• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

The Professor Is In

Guidance for all things PhD: Graduate School, Job Market and Careers

  • Home
  • Courses & Events
    • How To …
    • The Art of the Academic Cover Letter
    • The Art of the Article
    • Unstuck: The Art of Productivity
    • On Demand Courses
    • Upcoming Live Webinars
    • Free Productivity Webinars
    • Gift Certificates
  • Personalized Job Help
    • Document Editing
    • Quick Reviews
    • Specials
    • Interview Prep
    • Personal Negotiating Assistance
    • One on One Career Consults
    • Testimonials
    • Interview Testimonials
    • Graduate School Application Assistance
  • Productivity
  • Coaching
    • Productivity Coaching
    • Private Coaching
    • Leaving Academia Coaching Group
  • The Professor Is Out
    • It’s OK to Quit
    • Our Art of Leaving Program
    • Prof Is OUT Services
    • Our Prof Is OUT Team
    • Prof is OUT Client Testimonials
    • Ex-Academics: A TPIO Support Community
  • Workshops
  • Blog

How to Strategize for the 2020 Job Market

By Karen Kelsky | January 3, 2020

Happy New Year, everyone! It’s the start of 2020. And, it’s also the midpoint of the academic year. That means…. a lot of people are coming back from winter break facing the stark realization that they didn’t get shortlisted for the jobs they hoped for this year.

Other folks are looking ahead to going on the academic job market for the first time next Fall.

For everyone who’s already turning their minds ahead to the applications they’re going to need to send out in Fall 2020, this video is for you. It’s a quick sketch of what to do with the next 8 months to make yourself as competitive as possible for the academic job market next year.

If you have questions about working with me, drop me a line here. I’d love to hear from you!

And just to anticipate one predictable reaction: my focus on peer reviewed achievements is most responsive to R1 and elite SLAC hiring, but is absolutely also relevant to lower tiered teaching institutions as well. Those institutions have become increasingly “aspirational”, and frankly, greedy for research outputs even though they don’t support the work with funding or research leave time. And the wretched job market means they can demand high research productivity from their new hires as well. So please BANISH the thought “I just want to work at a teaching oriented school, so I can skip the peer reviewed publishing imperative.” NO. Those days are gone.

~~~~~~~~~

Resources Mentioned In Video:

You can go here to schedule a one-on-one consult with me.

Purchase the CV Strategizing Service that I mention in the video here (Special January Reduced Rate just for video post viewers!):

 

Get the Spring Special 3-Doc Package ($430 instead of $540 for full review of three academic job documents) here; as I mention in the video, Jan-April is THE time to get on our schedule and knock out those job docs like the CV, Cover Letter, Teaching Statement, Research Statement, etc.:

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

At TPII we offer help on all aspects of the academic career. Email to learn more.

Similar Posts:

  • Strategizing Your CV for the Job Market
  • Workshop Summary: Hacking the Academic Job Market
  • How-To(sday): The Ten Commandments of Going on the Market as ABD
  • Here’s What Goes in Your Tenure Portfolio–A Special Request Post
  • How to Plan Your Research and Writing Trajectory on the Tenure Track

Filed Under: Advising Advice, Landing Your Tenure Track Job, Major Job Market Mistakes, Strategizing Your Success in Academia

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Maria says

    March 15, 2020 at 10:03 am

    Dear Karen,

    I recently had a campus interview where I felt I excelled in every item on the list, including the teaching demo and the job talk. As I am usually a very self-aware individual who knows my faults, in this case I felt like I honestly exceeded the expectations for the TT Assistant Professor position at a second-tier state university in the northeast. Yet, they offered the job to someone else. The head of the department mentioned during our meeting that the position was written in mind with someone who was recently out of a PhD program and didn’t have much experience. I am 7 years out of an Oxon PhD program and have over 20 publications in some top journals/publishers under my belt, with 10 more to be published in the next year or so. Did this seem intimidating to them? When is a candidate for a TT Assistant Prof position overqualified?

    Reply
    • Karen Kelsky says

      March 16, 2020 at 1:17 pm

      I’d recommend you do an Interview intervention to be able to target any potential places where you sent the wrong message.

      Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter

Buy My Book!

4.8 stars on Amazon!

The_Professor_Is_In.indd

Get Immediate Help

In addition to our blog and book, we have upcoming live webinars, pre-recorded webinars and other programs that you can get started on right away:

The Art of the Academic Cover Letter
The Art of the Article
Unstuck: The Art of Productivity
Quick Reviews
Free Productivity Webinars

Categories

  • #MeTooPhD
  • Academic Job Search
    • How To Choose and Manage Recommenders
    • How to Interview
    • How To Write Academic Job Cover Letters
    • How To Write CVs
    • Landing Your Tenure Track Job
    • Major Job Market Mistakes
    • Negotiating Offers
  • Adjunct Issues
  • Advising Advice
  • Alt-University Critique
  • Black Lives Matter
  • COVID19
  • Dispatches
  • Goodbye Ivory Towers
  • Graduate Student Concerns
    • Bad Advisors and Good Mentors
  • How To Do Conferences
  • How to Get Grants and Fellowships
  • International Perspectives
  • Intersectional Analyses
  • Makeup
  • Marginalized Voices
  • Mental Health and Academia
  • Ph.D. Poverty
  • Podcast
  • Post-Ac Free-Lancing and Small Business
  • Post-Ac Job Search
    • Careers Outside
  • Postdoc Issues
  • Productivity
    • Book Proposals and Contracts
    • Publishing Issues
    • Writing
  • Promote Yourself!
  • Quitting–An Excellent Option
  • Racism in the Academy
  • Rearview Mirror
  • Resumes & Postac Docs
  • Sexual Harassment in the Academy
  • Shame
  • Stop.Acting.Like.A.Grad.Student
  • Strategizing Your Success in Academia
  • Teaching and Research Statements
  • Teaching Demos
  • Teaching Portfolios
  • Tenure–How To Get It
    • How To Build Your Tenure File
    • Surviving Assistant Professorhood
  • The Campus Visit
  • Unstuck
  • Webinars
  • What Not To Wear
  • Women of Color in Academia
  • Work/Life Balance in Academia
  • Yes, You Can: Women in Academia
  • Your Second and Third Jobs

Footer

About Us

  • Who Is Dr. Karen?
  • Who Is On the TPII Team?
  • In The News
  • Contact Me
  • FAQs
    • Why Trust Me?
  • Testimonials

Community

  • #MeTooPhD
  • Peer Editing
  • PhD Debt Survey
  • Support Fund
  • I Help With Custody Cases for Academics

Copyright © 2023 The Professor Is In·

We Are Redefining Academic Community

That’s why we upgraded our private
Mighty Network.

We are committed to building a community with a focus on productivity support. Every day, in a dedicated space, we offer free coaching advice and encouragement. And the couple thousand people who have already joined are steadily building a supportive and interactive community devoted to that elusive idea of work-life balance.

Learn More

Get on Dr. Karen's Schedule

Get on my schedule to work on your tenure track job cover letter, CV, grant applications, book proposals, interview preparation, and more.  [si-contact-form form=’2′]