+5 votes
asked ago in Job Market - Candidate Questions by (1.2k points)

4 Answers

+3 votes
answered ago by (1.2k points)
There was a great thread on Twitter tonight under the hashtag #econlife.  Hoping some of the participants will share their advice here!  I have some advice I wrote quickly in the 1990s; but there are more current and thorough sources today!  https://people.stanford.edu/athey/professional-advice
+5 votes
answered ago by (520 points)
edited ago by
Some great resources were collected from the #econlife discussion on twitter.

Sarah Jacobsen's "How to Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Job Market": https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.4284/0038-4038-2014.156

Eric Zwick's  "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Job Market": http://www.ericzwick.com/public_goods/love_the_market.pdf

Adam Guren's "Job Market Advice": http://people.bu.edu/guren/GurenJobMarketAdvice.pdf

John Cawley's "A GUIDE AND ADVICE FOR ECONOMISTS
ON THE U.S. JUNIOR ACADEMIC JOB MARKET":  https://www.aeaweb.org/joe/job_market_guide

NYTimes' "How to be better at parties": https://www.nytimes.com/guides/smarterliving/be-better-at-parties
+2 votes
answered ago by (210 points)
These are good sources.  Also, the CSWEP newsletter focuses on professional development, and articles on the econ job market are collected here:  https://www.aeaweb.org/about-aea/committees/cswep/newsletters/audience#jobmarket
0 votes
answered ago by (170 points)
http://theprofessorisin.com/

Her blog and the book were the most practical advice I read.

Such as: Don't write the "fit" sentence.

From the blog: "You know the one—it’s the sentence that says, “with my background in xxx and yyy, I am the ideal candidate for your position in zzz.”

“Was I born YESTERDAY????” a senior professor friend of mine with countless searches under his belt responded. “Do they think I’m that NAIVE….? Do they think I’ll just BELIEVE them????”

I mean, professors don’t take anything at face value, not anything at all. So why in the world would they believe a job letter that claims the writer is an “ideal fit” for their advertised position?

As a colleague, whom I shall call Professor Snark, recently remarked,

“Gosh and golly! How could I, seasoned professor that I am, have failed to noticed the so plainly obvious fact, until you pointed it out, that among all the eminently qualified candidates for this job, you, yes you alone among them, are the ideal candidate for the position? I stand humbled before you in all your awesome idealness.”

Seriously, job candidates, remember the rule of good writing: Show, Don’t Tell."
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