Comment by coreyp_1 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by coreyp_1 | Hacker News Reader

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Am I an insider?

I'm finishing my PhD this semester, and looking for a University teaching job (unfortunately, these are not tenure track), and the number of openings is staggering. For that matter, don't confuse a teaching-track job with an adjunct job. They are most definitely different. Also, teaching faculty aren't the 2nd class citizens that they may have been 10 years ago. Most teaching faculty are specialists not just in teaching but also in the most up-to-date info in the field itself.

It is a seller's market where I (the seller) get to be selective and universities (the buyers) are having to offer premiums (including sign-on bonuses... who would that thought that a teaching position could get a 5-figure sign-on bonus?!?) in order to attract top candidates. Many schools that I have interviewed at say that they are looking to hire multiple positions (both the tenured research-track, as well as the non-tenured teaching track).

Also, from personal knowledge, there are not hundreds of applicants for many of these positions. There may be several dozen, but I know of candidates who have applied to 40, 60, and even 100 jobs.

Combine this with the knowledge that many Comp Sci programs have doubled enrollment in the last 5 years, but have not had a corresponding doubling of faculty size, and the article's assertions make even more sense.

While my experience does not consitute a formal study, I can tell you that everwhere that I have interviewed has said the same thing: "This is a very good year to be looking for a CS, university job!"

Meaning that you will be able to apply for 200 open positions that never pan out, instead of just 100?

I tend to measure my ease in finding a new job by the brevity of the timespan between deciding to look and accepting an offer. Around here, that's usually 2-6 weeks. I don't usually apply to university positions, but for those I have attempted, I frequently see a delay of months between the time of application and their first attempt to put together an interview. None have ever been able to establish initial contact in less than 5 business days. Also, the postings frequently have bizarre requirements, such as requiring a masters in CS and 10 years of experience in C and Matlab, in order to write a glorified CRUD app that requires neither.

The teaching positions might be different, but I have personally never found any year to be a good one to be looking for a university job.

> The teaching positions might be different

They are very very very different. You have the normal "applications close on / for full consideration submit materials before [month] [day]" thing. But if you submit your application on that day (or anyways, pretend you did) then the typical schedule was something like:

  * phone interview the next week
  * onsite between one week and one month from phone interview
  * offer within a few days/weeks of onsite.

Actually, my teaching job process moved much faster than my industry job process.

Maybe at least in CS we need to move to a "rolling basis" style.

I only applied to 9 universities, all R1. After the rounds of interviews, I have received 3 offers so far, and am still waiting to hear back from the majority of the others. Each of the schools is hiring multiple positions, and I can only take one of the positions.

The timeframe is longer, of course, but I am beginning to look for those jobs while finishing my PhD (e.g., still employed at my previous job as a grad student). It's no secret that schools generally hire within the timeframe of the academic year. It's different from industry, though, because schools must hire early enough so that they can schedule classes and plan teaching loads, and that means that it must be early enough for students to be able to register at the end of the previous (spring) semester, but the job itself doesn't begin until the fall. That's the nature of the academic calendar.

As for speed of response, it has generally been quite quick, which is amazing given the committees that everything must go through. I have not had any experiences with bizarre requirements.

Are you coming from a top school? You're applying to R1 schools so I'm wondering if your anecdote, as an ideal candidate, falls outside the "normal" range of actual job search difficulty.

Well, that's why anecdotal evidence is not research. ;)

You are absolutely correct, though: I'm a strong candidate. But when I said that I knew people who were applying to 40, 60, and even 100 positions, those, too, are from top schools.

When I say that schools are only receiving dozens of applications (50-70), those are also top schools.

What I didn't say was that, due to my personal network, I also know of dozens of smaller schools (who aren't advertizing on the CRA job board, for example) who are desperate to find good applicants. I have been contacted by them, as have some of my collegues.

I also happen to know that many of the applicants are international, who are (presumably) looking for a ticket to the US, because they don't have any relevant experience. (Obviously, there are many good international applicants, too!)

My personal experience is that this is a good year to be looking for an academic job. The link just confirmed my personal experience.

While it's certainly not common, there are some school that offer tenure track positions for lectures. The University of Toronto is the only one that immediately comes to mind, but I know there are others.

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