Maybe some advice or insight from others seeking professor jobs or have recently landed one would be really nice here. On the heels of my latest application rejection, I feel at this point there absolutely has to be something lacking about my application materials. I feel like I’m missing out on some kind of secret handshake formula that they’re actually looking for.
I feel like I have a pretty standard level of teaching experience for someone having graduated with a PhD. A couple semesters of TAing, a couple semesters of writing lab experience. Maybe what sets me apart is a year teaching ESL in another country. Maybe my couple years as an RA during my PhD isn’t what they’re looking for? Maybe my 5 years as a researcher are the death knell to a teaching position in a subject that can’t decide if it’s humanities or social sciences.
I just feel totally lost. Email after email telling me I’m just not what they’re looking for. Am I good for anything? My only success has been adjunct positions, but those have been for too little pay and would require me to uproot my life to go teach there.
I feel like I’m throwing my applications into the void, only to get back “sorry, you suck” responses. Does anyone have any insight? Additionally, any kind of resources, either academic resume critique services or something similar would be welcome.
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Nepotism. If they know you then you’re 4x more likely to get the position. It’s not about merit or your CV. It’s about who you know.
Either use AI and apply for thousands of jobs or use your LinkedIn network to apply for a few by hand. Or just leave Academia… it’s garbage anyway compared to industry.
Edit: lol at the downvotes. Sorry you don’t like the truth snowflakes! 😘
Academic and higher ed is collapsing. It isn’t you. It is them. What is your field if I may ask? Some fields are just totally screwed. Others, there might be some pivoting you can do but it is very field dependent.
It’s hard to get teaching positions without some instructor of record experience. And what of your publication record? If it’s light then you won’t get attention from R1s. If it doesn’t exist, then even R2s and some teaching positions might pass you over for someone with a couple of articles and some course experience.
Are you getting rejected at the first screening phase, or after interviews?
If rejected before interviews, it may be a problem with CV or cover letter. If rejected after interviews, it may be more about how you “fit”.
Also, how many applications did you send out? You may just need to apply more.
Like someone else said, its not you.
In addition to all the federal crap, universities are running into an enrollment cliff rapidly. Not too long ago, higher ed was in high demand so universities built up these huge departments with lots of faculty but with the recent focus placed on trades and alternatives to college mixed with people having fewer kids, even undergrad enrollment will soon drop off majorly and departments will shrink.
Keep trying, get creative in the schools you are applying to, and be creative in how you sell yourself and your skills. You got this friend.
Are you applying to teaching schools? At SLACs like mine being a TA is not going to get you past the first cut to the pool. We expect successful applicants to have been instructor-of-record for multiple courses, and really since COVID pretty much all the short-listed folks have been VAPs or multi-course adjuncts for a while so will have at least a half-dozen courses under their belts (and quite often several years of full-time teaching experience to make the short list). The student evals and peer/mentor evaluations (and LORs) from those courses are critical in the application process.
Teaching ESL will be seen as irrelvant unless that’s somehow connected to the job or you’re applying to places serving bilingual students in large numbers. Being an RA doesn’t make a difference for teaching jobs either in my experience. Realistically most people who did not get solid teaching experience as grad students are going to have to get it somehow before they are competitive for TT positions at most teaching-based institutions these days. More often than not that means adjuncting or a non-TT term position somewhere for a few years. It’s basically taking the place of a STEM postdoc for the humanities and some social sciences.
I am so sorry. My SLAC just cut its rhetoric degree and most of our comms faculty come from industry & don’t have a PhD. English & library PhDs are running the writing labs. It’s tough out there.
Publish in an A* journal or lean into generative AI for the short-term. If Ed Zitron is right, the AI bubble will burst eventually and demand for credentials like yours should increase as value of humanity & critical thinking in comms becomes apparent.