Question for readers
How many times would you take rejections for a particular career path before you decided that you should pursue another one?* Twice? Twenty? Never? And why? What is the line between ignoring the evidence and “believing in yourself”? (If you answer, would you mind disclosing what field you’re in?)
*And no, I haven’t suffered any particular rejections recently; things are going very well. I’m just curious, since my career path has the potential to offer me an above-average number of rejections.
September 14th, 2007 at 12:42 pm
A lot more than 20. I sent out 24 applications in the past year. That got me one interview at the AAR and three on-campus interviews. So, that’s 20 rejections up front (of course, many of these were stretches, either because a more senior person was desired or I only partially met the particular criteria of the call). For the AAR interview I was one of 20 initial candidates under consideration and didn’t end up in the final three. For one of the on-campus interviews I ended up as the second choice (the first choice accepted), for another I was the first choice (and I accepted), and for the third I withdrew before the end because I’d already decided to take a job (so, no way to judge exactly where I fell in the order). Looked at it one way, I had a ratio of 1 acceptance to 22 rejections, plus one abstention.
This wasn’t a bad ratio at all. It was a horrible, terrible, much-discussed awful year for new hirings in my field. I was one of the few who landed a full-time, tenure-track job in my own field at a good university with proper pay and a light class load. I fully expected that I might not get any job at all (this happened to colleagues whom I consider fully as qualified as myself). The job market was so bad that it scared some grad students enough to drop out of school altogether before reaching the end game.
If you’re going into academia you have to be prepared for twice as many rejections as I had, three times as much, maybe four or five times as much. Remember, I was actually one of the greatest success stories of the year (part of this was luck, of course), and it still took more than 20 applications and interviews at multiple schools.
As for the dividing line between believing in yourself and ignoring the evidence, there is no such situation. Your belief in yourself should not be rooted in self-confidence, it should be rooted in empirical evidence. There is no deep mysticism to the academic job market. Your confidence won’t do a damn thing for you. What you have to have are facts that you can demonstrate to yourself and to others on paper, because before they ever see your face they’re going to make decisions based on the evidence on your CV. Your advisers should be able to tell you whether, by the later part of your training, you have enough teaching experience, publication record, conference speaking, professionalization, etc to be a good candidate or not. If they can’t, you’ve chosen your school poorly.
The hiring process in academia is grueling and dispiriting, especially the first time round. Much of it is simply luck: how many places are hiring this year vs. how many candidates there happen to be (there were an average of 120 applications for the jobs I applied to, for instance). But it is also inevitable, if you stick with it: a qualified candidate (again, you and your advisers should be able to determine this objectively, without resort to “believing in yourself”) who sticks it out long enough will in most cases eventually find a spot. It can take dozens, even dozens of dozens of applications. It can take years (these are, however, the horror stories that get passed around a lot precisely because they’re so horrible, not because they’re typical). But people qualified to be professors aren’t so many, and eventually your day does come around.
I know you’re asking a more abstract question, but since you’re on this track and I’ve recently been on it, I can’t help answering in this way.
September 14th, 2007 at 12:58 pm
Jeff, yeah, thanks. I hope my self-confidence is grounded in empirical evidence when it comes to my academic abilities:) But lots of folks tend to go by an “inner sense”–hence the horrific American Idol tryouts. So I was curious.
And I was asking the question in part because of what you mention (congratulations, by the way). There is a blog I recently discovered chronicling a philosophy grad’s attempts to get a job, second time around. The whole process is pretty dispiriting, which I’ve known, but hearing it in a narrative form…eek (I haven’t shown my spouse the site yet, for that reason).
Plus I was curious to see, for non-academics, if they would even consider pressing forward on a path after, say, 60 rejections. It seems so extreme in contrast the way the rest of the world does hiring.
September 16th, 2007 at 3:35 am
Totally depends on the field you’re in. Totally depends on you. When I was searching from my present ministry job, I was in search for three years, was rejected or not even considered by around fifty congregations, took some interim positions, rejected one or two job offers, until I finally wound up where I am now. I know some ministers who have given up ministry after a two year search. I know other ministers who have spent six or seven years searching.
From talking with my sister, who is a university professor, I believe the humanities in academia offer a similar rate of rejection.
Implicit in what you ask is how one survives such long, drawn-out job searches. I survived by having Plan B and Plan C ready to go, in case Plan A failed. I also took some degree of control over the situation by applying what I know of sales and marketing to myself — as all the career counselors tell you these days, you have to be entrepreneuiral in your job search. I did not commiserate with others in similar job searches, since that just brought me down — instead, I reminded myself that I did not want to go back into the residential construction industry, and that, dispiriting though my job search might be, ministry was a hell of a lot better than my last career.
My $.02 worth. Your mileage may vary.