Academia Job Search and Processes
Hello reader (and you also might be someone who is going through the academia job search process),
This blog is a place where I collected experiences (to how much I could remember and document through the process of my job search) as an early career research scholar looking for a permanent tenure-track faculty position in the US universities during Fall’22 and Spring’23.
The timeline of my job search was from 2021 Summer (when I was still writing my dissertation)- 2023 Spring (ongoing, where I am applying for a permanent tenure-track position while I was working as a Visiting Assistant Professor in IU Bloomington). When I was applying for this process, I was a Visiting Assistant Professor at IU Bloomington in the HCI/d Program. You can also see my work and CV on my website.
If you want more specific examples about the documents or any other questions, feel free to email to the email in the footer and/or shruthisai509@gmail.com (personal id).
My positionality/personality:
I heavily document everything
I am very grounded and often portray it as the University/ Department is offering me a job, and takes a bit to understand that I also am choosing the University/Department.
I can easily feel restless to respond to emails, know the answers, and reach out to search committees. Not obsessively, but in the right quantities to be aware of the process as much as it concerns only you. (I think it is good in the right amount!)
I ask a lot of questions and think through “questions.” I would suggest always to ask any kinds of questions you have and at every stage.
In this Blog, you can know my experiences that you can use as tips, checklist, or preparation material for your own process (click to progress to the section directly):
Prep Work for the Process
These are aspects that I prepped for and are required before starting the application process:
Sign up for job list-servs from your research communities. For people in the CHI/ HCI space, I suggest signing up to CHI-JOBS list serv. I was looking at Indeed for notifications, College/ Schools of preference Job Postings website.
Make a Google Folder that could categorize and store spreadsheet to list all the application solicitation (which collects name of the university, link of solicitation, your status, requirements, notes per each row; store your data from the above point), sample documents (which lay a basic textual framework for all your document), a specific folder for each application (which will contain your sample documents customized for that particular solicitation/location)
Prepare your documents (details provided below): 1) Updated CV, 2) Research Statement, 3) Teaching Statement, 4) Diversity Statement, 5) Cover Letter Template, 6) References List and Contacts, 7) Portfolio (web-based or pdf that is easily accessible), 8) List/Folder of Writing Samples (I made one document with a list of different kinds of writing samples I could share with links to each writing sample as one PDF).
Prepare, send for review, and edit till the time it gets to the point and boasts YOUR work as an amazing research or teaching scholar.
Yes! It's just too much when you think about how much you have to prepare for. This sometimes made me think to just skip and apply to the Tech Industry where you might be needing just a one-page resume and an existing web-portfolio (not demeaning that process, but such emotions are real!)
Reach out to your references before your job process starts to request LoRs, have a conversation with them regarding your goals, and identify how long before they would need a notification/ reminder regards to sending LoRs. Shout out to my references who have always been ahead of the game for me and keeping an open line of conversation , although it feels like nagging, is very crucial. It is your job process and they are doing a service.
Network and keep talking to people about you being on the job market in your comfort levels. I never posted about it on Twitter, but have seen some folks tweeting about them being available and on the job market. Make use of those conference connections and networking.
Different Documents and Details
Range of documents you might have to keep up-to-date, or create throughout this whole process:
Updated CV: List of all research, teaching, and service accomplishments chronologically. My example for a CV.
Research Statement: A 2-4 pages document that discusses your research philosophy, recent past/foundational/ background research, future research agenda, and potential funding avenues.
Teaching Statement: A 2-4 pages document that presents and/or illustrates your teaching philosophy, teaching experience, teaching illustration, specific courses you could teach in the dept/school applying, and /or any additional courses you would like to introduce (per your interest, not because they are lacking). An example/ version of my teaching philosophy.
Diversity Statement: A 1-2 pages document that illustrates your contribution towards diversity, inclusion, and equity in your practice, and specifically for your research, teaching, and service. This is to illustrate your ways and not to prove how you might be DEIJ-oriented in theory. Make this personal, just like all other documents, but what is your standpoint and how would you like to contribute to this space moving forward. I listed some probes or criteria that can be talked about in a Diversity Statement at the end of this blog.
Cover Letter: A 1-2 page document that mostly acts as the first thing the search committee might be reading that gives what position you are applying for, who are you, what is your background, specific paragraphs to brief (like a 6-8 lines summary of your statements) your research, teaching, and service (depending on the position), why that place specifically, potential connections and collaborations you can find, personally + professionally how might that place help you, how will you contribute, and last, inviting the readers to your work if any online presence. This document sets a stage on who you are and what you want to become as a person, scholar, and/or faculty.
References List and Contacts: A 1 page document with the names and contact of your three-four references (ones who have promised to go through with your process).
Portfolio: Collection of your work, your personal quirks, and blogs (web-based or pdf that is easily accessible.
