The market in the time of COVID (mostly Zoom/Skype interviews)

 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 that was a coincidence. Those of you on the market this year have been dealing with a lot of virtual meetings so you are probably better prepared than I was, but I encourage you to practice virtual interviews specifically. If your school conducts practice interviews, see if you can do one over Zoom. If not, do practice interviews over Zoom with colleagues.

2. Conduct it as professionally as possible. Wear a suit. Have a professional looking background. Make sure you are using a good quality camera and microphone.

3. The most difficult part of of virtual meetings is having a natural flow of conversation with interruptions. So you want to make sure you are easily interruptible. Make sure you aren't talking too fast. Listen carefully for people trying to talk. Watch for things like raised hands, either on camera or using the Zoom feature. You may also want to exert a little bit of control if things start getting chaotic. For instance, if multiple interviewers are talking at once, pick one of them and say "Yes, so-and-so?"

4. The level of interest displayed by your interviewers will vary a lot more than when you are in a room together (although even then it varies a fair bit). Some people will be obviously not paying attention or doing other things on their computer. There is not a lot you can do about that except for be ready for it and not let it bother you. In general, interviewers act the same way across interviews. So if someone is obviously not paying much attention to you, they probably don't pay much attention to many interviewees, and it's not a sign they are bored by you specifically.

5. One way to take advantage of the remote interview is to have notes on your screen you can look at. Either for your job market paper pitch or about the interviewers. If you do this, be careful and do it sparingly. First, it's probably best not to minimize the Zoom/Skype screen or put it in the background. Have it up, either on half your screen or on one screen of a multiscreen set up. Second, reading off of your screen or obviously scrolling is a bad look. The best thing to do is to have a skeleton of your pitch and a couple notes about questions you might want to ask your interviewers that you can glance at quickly. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Failing the market

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
Read more

Job market paper pitch

In this post I will talk about the job market paper pitch. Like the rest of the blog, the purpose is to complement the major job market guides (Cawley is the gold standard), with some focus on what I think is undercovered. In particular, I have experience on both sides of the market at schools that are not highly ranked, and that seems to be a gap in the job market guide market. Plan and practice It is important that you plan your job market paper pitch carefully before the market. You will need to use it a lot, and without a good one, you are dead on arrival. Plan it out carefully and practice it with colleagues and hopefully your advisors. At the same time, be careful about sounding overly rehearsed. You want a more conversational tone. The best rehearsals are with a faculty member or another grad student who interrupts you with questions. That is what is going to happen in an interview. One piece of advice that worked for me is that I tried not to use the same language each ti
Read more

Getting a job at a lower-ranked school

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 labor
Read more