yes, the signals were sent out just once, and there's no way that you can send another. Surveys are going out to signallers to help improve service for next year; please fill out the survey, which have space for open-ended comments.
If you want to signal some school as your #3, why not just send them an email and explain that one of the searches you signalled already got cancelled? I think it would be seen as credible.
Any thoughts on the JM signals? I heard it was for mediocre students at great schools to beat out great students at mediocre schools in getting interviews. Didn't sound pareto improving.
I think medicore students at great schools get a lot more play via their advisors and placement directors. I think the signals will be most helpful outside top schools.
I've heard that some interviews will trickle in until the end of December. Schools can't do all of them at once because the process is so noisy. They need to leave some room for the networking process to work.
I got 1 of 2 - I take it everyone just entered the email for the department chair since recruiting chair information seems to generally be hidden from view.
1 of 2 till date. Some JOE ads explicitly mentioned the email address to be used for signalling. Else, I guess the majority went with the Department Chair. I called up the Department Secretary, obtained the name of the recruiting chair and put their address in. Turned out to be the Department Head in both cases.
By networking I meant advisors calling their contacts. Sorting through hundreds of applications is a pretty imperfect process, and I think some interview slots must be left open in case someone known to the department calls up and says, hey this person would be perfect for you.
12:46, in any case shouldn't the process be essentially over by now? In other words, which fraction of interview slots you think are kept for such additional signaling.calling?
On the Harvard + Stanford job mkt materials, they tell students to get their advisors to make calls after 2nd week Dec if they dont have round 10 interviews. Apparently, this works "wonders".
12:53: That depends on which is the pool of universities you have applied. In general. top universities will have less slots available as of now. But there is still one week left...
I deleted several comments because I am MAD WITH POWER ;)
Also they were about specific searches and as such belong under their headings. If they do not fit a heading use the open category or request that I make one for you.
I want to keep things tidy so every person does not have to scan every post. Only those that cover the area they have apps out for.
FYI for all those who may be despairing. I just got an e-mail from one school letting me know they would make calls by the 28th. So some are doing things late.
Having done this before, there are always a few that sneak in either right before or right after Christmas.
I know salaries are not an issue until you get an offer. But does anybody have an idea of how much expect? At http://www.salary.com it says: "The median expected salary for a typical Asst. Professor - Economics - Higher Ed. in the United States is $64,393" How about schools with vs. without Ph.D programs?
I'm from a middle tier program (probably ranked between 50 and 100 in most rankings). I've heard from 10 so far, 1 of which was a consulting firm, 2 of which were liberal arts colleges (ie teaching jobs), and the remaining 7 which are a mixture of MA-only and BA/BS-only programs.
On December 4th, I got 4. Then I heard basically nothing until THursday. And since then, I've gotten a little every day. I also heard from one school in Texas on Thursday that they had begun looking at applications for the first time that day at 1:30. And by the end of the day, they were not done (search committee chair had a conversation with my adviser).
My impression is that some schools have waited until after exams before going through these. I don't think the better schools likely are doing that, but I suspect some of the ones I'm a realistic candidate for may be doing that.
Just a brief interruption to these discussions to publicly thank the founder(s) of this fabulous resource. I was reflecting this afternoon how truly not-costless it must've been for him/her/them to collect our addresses and get the ball rolling for this. Well done, and *thank you*! You have oodles of good job market karma coming to you.
Please post more about places you have heard from under the respective categories. Most of the post thus far have been for jobs I have no chance getting I am from a similarly ranked department and the news has been scarce for non-top 50 jobs.
First, the person(s) who came out with this idea, its helpful and a nice job!
Second, can we not boast of the number of interviews and simply make the forum as an effective information exchnage channel?
Can everyone provide some "compulsory" info about:
1.School rank 2.No of apps sent out 3.No of interviews received 4."Good match" places (share of the total) 5.Places from where a call was most unexpected 6.Gender 7.US Citizen or Not 8. Etc that you may think important
We should (from these info) try to formalize some ideas about how the market works.
There is a paper out there somewhere that has pretty good data about the econ job market. As in people from tier 2 schools tend to get X number of interviews and y fly outs. I can't seem to find it though. Anyone know the citation for what I am talking about?
so i was wondering if anyone else is going to the conference in london that is kind of like a european version of the aea.
i'm going there and my friend is too, and co-incidentally, neither of us has got any interviews in chicago with european schools, despite having obtained interviews with several top us schools.
seems to me that, in general, people who applied to go to the london conference will not be getting interviews with european universities in chicago; rather, they will have to wait til they go to london.
another friend of mine did not apply to go to the london conference, and received an early offer for a flyout from a top british school, with no preliminary interview.
Question for recruiting faculty members, if there are any reading this blog: if a colleague calls to solicit an interview, what are the realistic chances that the student will have an offer at the end of the process? Higher or lower than the chances of other candidates that were the first choice ?