List/Folder of Writing Samples: Published/Unpublished articles, mostly first authored if possible, to showcase your research skills.
Tips:
Making all my documents on Google Docs which can be retrieved at any time and can be edited on the go.
Fix to a template to make sure all your documents look like a part of the same family.
Always good to have cloud based documents for this purpose to not deal crashing system 😀
**Reach out to me via email (in my footer or shruthisai509@gmail.com) if you want to see specific examples.
Stages of the Process
Typically the process involves the stages of:
Finding a solicitation or job posting
Studying about the position, dept/school/university, related faculty/ researchers
Reaching out to known people from the place and asking behind the scenes questions
Preparing your job materials catered to the job posting.
Submission of application: Use the portal specified in the solicitation and submit all the documents that are requested to be submitted. Make sure to note the page requirements which might be sometimes less than your sample documents.
WAIT! Eternity later..
Phone/ Zoom Interview with the Search Committee: Usually 20-60 mins conversation with the search committee where they either give you a set of questions beforehand or engage asking about your teaching, research, and deij practices. The call usually ends with you having a chance to ask them questions as well.
Virtual presentation stage (not too common): Usually a research talk is 30-60 mins to engage with either one project or an overview of your research. If it is a teaching focused position, they might request you to give a teaching demo.
If selected further, onsite visits.
If offered a position, negotiation
Signing the offer letter
Then, actual life begins :P
Tips:
Learn about the department/ school through thorough website search or contacting a faculty member from the department for a 20 mins call to learn about the place.
Ask who the search committee or interview panel consists of. And, check their profiles and their background to just have a sense of the backgrounds of the people you are talking to.
Any stage, always make sure you ask about the expectations and requirements to the search committee lead. For example, what are your expectations from my research talk? Can you share with me about time, logistics, and requirements about my teaching demo?
Ask clear details about your teaching demo to learn if it is a standalone teaching demo, incorporated in an existing course (if yes, as much as information through syllabus, talks with IoR,etc.), time, number and backgrounds of students, room logistics and materials, etc.
Questions that come your way
These questions can be asked during initial interviews or during on-site. I have categorized the questions based on the kinds of topics they cater to across personal, teaching, research, DEIJ, service, and HR related. Usually for a tenure-track faculty position, you will get questions from all these aspects at you, one after another. So, expect combinations of questions from all the sections below:
Personal/ Intro/ General
What interested you towards this position?
Can you talk a little bit about yourself and your background and why <this place>?
[SPECIFIC TO MY TOPIC] Our search is for a “user experience/design” position. What do “user experience” and “design” mean to you, and how does your research engage with both of these concepts?
Interdisciplinary environments can be generative, but they can be challenging as well. At <school>, we have colleagues and students from technical backgrounds, social science backgrounds, and humanities backgrounds, all of whom might understand and conduct research in dramatically different ways. Likewise, we have some colleagues and students who identify with particular professions, such as librarianship or archives, and other colleagues and students who have nothing to do with particular professions and don’t know anything about them. What is your experience with interdisciplinarity, and how do you see yourself responding to its challenges, as well as its opportunities?
What’s your ideal working environment? What kind of environment best enables you to thrive as a scholar, teacher, and person?
Teaching
What is your teaching style and teaching experience?
What changed about your interests in teaching over your years of experience? What did you learn and what was different (especially because I had new teaching experience as a part of my current job)?
What are some positives and negatives or things that worked and did not work in your teaching experience?
How would your teaching experience and interests align with the graduate and undergraduate programs at the <school/dept>?
<School> offers a variety of degree programs, including an undergraduate program , two professional master’s programs, and a doctoral program. How might you see yourself engaging with our students? What classes might you teach here at <school>?
In addition to the electives listed in the program curriculum, what would be some core electives you would suggest or add to the list?
Given the transition into hybrid models, what are some of your teaching practices in such a model?
What makes you interested in teaching the most?
Given that you had this one year of teaching experience, what are some of your learnings about teaching, in general and specific to yourself?
Imagine you were given all the resources and you have everything you have with you, what would be some ideal teaching explorations you would like to do?
How would you approach teaching an introductory class in user experience design [replace with your discipline/topic], with students who might be completely new to the subject and have no background in computer science or design [replace with a complimentary discipline/topic]?
[TOO SPECIFIC] We are trying to develop and support the course on “Designing for XR” now. What is your experience in designing/ teaching such a course? How would you envision a course such as this?
What technical tools would you use?
Do you have any experience with Adobe Aero and Dimension?
Do you prefer using Oculus Rift or Quest? What else would you suggest?
Research
Can you talk a little bit about your research trajectories and how that relates/fit/compliment (forgot the right word) with our lab/school?
What is your future research trajectory?
Could you please us more about your individual research and how your research program would thrive at the <school/dept/university>?
