Economics Job Market Advice

The non-academic market, both government and industry, is a major source of jobs for candidates. Unfortunately, I don't know a lot about it, and I don't want to give advice I am not confident with. So I am making this post, and hoping that people who do will pass on tips in the comments section.

Because I chose to do this blog anonymously, there is a natural connection with the Economics Job Market Rumors board. That is inherently controversial, since the board has been criticized for having a lot of sexist and offensive content. There are advantages of anonymity, which allows posters to be candid and share more information, but there are also disadvantages. That is one of the reasons I decided to host this on a blog where I can moderate the comments. I will do my best to make sure that the comments do not contain any questionable content. I know that there are those who believe the EJMR board should be avoided altogether, so in the interest of full disclosure, I should say that I have posted links to this blog on EJMR. It seemed the best place to get the word out. One other downside of the EJMR board is that there are a group of jokers who spend a lot of time trying to convince candidates of falsehoods. One request I have received is to make a post dispelling these myths....

Many job market candidates have been out of grad school for a few years, and are looking to move to a new position. Some are looking for a better fit, others have failed tenure or are worried they will. The market functions very similarly, but there are a few wrinkles that prospective movers should keep in mind. I don't have a ton of experience in this area, so anyone who wants to add anything in the comments would be appreciated. The scrutiny of you will not be based as much on one paper, but will be about your entire record. The flyout talk can be more like a standard seminar talk. You can certainly present coauthored work, and it can be a little more of a work in progress than a job market paper (although probably not quite as much as a normal seminar). At a more teaching oriented job, your teaching record may be scrutinized in more detail too. Syllabi, assignments, evaluations, etc. The general rule is that, as a non-entry level faculty member, a school will look at you if ...

As the job market gets going, there will be well over a thousand listings on the various job boards. The basic rule is that you should apply broadly. That is definitely true. The marginal cost of applying to an additional job is low, and if it ends up being the job you end up with, the benefit is massive. But there are a few pieces of specific advice. Top censoring If you are not a star candidate, which most candidates aren't, there will be a decent number of listings where your chances are close to nil. You should ask your advisor how he or she feels about whether or not you should apply to them. Advisors sometimes have strong opinions about top censoring applications. Some are strongly against it, as they feel you aren't taking the market seriously if you aren't applying to the best places. Some are strongly in favor of it, as they want to be able to say to any school you apply to that they are confident you would be a good candidate for that job. So just go with...

Everyone who gives you advice about the job market will tell you that the job market is stressful. Which is true for almost everyone. But what is also true for almost everyone and is perhaps more useful advice is that the job market will be more stressful than you think it will be. Most people I know who have gone through the market have had moments of stress, anxiety, and depression that were worse than they anticipated going in. The general sense that I had when I was on the market was a feeling of doors to possible futures slowly being closed one by one, and hoping that one or two would stay open at the end. I am not an expert on stress management, so I can't give all that much more than a head's up. There is a plethora of advice out there about dealing with stress. I am sure a lot of it is decent advice, but my impression is that there are a lot of individual factors, so there isn't a one size fits all solution. Overall, it is probably best to deal with stress in what...

Before I begin, I should acknowledge that I have been criticized for having an insensitive title to this post. It's certainly true that lots of good candidates do not find a job they are happy with on the job market, so in that sense "fail" is a harsh term. But overall, I think candidates will benefit from this blog a lot more if it is blunt and does not sugarcoat things. One of the advantages of doing it anonymously is that I can afford to do it that way.  The job market is tough, and almost everyone has some pretty crushing moments. Unfortunately, not everyone succeeds, and history tends to be written by the victors. Most of the job market advice you will get will come from faculty members, which means that they had at least some success on the job market. Personally, I struggled a little bit and had some close friends who struggled a lot. I will try to pass on some wisdom from non-winners. The first piece of advice is to stay on top of things. If things start going...