Does anybody else have a hell of a difficulty in scheduling interviews on Sunday 7 of Jan ? If that is such a terrible day, why not move the conference on three days from, say, Tu-Th? Considering that virtually everybody is on a winter break...
Most letters of recommendation are useless. The problem is that too many letter writers have zero cost to embellishing. This problem is more severe when an advisor has fewer students. Advisors who write more letters know that their reputations are more likely to tarnish when they write five letters that all say X is the one best student on the market in the past 10 years. These letters are usually more informative.
Calls help solve the moral hazard problem when the caller is someone I know personally. If they value our friendship, they will be more honest.
hey 5:34, that must be as frustrating for you (a buyer, i presume) to have to write as it is for me to read. in this whole process, my recommenders are the *only* people who simultaneously know (1) me and (2) what it takes to make a career that extends the frontiers of economic science. but you're saying they're utterly not credible, so they can't help you match (1) to (2). i presume that means you're left to do that for yourself on the basis of one paper, or the "information" which cascades your way from all the other buyers. how shockingly, depressingly, hopelessly far from first-best. all the years this market's been operating, and this is the best we can do?
Letters actually can make a substantive difference; even though all letters contain flattery, one can read between the lines to figure out what the letter writer is saying. For example, "This is a great job paper....I would recommend this person to every dept outside the top 20..." is informative (if you're at a top 30 dept).
i have an idea, instead of having everyone calling themselves anonymous, why not assign ourselves #s? or whatever so that we can idea people easier? a number doesn't give anything about you away.
I think some of the people on the buyer side are also reading this blog. So I have a question for them: What are the average flyout/interview ratios for your schools?
Mr. Whyite - I got one yesterday. I think they're going to trickle in for a while longer. I got an email from Florida State, for instance, thanking me for sending in my application, making me think they were still looking at apps. I also know someone who got an early invite to one school, and I then got an invite a few days ago. SO I think knowing invitations have gone out does not mean all invitations have been extended. It does speak to where you may be on their preferences, though, making the interview exposure all the more important.
I got two yesterday, two today, but declined one. So don't give up your hope, some universities are starting review on Dec 15th. I think more will trickle in at the end of this week. Also some one did get calls just a day before AEA meeting.
Not only would I say that Christmas cards are not necessary, I think they can only send a negative signal that you're too desperate to get hired by them. Of course, that may be the truth for many of us, but I'm just not sure if sending cards would do any good.
How about a thank you card after a fly out? I think that might be a little more justifiable, but am still not sure.
I got the letter from Florida State yesterday on 12/20/06. Like I said, all it said was something like, "We got your application and are going through them, as well as the others. We will contact you if we need anything else." Or something to that effect.
To the sending cards: I had phone interviews last week and wrote thank you emails. I don't think it's retarded to do something like that, but sending a physical card is probably unnecessary. NOt sure if it signals anything bad or good, but probably the same effect can be made with an email to the person who interviewed you.
Don't get too down on yourself, 10:55AM. Just focus on preparing for the interviews that you do have, and try not to worry too much about how other people are doing. I know, that's easier said than done, but I think it's the only way to stay sane. Good luck next week!
Just analyze how good a match you are for the interviewing dept, even if you have very few. Does not matter, only match matters. Good luck to you all!!!
LEt's get a new thread going, as I'm also checking this on my freaking break.
How about some recommendations of the sorts of information we should be relaying to the blog during the AEA. I figure some things are obviously optimally kept secret, but maybe some things could be distributed to help everyone - particularly if someone just interviewed with a low preferred place and thus don't care to release the info. Just some ideas.
If I haven't heard back from you, is it inappropriate to write/call and ask whether I will get an interview, and if not, to ask about what factors ultimately caused me not to get considered? I don't want to contact the demand-side at this point, because I don't want to bug anyone. But I would like some clarification for my own sake, too.
to the previous question (about contacting recruiters) - 12.10pm:
this would be very non-standard thing to do. I wouldn't recommend it unless you already know the person whom you are contacting (e.g. that person graduated from the same univ as you, or you presented in the same conference session or you went out to drinks with her/him after the conference).
In any case, you will likely not get useful information that way. they will just be nice and tell you - you weren't exactly what we were looking for - e.g. because of your field.
In reality, there is so much randomness in this process that it's hard to gain any useful information about your particular case, especially if you are a new Ph.D. (i.e. the random component is much larger for new Ph.D.s since there is not that much information that recruiters will have on you).
Given 300-400 applications for 20 interview slots, it's not possible to read your paper either carefully or at all at this stage, so not getting an interview is not that important a signal about your quality and conversely, getting an interview is not as informative as we might like.
Getting interviews probably conveys more about the quality of the people writing letters for you and the quality of the letters they wrote.
I wrote 3 emails to recruitment chairs to signal that the positions match my interests very closely (I did not use aeaweb.org/joe to signal). It turned out that it is entirely useless, I did not receive any interview call from them. I thought writing such emails or letters is negative.
