Advice....

Subscribing to a professional list-serve has often been a pain, but I'm too lazy to figure out how to unsubscribe and everyone once in a blue moon there is something interesting on there. Yesterday, someone asked people on the list if there were any job letter errors that would ensure an applicant didn't get an interview. Since I hope to go "on the market" next year, I thought this would be a good thread to follow.

Unfortunately, so far...and I'll admit I haven't waded through all the responses, the majority of advice has not been about errors but about tailoring your job letter. If a letter is too generic or boilerplate they either don't read it all or can't figure out why the candidate might be good for the position. Now, this is good advice, I'm not trying to advocate for rote letters. It's just the advice that is always given...at least around here. I'm well steeped in why I need to make the job letter count -- why I need to make sure it tells the committee why I fit their job. That's not exactly the advice that I need.

I know not all departments are like mine, but I do have to day that in spite of all my recent complaints, they do a good job of making us "marketable." I know they want us to get jobs to keep up their placement rates, but I think there is a genuine desire to help us figure out what it is that makes a position work for us. That is important, as one respondent pointed out,

"When graduate students have flubbed, it's often because their letter entirely unexceptional -- I can't see any reason to interview them over the other 30 ABDs in the pile. (And, FWIW, I think this was me when I came out of grad school!). At that point in your career, I think it's often tough to see what distinguishes you from your peers.
And yet, looking back, I can now see what defined me at that stage in my career -- and it's clearly what got me my first job. So it may help to talk with mentors and friends about what makes you "you," professionally speaking."

My letter may end up entirely unexceptional, but I think it will be for other reasons. Our faculty, at least the ones I work with, do a good job of helping us figure out 'what makes us, 'us' Unfortunately, I think part of that process happens now, where I am, while writing the dissertation. A lot of my problem is that I don't necessarily know who I am professionally. Partly, that is because I have many different interests. Writing the dissertation forces me to choose to priviledge one of those interests over another. It's not something I've ever been good at. There is one piece of advice I saw on the list which made me nervous. One person wrote about the candidate that tries to represent too broad of a field. I think that if I were start writing letters now, that would be an issue for me. My areas of interest are broad. My skills are broad. My experience is broad. When I apply for a job, I hope to bring all of those things to bear. Hopefully, I can find a way to demonstrate that without appearing vague, or unfocused.

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