[SPECIFIC TO MY TOPIC] What are some questions you would ask from an ethics point while developing a product?
How do you think Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is a part of your research agenda?
Could you please usmore about how you see your work as a faculty member at the <university> and how you might collaborate with other research units, groups, or initiatives across campus?
What kinds of support are you expecting for setting up your research lab at <school/ university>?
Think about a super awesome research project that you’ve either worked on in the past, are working on now, are are thinking about pursuing in the future. Assume that we don’t know anything about your research area. Briefly describe your project and help us understand what is super awesome about it.
[INTERESTING] In your dialogue, you often use I and we interchangeably, plus you have a design-focused lens in your work, do you see yourself as complimenting and bringing that expertise into the department?
[INTERESTING] Given the design focus of your work and engagement through participatory approaches and the range you just mentioned, do you consider your work as research or service?
[SPECIFIC TO YOUR TOPIC] There might be a lot of questions based on your research talk or statement that are specific to your methodologies, an insight you presented, your user group, impact of your research to different fields, implementation or dissemination of your work, definiutions of certain terms, etc.
DEIJ
Can you talk a bit about how you incorporate diversity, inclusivity, and equity in your research and teaching?
How do you think Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is a part of your research agenda?
<university> prodes itself on being a diverse and inclusive environment. Could you please share with us how you plan to contribute to our efforts in this regard?
You are interested in speculative designs and related topics. Again, from an ideal POV, what would be some of your views on DEI?
Check the section below for more DEIJ-specific probes or criteria to prepare your for this section.
HR
When can you join us if you were to be given this position?
Service/ mentorship
Faculty in our school are heavily invested in mentoring. How are you an effective mentor?
Can you talk about your service contributions?
Questions you can prep to ask the search committee or others in faculty
What are the expectations of this position?
What was a recent change in your dept/school that led to this position?
What is the flexibility around teaching and research?
What is the structure of the school?
What are some mentoring or support structures in place for early faculty in your school?
Support in collaboration and grants/ onboarding early faculty on board?
What is the collaboration nature of this department/ school?
What are some recent changes that happened in your department that were impactful?
Can you walk me through your tenure-track process or promotion process?
Can you talk about a recent case of tenure and about that process/ expectations?
[TOO SPECIFIC] What is the HCI/ UX focus in your school?
Pre-onsite Visit
Before you go for an onsite visit, there might be couple of things you need to prepare to share for publicizing your talk/ demo in the school/department. Make sure you prepare:
Personal Biography: A 50-100 words quick intro about you, your researc/teaching interests, and things you want to be shared in your introduction.
Teaching demo abstract: A 150-20 words intro about what you plan to teach during your visit and potential learning objectives/ takeaways from the demo.
Research Talk Abstract: A 150-200 words abstract of your research talk/ interests and potential intersections with the school/department.
Sample Slide-decks for all the kinds of talks.
Tips:
Create a template of slide decks and talks that you can use across multiple positions.
Make sure you address different topics for your teaching demo and research talk. Meaning: your research area might be your baby, but your teaching have to resonate with the needs of classes you can teach in the school/ department which might not directly relate to your area of research. So, make sure you diversify the talk/topic for both teaching demos and research talk.
Make sure your teaching demo has more than just lecture components and include various active learning components. It is a 50-60 mins of a full package of ALL your edagogical mechanisms. So, find a good balance.
Onsite Visit
Things to know about on-site visit:
Planning includes travel, hotel, meals, and logistics that you might have to book yourself and later get reimbursed. Make sure you have a sense of what is covered/not for reimbursement.
Tip: Make sure you are good at documenting everything (your bills, receipts, etc.)
Search and prepare about everyone on schedule to meet you during the visit. Prepare specific questions or points of conversation with all.
Remember that you might be meeting with deans, chairs, faculty, and students. You might need to talk and engage with people from different disciplines and mindsets in a span of 6-7 hours. That is a lot!
Request the search committee chair to meet any specific groups on campus, HR, and so on based on personal interests or potential collaborations.
Manage and prepare for your teaching demos and/or research talks ahead of time as you usually do not have too much time that day to prep.
Wear your comfortable clothes and footwear (avoid heels). There will be a lot of walking, moving, and sweating :P
Learn about all the resources and space where you might end up working. Usually someone from the search committee gives you a tour of the building, department, classrooms, labs, etc.
Make sure you have some time to explore the city and opportunities around as you might shift and live there soon.
REMINDER/ NOTE: This process/stage is not only for you to show who you are in person, but also get a sense of who/what the department is like. It is a two-way conversation. So, you can feel things too.
