The academic job market has always been competitive. At Professor Services, we warn clients that they can expect to send out 100 applications before they are invited to interview. Hiring managers report receiving more than 300 applications for an adjunct position for a single course. And yet, with the expansion of online learning, there have never been more opportunities to teach, design courses, and assess student work. The competition-opportunity contradiction is just one of the many contradictions academic job seekers have to reconcile daily.
Reconciling those contradictions is exhausting! Hope and disappointment are inevitable parts of any job search. Job seekers need to protect their mental health and well-being with self-care. Unfortunately, self-care is often misunderstood as a series of spa treatments vital to soft skin and emotional equilibrium.
Professor Services would like to propose a different model. Self-care during an academic job search is about accepting the realities of what job seekers can and cannot control.
Here is how we see that working out:
- Positive Self-Talk Does Matter
As part of your application package creation and interview prep, you’ve come up with a list of what you have to offer any institution you will work with. You have a unique model for interacting with students focused on their success without lowering learning expectations or standards. Your research in your field has required you to develop both discipline and curiosity. These are essential qualities to hold at your core. Hiring teams might question your thesis work and teaching methods, but your core self is well-prepared to take on any challenge.
- Prepare Yourself to Walk Away
The job description you replied to through the application management system and the job on offer can be as different as a Tinder profile to a face-to-face date. While you were in graduate school agonizing over the format of every citation, you were also developing critical faculties to help you evaluate and measure data and to incorporate feedback. Those critical lenses will protect you during your job search. Nurture those essential skills you spent years developing and rely on them to tell you when a position will bring nothing but a toxic workplace into your life.
- Show Yourself
When you compose and customize your cover letter, your CV, and statement of teaching philosophy – whether alone or with the help of Professor Services – show yourself. You are not just a job candidate. You are a human being, first and foremost.
“Those candid and truthful snippets of yourself stand out when being reviewed,” is a sentiment hiring team members tell us. Your lived experience is embedded in your academic achievements. Show its influence in your application, and more importantly, use it to keep yourself strong, determined, and positive without lowering your expectations or standards.
We know solid self-esteem is not the focus of self-care you read about in magazines. Cultivating and nurturing it will help you be patient until you find the right job with the right employer. It’s the one part of the search in which you are entirely in control.
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