3:20 - why wouldn't you use the JOE signals as well? The search committee knows the JOE signals are scarce and thus meaningful to receive, whereas your signal via a cover letter is relatively cheap in comparison.
12:58, thanks for your comment. May I ask, would the same hold true (that reference letters matter much more than a paper) if an application has been solicited? Does the answer differ if it is by top-10 dept.? What I mean, do they solicit so much that they are not able to read the paper anyway? Thanks
How much time are people spending preparing for interviews? I am having trouble motivating to practice over and over again so could use some encouragement!
I think that mugging the dissertation speech is just a bad idea. During interview, it works like a radio speech. Instead,having some sort of a structure in mind is better. Also time can be spent on answering questions about future research etc etc.
I'm putting in a few hours a day on prepping. I'm reading the articles of people who are going to be interviewing me, as well as practicing my scripted answers to questions. I think the key to the interview is to have structure to your answers.
I propose that we do something like this wiki just after the AEA meetings end. This will need to have a unique page on the wiki. That, or we just push the current table to the bottom of the page, as it'll be more or less useless at that point... Or, we just edit all the extraneous information out and go with something like this. It'll probably be noisier than the current wiki, as I think there's strategic value to vandalism, and value to keeping information public vs. private. Still.
This is "12.58" again answering the follow-up question from Dec 28, 7.15pm *********** May I ask, would the same hold true (that reference letters matter much more than a paper) if an application has been solicited? Does the answer differ if it is by top-10 dept.? What I mean, do they solicit so much that they are not able to read the paper anyway? **************** Let me start by saying that it's difficult to give general answers to any of these questions. My whole point about randomness in this process has to do with idiosyncracies of particular individuals and departments on the demand side.
from my experience on the market, the conditional probability of landing an interview is much higher after a solicitation. Soliciting either means (a) someone is interested in you after reading your paper or seeing you present, or (b) you were recommended by your dept or by the recruiter's colleague or friend or (c) they got interested after seeing your CV or dissertation abstract or web page.
(a) is the nicest case. in (b) or (c), it's possible that the recruiter may lose interest after seeing your paper.
So 'solicited' itself does not mean they have already read your paper. this is why not all solicitations lead to interviews.
I have a question. I've been using a webtracker to monitor the IP addresses of people who have been viewing my job market webpage (with my vita, job market paper, etc). This lets me see which universities might be interested in me. The strange thing is, I am still getting hits every day from places I applied to, that have not given me an interview. Does this mean that there are still a lot of schools thinking of making last minute interview offers? Why else would they be visiting my webpage?
To the above two posts: I think it is possible that it is the job-market candidates in those universities surfing for your information, not necessarily the search committee. My university is recruiting and I am a job market candidate, and when I am bored in the office, I will check other candidates information, here is the link to the job market candidates webpage:http://www.nber.org/candidates/
I look at who visits my webpage as well. I think you can distinguish other PhD students from possible interviewers if your tracking software indicates the link that brought them to your page. If it has a placement page link then its probably a PhD student or other surfer. If they arrived there without a link (just typed in your URL in the address bar, I presume) then I think its probably a recruiter who has your information.
the recruiting committee does not need to visit your website.They have hard copies of your file, or have your files in the department intranet. 95% sure the vistors are phd candidates in that department.
9:29 - it's relatively easy to check out a website. So I can imagine that reading a person's dossier, the department search committee will pull up the website to look at pictures and/or find other personal information (e.g., a blog linked to on the homepage). Much information is posted on a candidate's webpage that is not included in a dossier.
I am looking for advice on spousal issues. My spouse is on the market in a separate field. So far we have not linked our applications as we would consider taking a job at a school where only one of us got hired. We would however, like to get some visiting or adjunct work for the other should one of us get an offer.
Any advice on when this issue should be brought up? We were thinking during the flyouts or when an offer is made.
I don't want the issue to prevent either of us from getting a good job.
I'm on the demand side, and we get a lot of pressure from the dean's office to make affirmative action hires. They coax/cajole/force us to try to find out information about ethnicity from webpages.
Word to the wise: if you are "ethnic", but it doesn't show up in your name, then post a picture on your webpage. It's a bit late now though.
Just a silly question, should we call the interviewers by their firstnames or should we call them Mr. (Lastname), Dr. (Lastname), Prof. (Lastname). I'm an international student -- I would like to know how the interview culture is here.
Not a silly question. Everyone wonders about this. I have been through the process before and the main rule I have is to pay attention to how they introduce themselves. Usually they'll use their first names - if so, feel free to call them by their first names. If they say "I'm Dr. so-and-so", then call them Dr. so-and-so.
That's rare though. Remember, the committeee is considering you as a potential colleague. They'd like to see you on their level professionally, so treat them as if they were already your colleagues.