Offer Made + Negotiations
After all these steps, planning, and efforts, now comes the stage of being made an offer for the position. Multiple things can happen here:
Offer is not made, Yes! this can happen after all these efforts. In 2022 cycle, I have had a situation where the school reached out to me to apply, made me go through the WHOLE process, and was not even informed unless I requested for a result that they were not going to make me an offer. You can sense the level of frustration in my sentence framing, but this is very much a possibility and it is no one’s fault. Every interaction and experience helps you build your presence and presentation better. Practice maketh a man/ woman/ human!
Offer is made and you are still thinking/ might turn down!: Yay! First, Congratulations. This is a good turn out for all your efforts. An offer made need not always have to be accepted just because you went through it (I learned this myself and in a hard way). Saying NO is very difficult for a few. In 2023 cycle, I had 4 offers made and I obviously had to turn down (I am avoiding to use the word “reject”) because they were either outside US, I did not see myself fitting into the group, too early to make a decision (although the pay was crazy), etc. Make sure you are very clear in your communication on what your decision is in a way you are not burning any bridges.
Tip: Be vague and be honest. This is too complicated! Academia is a small world to do anything weird!
Timelines are weird sometimes and you might have to take a decision without knowing from other places. It is definitely something you have to work through. Happy to chat more on how I dealt with a confusion between three places.
Offer is made and you want it! Yay! YAY! Congratulations, you found the one. You found the best of the lot you have applied to. It is now time for negotiations (read below).
Negotiations
An offer can be made via a phone-call (this is something I newly learnt) and/or via email. Make sure you listen and note down details about (ask if not mentioned any of these): Base-salary, relocation money, start-up/ research/ travel/ discretionary funds, technology set-up, resources provided, responsibilities, and employee benefits. If you are an international candidate like me, CLEARLY ask and mention about your Visa situation and the requirement for the school/ university to sponsor your work Visa (it is better to make this included in your cover letter).
Couple of resources you can refer to get a sense:
If it is a public university, the salaries of employees is public access. Google it! Learn an average of salaries faculty is making in the dept/school/university.
I was recently shared about the CRA Taulbee Survey. This survey gives details about Faculty hires, salaries,etc. from previous year.
Send across the negotiations and clearly make sure how its being received. Then, all of that will be translated and sent to you as an offer letter. Read the letter thoroughly for all the propositions in their template and ask for edits if required.
This stage is the most patient one! Be patient and do not worry about the backs and forths :)
Tips:
Be clear in your negotiation with clear sentences. For example, “Increase the ten-month salary from $$ to $$,” “Confirming $3500 as research or discretionary funds for set-up of my work,” “Allow for the purchase of a laptop computer for research and teaching use without expending discretionary funds. I am a Windows user and would like to set up my systems for easy digital whiteboarding and working from my desk.”
Make clear about spousal hire (just from experiences about other candidates or situations).
Read through the employee benefits to make sure you understand and know your financial situation in general (health insurance, retirement plan, etc.).
DO NEGOTIATE!
DEIJ Probes/ Criterias
Writing a DEIJ Statement can be very difficult. It is very subjective. I was recently submitting yearly evaluation portal in my institution and colelcted some criteria they listed there that might be helpful to think about. I really wished I had this when I created my document or prepare for some Q&A:
Mentored individuals who are underrepresented
Revised syllabi to emphasize the intellectual contributions provided by scholars from underrepresented groups in my discipline and feature studies of a range of diverse research subjects
Incorporated significant DEIJ issues in course
Discussed diversity with students with a focus on intersectionality
Worked to create a classroom environment where every student feels comfortable participating in discussions
Identified and remedied environmental cues that might be present in my course or my teaching space that could make some students feel as if they do not belong
Engaged students actively who may be dealing with social identity threat issues to ensure they are comfortable seeking help when they are struggling
Discussed what microaggressions are prior to starting group projects and made it clear they will not be tolerated
Attended pedagogy workshops focused on enhancing DEIJ in teaching
Designed lectures intentionally to display visual imagery representative of diverse populations
Educated students/audiences about the contributions of other cultures, faiths, societies, ethnicities
Attended extension programming on diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice
Provided extension programming on diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice
Expanded extension, engagement, or outreach programming to include diverse audiences
Engaged in efforts to expand access of university programming to diverse groups
Served on committees or related groups (both on-campus or off) focusing on issues related to DEIJ
Engaged in intentional efforts to bring in speakers and organize panels to ensure diversity is represented
Served as faculty advisor to student organizations who contribute to realizing a more diverse and equitable campus climate and culture
Served as faculty mentor to underrepresented students (i.e. women, racial/ethnic minorities, first-generation college students, student veterans)
Participated in university recruitment and retention efforts to increase the number and retention of underrepresented students, faculty, and/or staff on campus
Provided academic service to advance equitable access to higher education for groups in fields where they are underrepresented
Note: I did not make this list, but adopted the list from IU Bloomington’s DMAI portal.
