undergraduate-only programs then you ought to: 1) make it very clear to your letter writers that this is your intent. They can tailor their letters to emphasize your teaching skills without skimping on describing your research program. 2) Have something meaningful to say about the liberal arts if you are going for the liberal arts. This is especially important if you do not have a liberal arts background yourself. Don't say: the liberal arts are about teaching. Those of us who work hard to do good research at such places might resent that and it doesn't answer the question about what the liberal arts are. 3) Anyone can claim that they are interested in teaching - you should provide a statement that illustrates that you think about good teaching. And, finally, don't allow yourself to get stuck in the mentality that these sorts of jobs are somehow "lesser" than jobs at research positions. You should focus on what sort of job fits you best and will allow you to flourish most.

[Matt Tedesco]

"another worried grad" asked for more feedback from folks at places that emphasize teaching. I'm currently in my fourth year at a small liberal-arts college--a 3-2 load, small-ish classes (typically 15-25 students or smaller), high premium on student interaction, involving students in research, etc.--and I'm serving on a search for the second time. My experience is certainly a lot more like Craig Hanson's than any of the other respondents. My view on reading applications:

1) The first stop is the application letter. Ultimately, I want to see that you understand the sort of job you're applying to, and the letter can signal that. The pro forma, one paragraph, "I'm applying to Job #whatever as advertised in the JFP" isn't going to kill a file, but a letter that speaks of a passion for teaching and of working closely with undergrads can help a lot. It's also good to signal broad interests in teaching--we're a small department, so we all have to stretch out and teach a wide variety of classes, and your ability and interest in doing this is important.

2) Next stop is the CV, to see that you're a good fit for the job in your AOS and research, and also to see what you've taught. Have you had your own classes, or have you only been a TA? The latter is a real negative--if you really wanted to teach and to develop as a teacher, I figure, you would've taken that opportunity at some point already. Adjuncting experience can be a plus, but there's a danger in raising the question why you haven't stuck somewhere, if you've been out too long from the PhD.

3) Next stop are the letters. I don't care much at all where you got your PhD, and the fame of the letter writer counts for next to nothing. Assuming they think reasonably highly of your work in grad school, I care most about what they say about you as a teacher. Do they consider you a great teacher? Why?

4) Next stop are teaching evaluations. I want to see the students who are inspired by you as a teacher. The objective numbers matter, but best are the comments of students from a while class.

5) I'll almost always look at the teaching philosophy, but only to see if something jumps out as really intriguing in your approach.

Like Professor Hanson, I am amazed by how many very good philosophers are on the market, and I'm always struck by how easy it is to become an accident of history.

[Bryan Frances]

I think recent PhDs may not realize what goes in the letters of recommendation. Many of them go on for pages and pages! This is especially true of the letter from one's advisor. I read one yesterday that was six pages single-spaced.

This means that a LOT of information is included in the letters. In particular, a student can worry that although they really need to convey facts 1 and 2 about themselves somewhere, neither the CV nor writing sample nor research statement nor...will do the trick. So, they put it in the cover letter. But often enough, facts 1 and 2 are put in the letters too, especially the one from the advisor.

[Ralph Wedgwood]

Of course, this thread is about how hiring departments choose which applicants to interview at the APA; and, at least to a rough approximation anyway, it is only North American philosophy departments that conduct interviews at the APA.

Still, some of the graduate students applying for positions that are advertised in JfP this year may also be applying for jobs outside North America. Since there are some differences in these respects between North America and in the UK, I thought I'd say something about some of the ways in which things work slightly differently in the UK.

1. No UK job ever gets 300 applications. Probably the largest number of applications we ever get for a UK job would be about 100 or so. Most jobs will get fewer than that.

2. In the UK, cover letters are taken somewhat more seriously. It is generally expected that the cover letter will at least briefly address the question of why the applicant is suitable for the particular position that he or she has applied for. (Indeed, I have known it to be held against some applicants from outside the UK that their one-line cover letter "showed that they weren't seriously interested in the job"!)