E-mails are a bit trickier - again pay attention to how they sign and use that as a clue.
That's my 2 cents. If anyone has a different take, I'd be interested to hear it.
It's always better to err on the more formal side. Use "Professor" or "Dr." unless invited to do otherwise. It's true that we are looking for colleagues, but it is best not to be presumptuous. My rule of thumb is: If you are ABD, use Professor or Dr.; if you have completed your degree, then using a first name is perfectly acceptable.
Regarding ethnicity, it depends on the school. Generally black, hispanic, and asian (of Japanese/Chinese/Korean/etc. descent) are considered "minorities". National origin doesn't matter, as far as diversity is concerned.
Most schools would also consider Indian/Pakistani as ethnic.
It's less clear with Turks, Egyptians, and Arabs.
The whole diversity thing is a mess really. My school considers Indian ethnic, but not Turkish. Ghannian but not Egyptian.
They push for diversity, but the easiest ethnicity to find in economics (Asian), is typically the one that's least likely to be able to/want to come to a liberal arts school.
My impression (from extensive convesations with the demand side about my own spousal coordination issues) is that flyouts are the right time to bring this up. Waiting too long may make it difficult for them to figure out a position for your spouse. But telling them too early is just a waste of your time, and of theirs, and probably they will not pay attention anyway early on. I do not think that your average school will decide not to make you an offer based on your spouse.
Having said that, I give this advice assuming you are a man (which I am not). I think for us women, this is a bit of a tricker area since (even unconciously) people are probably more likely to assume you are going to be the "trailing spouse". This may make them less likely to make you the offer if they can't figure out something for your husband. I would love to think I am wrong about the gender difference here and this would not be true by any means for all schools, but it's an extra something to be aware of.
Good luck everyone! May the Force be with each and every one of you starting the second you land in Chicago. I'm praying that we're happy with the process when it's over.
143 comments:
Someone in the Macro Theory section asked what happens to you signal if the job search is canceled. I am 99% positive you are just out that signal.
yes, the signals were sent out just once, and there's no way that you can send another.
Surveys are going out to signallers to help improve service for next year; please fill out the survey, which have space for open-ended comments.
If you want to signal some school as your #3, why not just send them an email and explain that one of the searches you signalled already got cancelled? I think it would be seen as credible.
Any thoughts on the JM signals? I heard it was for mediocre students at great schools to beat out great students at mediocre schools in getting interviews. Didn't sound pareto improving.
I think medicore students at great schools get a lot more play via their advisors and placement directors. I think the signals will be most helpful outside top schools.
Is it true that schools don't schedule all of their interviews at once?
By what date will most interviews have been scheduled?
I've heard that some interviews will trickle in until the end of December. Schools can't do all of them at once because the process is so noisy. They need to leave some room for the networking process to work.
how important were your "signals" in getting an interview? In my case, only one of the 2 places invited me
I didn't hear from either!
I got 1 of 2 - I take it everyone just entered the email for the department chair since recruiting chair information seems to generally be hidden from view.
1 of 2 till date. Some JOE ads explicitly mentioned the email address to be used for signalling. Else, I guess the majority went with the Department Chair. I called up the Department Secretary, obtained the name of the recruiting chair and put their address in. Turned out to be the Department Head in both cases.
10:20 - when you refer to "room for the networking process to work", do you mean the process of advisors making phone calls on your behalf?
By networking I meant advisors calling their contacts. Sorting through hundreds of applications is a pretty imperfect process, and I think some interview slots must be left open in case someone known to the department calls up and says, hey this person would be perfect for you.
12:46, in any case shouldn't the process be essentially over by now? In other words, which fraction of interview slots you think are kept for such additional signaling.calling?
On the Harvard + Stanford job mkt materials, they tell students to get their advisors to make calls after 2nd week Dec if they dont have round 10 interviews. Apparently, this works "wonders".
12:53: That depends on which is the pool of universities you have applied. In general. top universities will have less slots available as of now. But there is still one week left...
From previous years, what fraction of interviews in good schools is schedule in the week before christmas? Anyone has an idea?
How about this: Is anyone here at a school that is hiring this year and knows they have YET to schedule most of their slots...
How many interviews do people have scheduled so far? I have 9
11 for me so far...
17
I deleted several comments because I am MAD WITH POWER ;)
Also they were about specific searches and as such belong under their headings. If they do not fit a heading use the open category or request that I make one for you.
I want to keep things tidy so every person does not have to scan every post. Only those that cover the area they have apps out for.
boo
After the meetings in Chicago, there should be a forum for people to post the weird crap that they heard in interviews.
14 interviews so far
27 so far
I got 35 in total, hehe
Hey folks, why don't we create a "do and don't in the interview", both helpful and fun at the same time. My placement officers told us that:
(1) Don't laugh if one of the interviewers farted big.
(2) Don't take it personal if one of the interviewers suddenly vomit when you are talking. He may be sick, that all.
