(Separate Fee Required) SSRPCB-1: All the things I never learned in graduate school: How not to bomb on your faculty job search

In our experience leading and participating on multiple faculty search committees across multiple institutions, we have come to realize that the job search process is one of the places where uneven mentorship in doctoral education becomes evident. Faculty candidates go on the job market with radically different levels of preparation and unsurprisingly, BIPOC candidates and first-generation PhD students are often the least prepared. In our school, we have instituted a process where we meet with each of the candidates invited to do a job talk and coach them through the process and our expectations. Our intent is to level the playing field, and in doing so, have found that making the process and our expectations less mysterious through the provision of concrete information and tips for what to do and what not to do creates not only a less anxious and happier candidate but better job talks that provide clearer data for assessing candidates. In our interactive workship, we will include a thorough review of the search process and its mechanisms and provide an expanded and more comprehensive version of the process instituted at our school. Our primary audience will be doctoral students, early career faculty, and PhD program directors and advisors. Topics discussed in this workshop will be understanding the job market and search process, how to read and interpret job cals to determine if the candidtate is a good fit, how to put an application together to speak to specific job calls, how to be prepared for the initial interview, how to be prepared for all aspect of the campus visit (including what should be in a research presentation and how to best prepare for individual meetings), and what happens after the job talk. Our goal will be to provide attendees with concrete information on how to prepare for the faculty job search process.