3. Practically no UK appointment committee will conduct APA interviews. Instead, the only interviews that will be held are when the candidates are invited to visit the hiring department. Generally speaking, the decision about whom to interview is made in the following way. First, the committee will read all the candidates' cover letters, their CVs, and the letters of recommendation (or "references", as they are generally called in the UK). It is not uncommon for the committee not to bother with reading the candidates' written work at all at this point (although I and many others have always made a point of at least skimming each candidate's written work at this point).

Then the committee will have a preliminary meeting to decide on a shortlist. After this point, the philosophers on the committee will read the shortlisted candidates' written work much more closely. (Indeed, it is sometimes only at this point that they will solicit any written work at all.) They will usually aim to read more than one piece by each candidate; so one piece of written work may not be enough at this stage. They may also try to chase up any of the candidates' publications that the candidates haven't actually sent them. The decision about whom to interview will largely be based on the written work that is read at this point.

4. In general, UK hiring committees will be impressed by publications, especially if they appear in reasonably good journals. (This is because it is so important to UK universities to submit as many people as possible to the Research Assessment Exercise [RAE] -- the mechanism by means of which the UK government allocates research funding to UK departments.)

[Scott Wilson]

As a professor at a mid-sized state school that focuses primarily on undergraduate education, I have a different take on the individualized cover letter question. In the two searches I have been a part of, we have looked to see whether the cover letter addresses our ad or not, whether the applicant has any idea whether we have a graduate program or not, etc. We want to make sure that the people we will interview will want the job if we offer it, and one way to try to gauge interest in the job is by what is written in the cover letter. If the letter focuses only on research and does not mention teaching at all, or mentions it only in passing, we can tell that the person has no clue what our institution is like.

We have interviewed people who did not address the ad, simply because they had great credentials, good pubs, etc. But these interviews have been uniformly bad--one person even fell asleep while answering a question, she had so little interest in our job.

I recall my graduate advisors told me to not waste any time on the cover letter--simply write "I am applying for job #123" etc. After hearing what others have said above on this question, and seeing where those people teach, I conclude that the more prestigious places do not take the cover letters as seriously as others. But I can say that some places (such as mine) do take these letters seriously.

[Jon Cogburn]

In my department, among all the candidates who fit the job description and who will be good teachers and colleagues, the most important factor is whether the person will be likely to get tenure in six years. Due to this, publications and presentations are by far the most important consideration in hiring.

A lot of us who love Kingsley Amis, David Lodge, etc. enjoy the absurdity thematized by campus novels. But this focus can lead us to forget that there are many genuinely inspiring things about our profession. In particular, philosophy professors are on the whole extraordinarily meticulous, respectable, and fair-yet-generous with their letters for people's promotion files, which describe in great detail the person's published research. At my institution, these letters are extremely important insofar as they are the major way for the department to make a good case for promotion to the administration.

So for most hiring committees I think that Leiterificity is mostly just relevant as one of the things that predicts quality and quantity of publications and presentations (and all else being equal, it is a predictor of that). But this is clearly trumped by someone who comes on the market who already has a record of publishing and presenting.

My only gripe with Leiterama (and this is not a fault with PGR or Leiter) is that I think a lot of job candidates focus on the horse-trading of stars covered in the Report too much. Given graduation rates, most of the graduates at the top n Leiter ranked schools will not be teaching and getting tenure at any of the top n Leiter ranked schools. Especially since tenure requirements have risen substantially at lower ranked institutions, job candidates need to work pretty hard to learn to thrive at schools ranked lower than the one from where they graduated. One of the depressing things I found about the Philosophy Job Market Blog is how rare this seemed among the candidates posting there. We should cut them slack, because they are at one of the most difficult periods in their academic career, but I found the attitudes to be fairly non-conducive to happiness. Then again, I never really gave up the hope that philosophy can do all the stuff that Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus promised for it.

[Almost ABD]

First off, thank you all for your helpful comments on the job market. I'll be on the market next year, and it helps to know what to expect. Here's a question that I've not yet seen discussed: what affect, if any, does listing online teaching experience on one's CV have on one's job prospects? I'm in a ranked doctoral program that offers a comparatively generous stipend, but it isn't enough to provide for a family of three. So, in recent years I've had to supplement our income with online teaching work in philosophy. I've seen comments about adjunct experience (which, for similar reasons I also have), but nothing about online teaching. Thanks in advance for your help.

