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Focusing Your Application Materials‹ Readings and Resources | Job Search Advice.Home Page | Know the Institution and Its Faculty › If you read any nonacademic book on getting a job, you won’t read very far before being told to remember that the application documents are about the future, not the past. A list of one’s past achievements does help a search committee extrapolate into the future, but candidates need to help that process along. What you did last year, or even what you’re doing this year (finishing that dissertation, assistant directing the comp program) pale beside a clear plan for What You Will Do For Us — and For The Profession — Next Year. (or better, the Next Three-to-Five Years.) I think job letters should all have at least 3–4 future-oriented sentences, in addition to or linked directly with their customized-to-the-position sentences. [D]emonstrate that you’re a good colleague. Years ago, when I was interviewing, one of my professors said something similar—people are trying to figure out if they want to have lunch with you for the next thirty years. It sounds superficial, but there’s considerable truth in such a comment. By the time we invite someone for an interview, we’ve looked at hundreds of applications and letters of recommendation (which, unfortunately, all sound pretty much the same these days), and writing samples. We know the applicants are smart. We know they are someone’s “best student in the past twenty years.” What we don’t know is whether or not we’re going to want to talk to them for the next thirty years. What we don’t know is what kind of colleague he or she will make. “Collegiality” is a word that is used with considerable caution these days (probably because it is less measurable than “research” or “teaching” or “service”). But it’s the silent fourth category, and it definitely counts. It counts a lot. Adding to the emphasis on “Collegiality,” there’s leadership within the dept/college community: any graduate student who has performed leadership roles in her dept/college/university should stress that characteristic. I would even suggest that the graduate student ask her recommenders to mention that in their letters, if they are in a position to do so. Rhet/comp graduates, in particular, have often served on or even chaired graduate student organizations, sub-committees, etc. (composition studies seems to foster passion and motivation for “leading others to the light.”) Even informal mentoring of other graduate students could be mentioned. If appropriate, I spend an entire paragraph in a recommendation letter talking about this issue because it sticks out. Many recommenders remember research and teaching— and maybe even service in general— but not so much the leadership. Instead of thinking about the interview [and job search] process as auditioning, I like to think of it as applying for citizenship. A job applicant is asking to be accepted into a tightly knit community. In letters and interviews you should somehow address your ability to contribute to the departmental and institutional process of running things. Don’t just talk about your teaching or your scholarship. Remember that service is often the third part of getting promotion and tenure, so at least mention it in passing. What committee work have you done? Other service to your department and institution. Connect this to your teaching/scholarship if possible. (Consider asking one of your references to address this in his or her letter.) This is especially important if you are applying to regional/smaller institutions where teaching is highly valued, but I imagine it’s important for Research I’s, too. (Not as important as scholarship, but important nonetheless.) Also, it takes minimal effort, e.g. one targeted paragraph, for a candidate to tailor a letter of application to the specifics of each program to which application is being made. Search committees from smaller schools especially like to see that the candidate is interested in them, their school, their program—it’s easy to tell when you’ve received the standard mass mailing form application letter. I was on my first search committee last year. It was much more obvious than I would have thought who took the time to tailor letters and who didn’t. One other point coming from my search committee experience—tell candidates to make clear to their letter-writers where the letters are going. Without getting into too much detail (I hope), we had one applicant who submitted a recommendation letter from his/her then-dept chair. The chair’s letter argued, quite (too) persuasively, that the applicant was “too good” for a job in which he/she would “waste time teaching 4 classes.” Which is precisely what we were hiring somebody to do. Oops. When I was working on my application letters some years ago, one of my litmus tests for the viability of my application was whether I could adapt my template letter to the specifics of a job within an hour. If I couldn’t figure out how to negotiate my purposes with the (expected) audience, that told me I shouldn’t apply for the job—either because I was misunderstanding something about them, or because there’s was something I wanted to say that I felt like I couldn’t. Either way, the 1-hour time limit is entirely idiosyncratic, of course. That would all depend on how quickly a candidate writes/revises. When I was on the market in the Pleistocene Age, I had a folder for each school. In the folder: geographic info, demographic info, details about the Dept. and the Program—classes (esp know which ones you might like —as well as one you might like to develop), requirements, emphases (Comp Rhet? Tech Comm? New Media? etc. ‹ Readings and Resources | Job Search Advice.Home Page | Know the Institution and Its Faculty › |