Don't Waste Your Time

this ostensibly more successful strategy is out of touch with the real world. job ads almost never specify with whom the applicant will work with. they also typically say very little about compensation, let alone the reward system in place. you can "select" only if you know the menu.

I've had great success with the pour and pray approach. I strongly believe in playing the percentages. If I send out 400 packages to 400 different schools, I'm hoping for a 1 percent positive return and I usually get it. Doesn't mean I'll take the job, just means that I have the opportunity to interview.

Placing your hopes on one or two elusive jobs has more to do with hope and praying than playing the percentages. In a perfect world where everything is created equal your approach might work but I seriously doubt that by the time someone gets around to applying using your qualitative research methodology, that the job would still be available.

I wonder if we each had 25 applicants and we used your approach and my approach, which group would have the highest number of offers to interview.

Cliff

Strategies that work in corporate America do not have a direct correlation to the academic job market, especially considering the current market, and this article is not directed at the educational jobseeker. Ironic, considering one of the points that the author seems to make is the intrinsic value of knowing one's audience.

HigherEdJobs editors, please do a better job at vetting the materials that you post in the Career Tools section of this site.

It's frustrating enough to feel lost or hopeless in the current market, without feeling that one of the chief resources for academic employment does not recognize the difference between advice for applying for a customer service manager position and a tenure-track assistant professor.

This article offers good advices. Another criteria helps to evaluate should one pursue a job is if the college can afford to invite candidates for a campus visit. However this information is not listed anywhere on the job postings. After going through tedious interviews and long wait, many applicants decided to not continue only to find out that the school in unable pay for campus visit and "highly encourage" job applicants to complete the process. This information is useful to save employers and job applicants' time.

I share your views regarding Peter's approach as I see how important is to stay calm, confident and clear-minded when seeking for a job with great meaning.

All good and well except you totally remove any new graduate from the chance of getting a job.

This article is obviously NOT targeted to an academic audience. The author does not seem to be familiar with the academic job market, or the article was written for another publication and simply picked up by HIgherEdJobs for some reason. For many faculty positions in the USA, a quantitative approach IS a very effective strategy in job searches.

After being out of a job for over 6 months I have to say that I don't agree. Of course, the ideal would be to have a contact, although, I haven't gotten any interviews where I have had contacts. I am looking for the right job. Unfortunately, if you're older it takes longer because they can hire someone younger and cheaper. The education sector has a horrendous track record with interviewing and getting back to candidates in a timely manner, or responding to them at all, and I speak from experience. I do believe when the right job comes to me it will be the best for me.

Thank you for your comments. Yes, I agree with you and have certainly not given up or have any plans to give up. I work for the students, and it seems that some force wishes me to travel and make more of an impact in more geographic locations. However, I will not deal with the politics of these snobbish, and mean spirited people and will continue to nurture my relationships with those worth their weight in gold as you so eloquently phrased.
The quantitative approach is the best approach as long as you truly meet the requirements of the positions. However when someone shines so bright many people get blinded by their own shadows and succumb to behavior that is not student centered. I have no disillusions and wish all of my colleagues out there the best of luck in their searches. Perseverance, is the key to success in education and being worth your weight in gold and dedicating yourself to the students is all that is important.

If there is anything to be gained by the article, one should reverse the "screens." Take the first screen, "what will I get to do?" You do what the position requires! Duh! The second, I have been lucky to have several jobs in Higher Ed, but am currently not where I want to be, but..."What will I learn?" No one has ever given me a job, because THEY wanted me to learn something. If I did learn something it was coincidental with the skill I already had that got me the job. And as someone remarked, this and many Articles, particularly by this author, with due respect, are NOT at all related to college or university faculty positions. So see the title, "Don't waste your time." How much time did everyone waste reading this who is looking to be a college faculty? How ironic, void of insight and ludicrous is that?

Peter, You say to stop using the quantitative method in job searching, yet you encourage a quantitative method in the search through your scoring method.

