Economics Job Market Advice

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...

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...