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Job application materials

Nov 2, 2023

It’s been a while since I posted last but I’ve been a bit preoccupied with |gestures desperately all around|.

Academic job materials

The academic jobs cycle is in full swing so I thought I’d post a version of my job application materials here. When I was applying it would have been tremendously helpful to have some examples around, but there wasn’t too much to be found.

I’ve chosen to share two sets of materials. The first set is from my first year on the market after I graduated (my second cycle since I applied to a handful of jobs as a student the year before). I got several shortlist interviews and one TT job offer with these materials (disastrous eventual outcome notwithstanding), so they did the job of getting people interested—which is what you want from the initial submission. The second set of materials is from my last year on the market, so the sixth time overall that I tweaked and overhauled the documents. They also got me on a couple of shortlists—so still doing the trick.

I think it’s interesting to compare the 2014 materials with the 2018 ones. I personally find the 2018 versions to be vastly improved over the earlier ones. I can clearly see how I matured as a scholar, teacher, and writer over the years. You can also compare my CVs to get a sense of how my research program grew and changed between the two sets.

Without further ado:

(I have redacted the names of the schools I applied to and of my recommenders, they are immaterial for relevant purposes.) You can find links to all of the publications mentioned in my cover letters on my publications page.

Non-academic job materials

Applying for non-academic jobs was much more straightforward. The only thing I needed to submit was a resume, nothing else–not even a cover letter. How refreshing!

Here’s the version of the resume that got me my first alt-ac job. I used the same template as my CV, but re-wrote it extensively and got lots of feedback before submitting. A resume is not just a short CV — it’s a whole different genre. I’ve written about resumes in other posts before. These days I use a two-column design for my resume, which I find more aesthetically pleasing.

 

  1. I realize that these statements are very long. That was always something I worried about. I also have a 2-page version and a 3-page “research and teaching statement” version. Nonetheless, these documents are what I submitted when there was no page limit. ↩