[Ross Cameron]

I thought I'd say something about Ralph Wedgewood's post above in case people took them to be generalisations about the UK market as a whole, rather than Oxford.

1) It's not uncommon for us to get around 300 applications when we do an open search. The numbers certainly tend to be a good deal higher than 100.

2) I at least pay very little attention to cover letters; and I don't think I'm doing something different from most of my colleagues. Initially, I'm looking for publications, your research program, etc - so the first thing I turn to is the CV.

3) Not only do letters of reference de facto not play a role in deciding who we shortlist, they can't play a role. We only ask for letters for the shortlisted candidates once we shortlist them. (We're told we have to do this by HR.)

4) I, and many of my colleagues, place a great deal of importance on the writing samples. Once we're down to a manageable size, they'll all get read in detail, and this will be one of the largest factors in deciding who to shortlist. And a quick look at the writing samples will also be what does a lot of work in getting the pile down to a manageable size in the first place.

Apologies for thread hijacking; I know this was meant to be about the APA!

[Manyul Im]

For ABD on online teaching: It could help with a few schools. Most philosophy departments seem a little wary of online teaching for traditional reasons--fears that there isn't enough interactive context and control--but some are interested in it. I don't think it will make or break an application. I listed my experience online teaching on all my applications in the recent past; no one even brought them up. On the other hand, I ended up with flybacks and offers from teaching-oriented institutions, so it didn't hurt.

As many others have been saying: good teaching experience is going to be important for most of your applications since most of them will not be for top 20 jobs. Online teaching experience is one aspect that some places will value, but I would say something about how you formatted the course to show that you did it with some thought rather than just for the extra cash. If you don't have anything interesting to say about it, don't bother.

Just to weigh in on the cover letter business. I always read cover letters if they were not the one paragraph, blow-off type-and I was always ever so slightly insulted by those, by the way. It allowed me to get a sense of the candidate's history and interests. A really good cover letter always stuck in my mind during my deliberations.

[Rookie]

There's been a lot of discussion about the relative importance of writing samples in evaluating candidates, but very little said about how writing samples are evaluated. It would seem obvious that at least two different types of samples are submitted:

- those that are adventurous, trying to break out and do something new and exciting, but might be a bit rough in places, and

- those that are more workmanlike highly refined, competently argued, but unlikely to break new ground.

And perhaps other types as well.

Any thoughts on how the relative merits of such samples are weighted? Is this a point of contention amongst committee members, or is there consensus going in on what is sought in a sample?

[Kris McDaniel]

This is a bit of a side note, but I would like to respectively suggest to my colleagues that it is unreasonable to be insulted by cover letters that merely state that the applicant is applying for the job, mention what is included in the packet and what will be mailed separately by the candidate's department, and provide the relevant contact information. Nor should one infer from the fact that a candidate's cover letter consists simply in this information that the candidate is not interested in the job.

My guess is that the typical job seeker applies to 60-80 jobs. The reality is that most people on the job market would be happy to just get a job. They take seriously pretty much any place they are applying for. How long do you think it would take the candidate to write an honest and informed letter of the sort I take it you want, in which the candidate spells out specifically why she and that school would make a great fit? My guess is that the bare minimum is 15 minutes, and probably longer. This means that the average candidate would have to spend 15-20 hours on individualized cover letters! The candidate's time would be much better spent on other things.

It might be that I am just not getting what you are looking for. For those of you who do care about cover letters, do you care if the cover letter is the same cover letter that everyone else will be getting? Many candidates include "statements of teaching philosophy" in their files -- do you want that to be incorporated in the cover letter?

[anonymous grad]

In reply to Rookie's last question, Brian Weatherson had a post a couple of years back (these are the times when you have to love the blogosphere) discussing, among other things, the use of +ve over -ve samples. (Note however Brian's disclaimer that these are his personal anecdotes, and there's a lot of subsequent discussion in the comments also worth checking out.)

Don't know whether this maps on to your adventurous vs. workmanlike distinction, but it's pretty close. You can find the post here:

http://tar.weatherson.org/2005/05/05/job-seekers-advice/

Let me also concur with Rookie's earlier comment in the thread that this discussion has been truly refreshing and useful.