Lying can really cost candidates. If you get caught out in a flat out lie, not only will it almost certainly sink your chances with the employer you lied to, it could become a real point of gossip and bad reputation.  As a case in point: A friend of mine on a hiring committee received an email from the adviser of someone they had flown out. The adviser told him that he had been in touch with another school the candidate had flown out to,  Apparently, the candidate had falsely claimed he had a Revise and Resubmit from a very good journal that significantly improved his CV. The adviser was so concerned that his student would get a job on false pretenses that he felt obliged to let all prospective employers know. Although the candidate had not actually told the same lie to my friend, the story set off warning bells, and he was not hired. This is obviously an extreme case, but it illustrates the point. The far more common case of "lying" is insincere flattery. I teach at...

I have been on both sides of the market at schools that are not research intensive institutions and are not ranked in most economics department rankings. I have found that a lot of candidates make fairly egregious errors when trying to get jobs with us. My guess is that because most candidates are at very good departments neither them or their advisers are familiar with our market.  I hope that this can serve to close this gap a little. Where to apply  The general rule is to apply to any job you think there is a decent chance you would take over having no job at all. That is reasonable advice. Keep in mind that your standards will go down if your market isn't going well. A lot of candidates wish they had applied more widely when their market isn't going well.  On the other hand, we tend to be pretty strict about fields. We need to offer a full range of the typical courses, and we want to have people teaching courses they are reasonably familiar with. So if our ...

 A suit is an absolute must for the job market. It doesn't need to be massively expensive. Most academics are not fashion experts, and they know you are on a limited budget. My advice is to buy a decent off-the-rack suit for a few hundred dollars and then take it to a tailor to get alterations. A second suit is optional but a very good idea. On the job market, you will probably end up wearing a suit 3 or more days in a row. If you have a second one, you won't be wearing the same clothes again and again consecutively, which is a good thing. It also means that if you spill on your suit or fall and split your pants, it isn't a disaster. You can send one suit in to be dry cleaned while you wear the other (although keep in mind suits are not like tshirts, you only clean them after every 5-10 wearings unless you get them dirty). One other advantage to having a second suit is that often flyouts have events over two days. You might not want to show up wearing the same clothes t...

A lot of interviews take place during the AEA meetings, which run from a Friday to Sunday in early January. Employers will contact you at any point between mid-November to late December to schedule interviews. They will not coordinate with each other, nor even use the same scheduling tool. It is up to you to be your own coordinator, and this takes care and planning. You won't know how many interview requests you will get. A lot of candidates will get well over 10, and very strong candidates may get more than 20. Fitting them in can be a challenge! When should you be in the city? The ideal answer is to arrive Wednesday (at the latest, early Thursday morning) and leave late Sunday night or Monday. . Given that the conference is in January, bad weather is sometimes a concern, so it is often worth paying a little extra to get direct flights to reduce risk of cancellation or arrive early to give yourself a cushion. You might want to think of some contingency plans like flying to ...

Interviews vary considerably depending on the rank of the school interviewing you. Candidates often get interviews with a wide range of schools so it is important to be prepared for the entire range. In my experience, PhD programs often underprepare their candidates for the type of interviews that lower ranked schools give, so hopefully this post can fill that gap a little. This is clearly a fairly continuous variable, but my experience is that it can be divided into 4 main categories, each with distinctive interviews. I will call them highest ranked research oriented schools, other research oriented schools, other sizable departments, and very small schools.  Going into an interview, it is useful to consider which of these types of school it is likely to be. There aren't any hard and fast rules, but here are some guidelines: Highest ranked research oriented schools: Any school ranked in the top 50 economics departments is probably in this category.. Departments ranked in the 50...

Welcome! I am posting this advice primarily to close some gaps I have seen in the job market advice information that is available. In the past decade, I have been on the market multiple times as a candidate, and multiple times as part of a hiring committee. When I was on the market, I found the existing job market papers helpful. John Cawley and Sarah Jacobsen both have excellent essays giving job market advice that every candidate should read. However, there were some things I figured out as I went along or afterwards, that I wished people had told me beforehand. With this in mind, the posts on this site are intended to close those gaps, not be a complete set of advice. I would recommend you read them first and come back here second. I have chosen to write this anonymously. I recognize that not putting my name on it reduces its credibility, but it also allows me to be a little more candid. Given that there is lots of existing advice that trustworthy people have put their name...