...
To Mr/Ms "hehe": I've only got 32, but I've turned down 7. Best not to be smug. Remember, you only need 1 job.
Or were you just lying? In which case I have 69!
Please substract interviews for transfer pricing jobs at PWC, E&Y, etc. They don't count.
Anyone hear anything today?
I heard England and Australia are slower this year than the US and Canada. I just heard from ANU...
Maybe because this year European job meetings are more popular? Oviedo (14-15 Dec) LSE (27-28 Jan)
FYI for all those who may be despairing. I just got an e-mail from one school letting me know they would make calls by the 28th. So some are doing things late.
Having done this before, there are always a few that sneak in either right before or right after Christmas.
I got an additional call this morning--first since early last week. Hopefully the trickle will continue.
I got my last call last wednesday and nothing since then. What's people's experience? When did you get your latest call?
I got two more calls this morning.
Out of curiousity, when everyone is saying "calls", do you mean an email, or literally a phone call. All my requests have primarily come via email.
12:28 : Which schools have you heard from this morning?
I meant both phone and email contacts
I know salaries are not an issue until you get an offer. But does anybody have an idea of how much expect? At http://www.salary.com
it says: "The median expected salary for a typical Asst. Professor - Economics - Higher Ed. in the United States is $64,393"
How about schools with vs. without Ph.D programs?
For salary info, check out Cawley's guide, http://www.aeaweb.org/joe/articles/2006/cawley.pdf
This site has salary info. for each school. This is for all fields. I've heard you can expect about 10% more if you are in economics.
http://chronicle.com/stats/aaup/aaupresults.php
Does anyone suspect that placement coordinators in their school really do little/nothing to help?
I'm from a middle tier program (probably ranked between 50 and 100 in most rankings). I've heard from 10 so far, 1 of which was a consulting firm, 2 of which were liberal arts colleges (ie teaching jobs), and the remaining 7 which are a mixture of MA-only and BA/BS-only programs.
On December 4th, I got 4. Then I heard basically nothing until THursday. And since then, I've gotten a little every day. I also heard from one school in Texas on Thursday that they had begun looking at applications for the first time that day at 1:30. And by the end of the day, they were not done (search committee chair had a conversation with my adviser).
My impression is that some schools have waited until after exams before going through these. I don't think the better schools likely are doing that, but I suspect some of the ones I'm a realistic candidate for may be doing that.
Just a brief interruption to these discussions to publicly thank the founder(s) of this fabulous resource. I was reflecting this afternoon how truly not-costless it must've been for him/her/them to collect our addresses and get the ball rolling for this. Well done, and *thank you*! You have oodles of good job market karma coming to you.
7:19
Please post more about places you have heard from under the respective categories. Most of the post thus far have been for jobs I have no chance getting I am from a similarly ranked department and the news has been scarce for non-top 50 jobs.
how are the stars of the market?
8:45 do we know the stars?
Job market "stars" are becoming a thing of the past. I've heard from faculty that the market has become very noisy compared to yesteryears.
How about this: names of top ranked students from each school?
First, the person(s) who came out with this idea, its helpful and a nice job!
Second, can we not boast of the number of interviews and simply make the forum as an effective information exchnage channel?
Can everyone provide some "compulsory" info about:
1.School rank
2.No of apps sent out
3.No of interviews received
4."Good match" places (share of the total)
5.Places from where a call was most unexpected
6.Gender
7.US Citizen or Not
8. Etc that you may think important
We should (from these info) try to formalize some ideas about how the market works.
After all, thats we are after...
Thanks!
8:58
There is a paper out there somewhere that has pretty good data about the econ job market. As in people from tier 2 schools tend to get X number of interviews and y fly outs. I can't seem to find it though. Anyone know the citation for what I am talking about?
My dept, UC Berkeley, has already informed us of a job talk by a Ukranian guy from Michigan - paper is on price stickiness.
An earlier post said that his/her faculty commented that there were few strong applied micro candidates this year.
9:03 - are you talking about the Cawley paper? IT's on the AEA webpage.
http://www.aeaweb.org/joe/articles/2006/cawley.pdf
so i was wondering if anyone else is going to the conference in london that is kind of like a european version of the aea.
i'm going there and my friend is too, and co-incidentally, neither of us has got any interviews in chicago with european schools, despite having obtained interviews with several top us schools.
seems to me that, in general, people who applied to go to the london conference will not be getting interviews with european universities in chicago; rather, they will have to wait til they go to london.
another friend of mine did not apply to go to the london conference, and received an early offer for a flyout from a top british school, with no preliminary interview.
sounds suspicious if u ask me!
I am going to London and have half of my interviews with European universities
If you don't mind, check out this wiki and update the information when you get it. Just so we have something that's easy to read and dynamic.
http://www.bluwiki.com/go/Econjobmarket
Be sure to include the JOE link, the field, and indicate any other information that you think everyone would value.
