The faculty and staff of LPS will do all they can to ensure
that you are well represented as a potential employee when you go on the
job market. (Recent placement information is available on the Graduate Alumni
page.) You are advised to join the APA, so as to use their placement
services and to receive the all-important Jobs for Philosophers (also available
on-line to APA members).
During the spring or early summer, the LPS Placement Director will call a
meeting to discuss job placement planning and procedures for the following
year. If you plan to be on the market in the fall, you should attend
this meeting and start assembling your dossier over the summer months.
A complete dossier will include:
1. Your Curriculum Vitae
There are no set rules on how these are prepared; the Placement Director
will have some samples. Roughly speaking, Areas of Specialization (AOS)
are those in which you expect to do research and feel qualified to teach
a graduate seminar. Areas of Competence (AOC) are those in which you
could teach an upper division undergraduate course (perhaps with the help
of a free summer beforehand).
2. Dissertation Abstract
Best to limit this to one page. Be sure to make it readable and accessible.
(A common mistake is to include too much sophisticated detail and not enough
motivation for readers outside your AOS.)
3. Letters of Recommendation
You will need at least three letters of recommendation, at least one of which
directly addresses your teaching. (It’s more important that the letters
be strong than that they be numerous.) Your advisor and the Placement
Director can help you draw up a list, usually beginning with some members
of your Doctoral Committee (as they will be best acquainted with your dissertation).
Confidential letters are collected and sent out to prospective employers
by the Career and Life Planning Center; you must make these arrangements
with the CLPC yourself (as no one else is allowed to do this for you).
If you like, you can designate one person, presumably your dissertation advisor,
to review the letters when they are all in place.
Obviously, you will need to get your latest dissertation material to your
letter writers in time for them to read it, think it over, and write a proper
letter. September 1 is a good target date. Remember that your
letters writers will be expected to predict, with conviction, that you will
have your degree in hand by the time you would take up your new job, so a
substantial portion of your dissertation will need to be drafted by this
date.
4. Teaching Data
You should include on your CV a list of all the courses you have TAed for
or taught. You may include syllabi, student evaluation data, and/or
a Teaching Statement, depending on the institution to which you are applying.
You may also request confidential letters from your students and/or TAs to
be included with your confidential letters of recommendation (at the CLPC).
5. Writing Sample
A paper of around 25 pages is recommended. This can be a dissertation
chapter, if it can stand fairly well alone. As a rule, the writing
sample should be the best philosophical writing you have. In some cases,
you may want to include more than one paper, or use different papers for
different institutions; you may also want to include a Research Statement
describing your past and future research plans. All this should be
discussed with your advisor.
6. Cover Letter
This is a letter telling the school in question how much you would like to
work for them. It can be a generic letter which you simply photocopy, or
it may be customized to the individual schools. You should discuss
this with your advisor and the Placement Director.
When Jobs for Philosophers appears in mid-October, you should review it and
consult with your advisor to draw up a list of the institutions to which
you plan to apply. (Copies of this list should go to your Doctoral
Committee members, and any one else who might be willing and able to act
on your behalf.) Deadlines will come soon thereafter.
You should plan to attend the Eastern APA meeting. Most schools will
want to interview some candidates, from a few to more than twenty; you can
expect to hear from them by phone or e-mail anytime from early December to
the beginning of meetings. (Be sure that your CV includes contact information
for that time period, and that the LPS staff has it also, for backup.)
Interviews generally run from half an hour to an hour; the interviewers will
be faculty members (and sometimes graduate students) with a wide range of
expertise, often enough including no one in your AOS. You will be asked
for a brief (about ten minute) synopsis of your dissertation and for summaries
of courses you might teach. (Some people like to have prepared sample
syllabi ready to hand out.) Expect challenging questions, about your
thesis, about when you will be done, about your way of teaching course x,
and so on. During the fall, you should contact the Placement Director
to arrange for a mock interview.
You also should contact the LPS Colloquium Director well in advance (preferably
the previous spring) to arrange to present a colloquium talk. The topic
will typically be related to your dissertation. If your interviews
are successful, you will be invited to visit the campus, in which case this
colloquium talk will become your ‘job talk’.
During the job search process, you should be sure to keep the Placement Director and your advisor informed of developments.
