Economics Job Market Advice

 It's vary common to try to evaluate how interviews went in an attempt to figure out how good your chances are of moving on to the next stage. It seems to be a common topic of conversation among candidates. And when I was on the market, my advisors asked me to tell them a lot of details about each interview so they could figure out where I had the best chances.  In my view, this is a fool's errand. Here's why: Most of the differences you perceive between interviews are interviewer "fixed effects" that are constant across interviews they perform. That one interviewer who seemed very suspicious of your identification strategy and interrogated you extensively about it probably interrogated a lot of candidates they interviewed about what she thought were the weakest points in each paper. For all you know, she was very happy with how you answered her and has you at the top of the list. That other interviewer who was very positive and upbeat about everything was probabl

 I wrote most of the posts prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. I think a lot of of it holds up, and which parts that don't (e.g. winter clothes at the AEA) are obvious. I am writing this post as an update prior to the 2021-22 market, which looks like it will be partially affected by COVID. The biggest difference candidates need to get ready for is probably the proliferation of virtual interviews instead of first round AEA interviews. These were becoming more and more common even prior to the pandemic, and there seems to be talk of them continuing in the future. So job market candidates should certainly prepare for them. My thoughts about how to do so are below. 1. Practice specifically for virtual interviews. During my pre-pandemic market, I had 3 or 4 virtual interviews. All of my practice interviews were face-to-face, and that made me a lot less prepared for virtual interviews than I thought I was. My worst interviews were the first couple virtual interviews, and I don't believe