Dec 19 - late afternoon. i just got a call. so don't give up hope yet. (they might still come)
(although I'm guessing they're giving me a slot that perhaps someone else canceled, so there may be a 'signal' in getting a call this late)
Would be good if you tell us the place you got a call from.
Question for recruiting faculty members, if there are any reading this blog: if a colleague calls to solicit an interview, what are the realistic chances that the student will have an offer at the end of the process?
Higher or lower than the chances of other candidates that were the first choice ?
Does anybody else have a hell of a difficulty in scheduling interviews on Sunday 7 of Jan ? If that is such a terrible day, why not move the conference on three days from, say, Tu-Th?
Considering that virtually everybody is on a winter break...
Re 5:22 on colleague calls
Most letters of recommendation are useless. The problem is that too many letter writers have zero cost to embellishing. This problem is more severe when an advisor has fewer students. Advisors who write more letters know that their reputations are more likely to tarnish when they write five letters that all say X is the one best student on the market in the past 10 years. These letters are usually more informative.
Calls help solve the moral hazard problem when the caller is someone I know personally. If they value our friendship, they will be more honest.
I'm having a hellava time scheduling interviews on Sunday as well. Everyone wants Friday!! Frustrating!
hey 5:34, that must be as frustrating for you (a buyer, i presume) to have to write as it is for me to read. in this whole process, my recommenders are the *only* people who simultaneously know (1) me and (2) what it takes to make a career that extends the frontiers of economic science. but you're saying they're utterly not credible, so they can't help you match (1) to (2). i presume that means you're left to do that for yourself on the basis of one paper, or the "information" which cascades your way from all the other buyers. how shockingly, depressingly, hopelessly far from first-best. all the years this market's been operating, and this is the best we can do?
Letters actually can make a substantive difference; even though all letters contain flattery, one can read between the lines to figure out what the letter writer is saying. For example, "This is a great job paper....I would recommend this person to every dept outside the top 20..." is informative (if you're at a top 30 dept).
i have an idea, instead of having everyone calling themselves anonymous, why not assign ourselves #s? or whatever so that we can idea people easier? a number doesn't give anything about you away.
I think some of the people on the buyer side are also reading this blog. So I have a question for them: What are the average flyout/interview ratios for your schools?
Question: when is the last time you got a call for an interview? Is it possible to get interviews this week or the next?
A couple this week. One yesterday, onr today.
Mr. Whyite - I got one yesterday. I think they're going to trickle in for a while longer. I got an email from Florida State, for instance, thanking me for sending in my application, making me think they were still looking at apps. I also know someone who got an early invite to one school, and I then got an invite a few days ago. SO I think knowing invitations have gone out does not mean all invitations have been extended. It does speak to where you may be on their preferences, though, making the interview exposure all the more important.
I got two yesterday, two today, but declined one. So don't give up your hope, some universities are starting review on Dec 15th. I think more will trickle in at the end of this week. Also some one did get calls just a day before AEA meeting.
Has anyone heard from the FED Board? What group?
To 11:26
When did you get the e-mail from Florida State? I haven't got anything.
the Fed Board has sent out emails soliciting interviews at the Chicago meetings from some job market candidates who didn't even submit resumes
Can we try to keep the rumors under their respective headings? It makes it easier to keep track of things
Does anyone see the necessity of sending christmas card to schools that interview us, as a way of saying thank you?
Not only would I say that Christmas cards are not necessary, I think they can only send a negative signal that you're too desperate to get hired by them. Of course, that may be the truth for many of us, but I'm just not sure if sending cards would do any good.
How about a thank you card after a fly out? I think that might be a little more justifiable, but am still not sure.
lmfao @ christmas cards
sorry, but that is one of the most retarded things i have heard in quite some time.
good point. this is business. that's it.
To the point that Xmas cards signal desperateness.
But I AM desperate! Has it been so long, too, that they have forgotten this fact?
To December 20, 2006 1:50 PM :
I got the letter from Florida State yesterday on 12/20/06. Like I said, all it said was something like, "We got your application and are going through them, as well as the others. We will contact you if we need anything else." Or something to that effect.
To the sending cards: I had phone interviews last week and wrote thank you emails. I don't think it's retarded to do something like that, but sending a physical card is probably unnecessary. NOt sure if it signals anything bad or good, but probably the same effect can be made with an email to the person who interviewed you.
Has anyone heard from IESE and Toulouse?
I heard from IESE Finance and Toulouse postdoc.
So I guess I am the only person who is sad enough to check the blog on Christmas day.
Don't worry, you're not alone.
I check this blog at least 4 times each day. So depressed that I do not have many interviews.
Don't get too down on yourself, 10:55AM. Just focus on preparing for the interviews that you do have, and try not to worry too much about how other people are doing. I know, that's easier said than done, but I think it's the only way to stay sane. Good luck next week!