Many posts to this article indicate considerable frustration. According to the American Association of University Professors, 3/4 of all university teaching positions are filled by graduate students and adjunct faculty. I found this statistic in Harper's Magazine, July, 2013, p. 13. This ratio illustrates that higher education teaching positions have been in decline for some time, ostensibly to lower costs. Rather than manage higher education institutions, the "six-figure administrators" mentioned elsewhere in this thread appear focused on saving their own income streams, fiefdoms and careers, at the expense of students and faculty alike. Faculty job-seekers are frustrated by career "musical chairs."

I spent 30+ years in executive recruiting and retained search, in the commercial world. I have two masters degrees and a few years ago shifted my own career, in my mid-60s, to being an adjunct at a well-regarded and ranked east coast university. I work in a graduate technology management and innovation program; I am also a self-employed career mentor, coach and resume writer for senior executives. I landed my position not via "pour and pray methods" but because the professor who directs my program had known me for 10 years and understood my value. My time with students is a mix of individual mentoring, resume and interview guidance, authoring and sharing articles concerning topics of career value and some face time in class. My student cohort is international and diverse. When a student finishes with me, she/he lands a job they want. Both my students and my superiors are pleased with my work. In my work, being older is an advantage. For a few years, I volunteered at my undergraduate alma mater by assisting its career services staff to provide the same services I now perform as an adjunct; I was well-received by students and department staffers alike. The career services department staff turned over regularly. In spite of my reputation and alum status, my attempts to seek employment within the department were ignored. The college continued to hire alums with large corporation experience, much of it from marketing and less from career management. Being an entrepreneur without Fortune 500 experience and over-age cut me out. After yet another round of department turnover, I am no longer asked to volunteer.

Many of my contacts who have landed full-time and adjunct faculty positions have done so through networking into the actual university/college departments they wish to join. Networking is not exchanging business cards and a few minutes of small talk; it is about establishing relationships with experts in your field beyond the walls of your present institution. Done right, it is the most effective means of managing a transitional campaign. Applying for positions via "the front door," that is, via Human Resources, is a waste of time. It may work for recent graduates but even then, I have proven with my students that networking is the better way. HRs job is to screen people out, not in; they focus on narrowing the candidate pool and do so by two methods. One is via computer, which searches for the number of "hits" of key words. If a prospective candidate survives that, she/he gets to experience the same this, this time by an HR person who is usually not qualified to screen for the position. The results are often absurd and I could share many stories.

My point is that a job search should not be limited to one method. Statistics in the business world, prove that networking is the most effective method in 60-77% of all career searches. This indicates how you should allocate your career search time.

I'm retired and have had a quirky job history. I now regret that I quit academia where I was respected for my teaching as an assistant professor of oceanography in line for tenure, simply because I was ****** off at the administration.
It was the '70's and I was radical in many ways but I was expressing my inner self more than the perfectly sensible reasons I had for quitting, or so I realize now.
I could have taken a sabbatical and cooled off.
I ended up going in a completely different direction in my career (arts management) and was quite successful. For example, I ran an organizational development project for small cultural NPOs and even published a book related to the results of the project.
I turned down an opportunity to become CEO of that organization and moved on to successfully work in fundraising, i.e., grant proposals and special events because I was good at publicity, mainly because I was an aggressive SOB who could be nice when necessary.
I give you this short bio because I advise those of you in higher education that if you hate the job but or because you are not completely happy because there is some talent inside you that can be applied elsewhere, I advise you to try it out as a volunteer with an NPO or take some courses in the field to decide if you actually enjoy being a good artist, dancer, magician, salesperson or administrator (ugh!) before you quit your position at the university by telling the administration that you have had enough of their B.S.

This assumes, of course, that the educator is able, willing, and free enough to just pick up stakes and move to wherever-in-the-country the jobs are.

copying and pasting columns by "a syndicated columnist who writes for a general audience" in an academic environment is rather un-academic