The summer of … thinking about faculty jobs

Dr. Joseph Barber

As summer approaches, you may find yourself with just a little more time to work on some strategic career planning over and above just focusing on your ever-important research. The cyclical academic job cycle means that much of the application action for faculty jobs starting in Aug/Sept 2014 will be coming to an end soon. In some academic disciplines, positions for Aug/Sept 2015 will start appearing by the end of the summer. Take a look at this chart of Assistant Professor postings from www.indeed.com to get a sense of this cyclical nature:

In the time between the end of one cycle and the beginning of the next, take a moment to consider the advice offered by Penn PhD Alumni who are current faculty members in a wide range of institutions. They offered their advice for current students and postdocs as part of the 8-13 year out PhD Alumni Survey that Career Services coordinated in 2012. You can find some their advice below, and more of the data from this survey here.

Alumni Advice1