I like this positive attitude.
Just analyze how good a match you are for the interviewing dept, even if you have very few.
Does not matter, only match matters.
Good luck to you all!!!
10:55am - It'll work out fine, man. You just need one interview to go well, remember that.
LEt's get a new thread going, as I'm also checking this on my freaking break.
How about some recommendations of the sorts of information we should be relaying to the blog during the AEA. I figure some things are obviously optimally kept secret, but maybe some things could be distributed to help everyone - particularly if someone just interviewed with a low preferred place and thus don't care to release the info. Just some ideas.
anyone heard rumors of "ranking discounting" of candidates from non-US schools in the interview phase?
How do we sell the idea that we will be a good "fit" to the department that will be interviewing us?
Should we stress what they are going to gain by hiring us or what we will gain by going there?
I have a question for the demand-side.
If I haven't heard back from you, is it inappropriate to write/call and ask whether I will get an interview, and if not, to ask about what factors ultimately caused me not to get considered? I don't want to contact the demand-side at this point, because I don't want to bug anyone. But I would like some clarification for my own sake, too.
to the previous question (about contacting recruiters) - 12.10pm:
this would be very non-standard thing to do. I wouldn't recommend it unless you already know the person whom you are contacting (e.g. that person graduated from the same univ as you, or you presented in the same conference session or you went out to drinks with her/him after the conference).
In any case, you will likely not get useful information that way. they will just be nice and tell you - you weren't exactly what we were looking for - e.g. because of your field.
In reality, there is so much randomness in this process that it's hard to gain any useful information about your particular case, especially if you are a new Ph.D. (i.e. the random component is much larger for new Ph.D.s since there is not that much information that recruiters will have on you).
Given 300-400 applications for 20 interview slots, it's not possible to read your paper either carefully or at all at this stage, so not getting an interview is not that important a signal about your quality and conversely, getting an interview is not as informative as we might like.
Getting interviews probably conveys more about the quality of the people writing letters for you and the quality of the letters they wrote.
12:58 - VERY HELPFUL. Thanks.
I wrote 3 emails to recruitment chairs to signal that the positions match my interests very closely (I did not use aeaweb.org/joe to signal). It turned out that it is entirely useless, I did not receive any interview call from them. I thought writing such emails or letters is negative.
3:20 - why wouldn't you use the JOE signals as well? The search committee knows the JOE signals are scarce and thus meaningful to receive, whereas your signal via a cover letter is relatively cheap in comparison.
12:58, thanks for your comment. May I ask, would the same hold true (that reference letters matter much more than a paper) if an application has been solicited? Does the answer differ if it is by top-10 dept.? What I mean, do they solicit so much that they are not able to read the paper anyway? Thanks
How much time are people spending preparing for interviews? I am having trouble motivating to practice over and over again so could use some encouragement!
I think that mugging the dissertation speech is just a bad idea. During interview, it works like a radio speech. Instead,having some sort of a structure in mind is better. Also time can be spent on answering questions about future research etc etc.
I'm putting in a few hours a day on prepping. I'm reading the articles of people who are going to be interviewing me, as well as practicing my scripted answers to questions. I think the key to the interview is to have structure to your answers.
I propose that we do something like this wiki just after the AEA meetings end. This will need to have a unique page on the wiki. That, or we just push the current table to the bottom of the page, as it'll be more or less useless at that point... Or, we just edit all the extraneous information out and go with something like this. It'll probably be noisier than the current wiki, as I think there's strategic value to vandalism, and value to keeping information public vs. private. Still.
For the post above,
has College of Charleston already called for campus interviews?
This is "12.58" again answering the follow-up question from Dec 28, 7.15pm
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May I ask, would the same hold true (that reference letters matter much more than a paper) if an application has been solicited? Does the answer differ if it is by top-10 dept.? What I mean, do they solicit so much that they are not able to read the paper anyway?
****************
Let me start by saying that it's difficult to give general answers to any of these questions. My whole point about randomness in this process has to do with idiosyncracies of particular individuals and departments on the demand side.
from my experience on the market, the conditional probability of landing an interview is much higher after a solicitation. Soliciting either means (a) someone is interested in you after reading your paper or seeing you present, or (b) you were recommended by your dept or by the recruiter's colleague or friend or (c) they got interested after seeing your CV or dissertation abstract or web page.
(a) is the nicest case. in (b) or (c), it's possible that the recruiter may lose interest after seeing your paper.
So 'solicited' itself does not mean they have already read your paper. this is why not all solicitations lead to interviews.
4:14 I don't think that page is a wiki, is it?
10:44 - it's not a wiki, you're right. But it can be made one easily enough. I meant mainly the organization of the information.
I have a question. I've been using a webtracker to monitor the IP addresses of people who have been viewing my job market webpage (with my vita, job market paper, etc). This lets me see which universities might be interested in me. The strange thing is, I am still getting hits every day from places I applied to, that have not given me an interview. Does this mean that there are still a lot of schools thinking of making last minute interview offers? Why else would they be visiting my webpage?
I've been having exactly the same experience, so I'd like to know the answer to the question above as well.
To the above two posts: I think it is possible that it is the job-market candidates in those universities surfing for your information, not necessarily the search committee. My university is recruiting and I am a job market candidate, and when I am bored in the office, I will check other candidates information, here is the link to the job market candidates webpage:http://www.nber.org/candidates/
Good point. That sounds like the most likely explanation.
May I humbly request the phd students to stop visiting my webpage and giving me false?
false hope, I mean
Personally, I get pretty depressed looking at other PhD candidates' websites, so I've stopped doing it ;-)
I look at who visits my webpage as well. I think you can distinguish other PhD students from possible interviewers if your tracking software indicates the link that brought them to your page. If it has a placement page link then its probably a PhD student or other surfer. If they arrived there without a link (just typed in your URL in the address bar, I presume) then I think its probably a recruiter who has your information.
the recruiting committee does not need to visit your website.They have hard copies of your file, or have your files in the department intranet. 95% sure the vistors are phd candidates in that department.
9:29 - it's relatively easy to check out a website. So I can imagine that reading a person's dossier, the department search committee will pull up the website to look at pictures and/or find other personal information (e.g., a blog linked to on the homepage). Much information is posted on a candidate's webpage that is not included in a dossier.
I am looking for advice on spousal issues. My spouse is on the market in a separate field. So far we have not linked our applications as we would consider taking a job at a school where only one of us got hired. We would however, like to get some visiting or adjunct work for the other should one of us get an offer.
Any advice on when this issue should be brought up? We were thinking during the flyouts or when an offer is made.
I don't want the issue to prevent either of us from getting a good job.
Thanks.
regarding websites...
I'm on the demand side, and we get a lot of pressure from the dean's office to make affirmative action hires. They coax/cajole/force us to try to find out information about ethnicity from webpages.
Word to the wise: if you are "ethnic", but it doesn't show up in your name, then post a picture on your webpage. It's a bit late now though.
Would international students be considered "ethnic"? or this is only for US citizen?
Just a silly question, should we call the interviewers by their firstnames or should we call them Mr. (Lastname), Dr. (Lastname), Prof. (Lastname). I'm an international student -- I would like to know how the interview culture is here.
Dear 12:28.
Not a silly question. Everyone wonders about this. I have been through the process before and the main rule I have is to pay attention to how they introduce themselves. Usually they'll use their first names - if so, feel free to call them by their first names. If they say "I'm Dr. so-and-so", then call them Dr. so-and-so.
That's rare though. Remember, the committeee is considering you as a potential colleague. They'd like to see you on their level professionally, so treat them as if they were already your colleagues.
E-mails are a bit trickier - again pay attention to how they sign and use that as a clue.
That's my 2 cents. If anyone has a different take, I'd be interested to hear it.
It's always better to err on the more formal side. Use "Professor" or "Dr." unless invited to do otherwise. It's true that we are looking for colleagues, but it is best not to be presumptuous. My rule of thumb is: If you are ABD, use Professor or Dr.; if you have completed your degree, then using a first name is perfectly acceptable.
One problem I've found is that people usually introduce themselves as "John Smith". There's no signal in that.
On the upside, you can usually get through an entire interview without needing to use anyone's name.
Regarding ethnicity, it depends on the school. Generally black, hispanic, and asian (of Japanese/Chinese/Korean/etc. descent) are considered "minorities". National origin doesn't matter, as far as diversity is concerned.
Most schools would also consider Indian/Pakistani as ethnic.
It's less clear with Turks, Egyptians, and Arabs.
The whole diversity thing is a mess really. My school considers Indian ethnic, but not Turkish. Ghannian but not Egyptian.
They push for diversity, but the easiest ethnicity to find in economics (Asian), is typically the one that's least likely to be able to/want to come to a liberal arts school.
To 8:57, on spousal issues:
My impression (from extensive convesations with the demand side about my own spousal coordination issues) is that flyouts are the right time to bring this up. Waiting too long may make it difficult for them to figure out a position for your spouse. But telling them too early is just a waste of your time, and of theirs, and probably they will not pay attention anyway early on. I do not think that your average school will decide not to make you an offer based on your spouse.
Having said that, I give this advice assuming you are a man (which I am not). I think for us women, this is a bit of a tricker area since (even unconciously) people are probably more likely to assume you are going to be the "trailing spouse". This may make them less likely to make you the offer if they can't figure out something for your husband. I would love to think I am wrong about the gender difference here and this would not be true by any means for all schools, but it's an extra something to be aware of.
"I'm leaving
on an airplane..."
Good luck everyone! May the Force be with each and every one of you starting the second you land in Chicago. I'm praying that we're happy with the process when it's over.
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