Matthew Wolf-Meyer Professionalization

Writing Job Letters & my Sample Job Letter with Commentary

As always, these are generic guidelines — depending on where you’re applying and what your committee says, you might need to tweak these suggestions.
Keep your job letter short — 2 pages, 12 point font, single-spaced. You’ll want to include much more, but the goal is to get an invitation for a campus visit. So, to get there, give your reader some interesting things to think about, index that you’re a potentially interesting colleague, and leave them wanting more — if you tell them too much, you run the risk of people feeling like they already know all there is to know about you…
The form is pretty generic:
1)   Address the job you’re applying for and give a sense of your interests & training
2)   Give a 1 paragraph summary of your dissertation
3)   Give a 1 paragraph summary of your next project and how it relates to your dissertation
4)   Write about your teaching interests & pedagogy in 1 paragraph
5)   Write about your broad research interests in 1 paragraph
6)   Close by addressing possible synergies between you and the department you’re applying to — show that you know something about the faculty as potential colleagues, but don’t overdo it.
The best job letters are anxiety-free. That might seem difficult, but if you write about what you know and your strengths, that will help to minimize any textual stress…
You can see a copy of my sample job letter with commentary here:
Matthew Wolf-Meyer Professionalization

Composing a CV & my Sample CV with Comments

Curriculum vita can be complicated things… they need to capture as much of your history as you can fit, without bogging down your reader with unnecessary details. Your committee might have insights on how to order your CV based on its content, but all CVs seem to include the following sections (with some variations in subsections):
1)   Your training, including your prior and current professional positions (if you’re employed), your educational background, your research interests, and your fellowships & awards (although this last section sometimes gets moved elsewhere)
2)   Your publications, including any peer reviewed and non-peer reviewed publications, including book reviews, as well as work that you currently have in process.
3)   Your teaching experiences, which can include both courses that you’ve taught as well as classes that you’ve TAed for.
4)   Your conference activities, including presentations that you’ve given and panels that you’ve helped to organize.
5)   Your professional service, including any activities related to the discipline, department, or university.
6)   Some people also include a section on their research experiences; this is probably only important if you’ve conducted research that isn’t reflected in your publications or interests.
How you order your CV is up to you, but its arrangement conveys implicit messages to your reader. For instance, if you’re applying for a position at a liberal arts institution, you might foreground your teaching experiences; if you’re applying for a position at a research university, you might foreground your awards and publications.
The content on your CV should be listed in reverse order, with the most recent stuff first, and oldest stuff last.
You can check out a copy of my 2011 CV here:
Matthew Wolf-Meyer Professionalization

Finding a Job (in Academia)

There are a number of places to look for jobs in academia — all disciplines have their own outlets, although some of these are fairly general (as in the Chronicle of Higher Education). Because there are so many possibilities, I’ve limited myself to just resources that primarily support academic job seekers in the humanities and social sciences. No list is comprehensive because it often costs money for departments to place ads on each of these sites (which is usually in the hundreds of dollars per placement). So many schools with limited budgets will only post on 1-2 sites they think will reach their most desired audience.

For a sometimes-comprehensive list of resources (and a frequently updated list of jobs), check out the Academic Jobs Wiki and the specific lists for your field.

If you find other resources that you think are good to share, please post them in the comments or email them to me.

Discipline-Specific Resources

American Anthropological Association

This is the catchall for anthropologists, and most jobs in anthropology — tenure track or not — are listed here.

American Association of Geographers

The AAG website focuses on Geography related positions, which can include positions in the geophysical sciences.

American Historical Association

The AHA website focuses on History related careers.

American Political Science Association

You need an account to access the APSA database–which I don’t have–so I can’t tell you much about it!

American Sociological Association

The American Sociological Association career website is, sadly, a paid resource and you need to pay dues to access it.

Modern Language Association

The MLA job website lists careers mostly in Literature and related interdisciplinary areas.

National Communication Association

Communications and rhetoric focused jobs are posted on the NCA website.

National Women’s Studies Association

The NWSA website has a broad database of gender studies related jobs (and jobs that aren’t gender studies focused, but where employers are seeking women-identifying applicants).

Philjobs

Philjobs lists careers for philosophers, including jobs in bioethics.

Royal Anthropological Institute’s Vacancy Link

The RAI includes mostly UK positions in Anthropology, including postdocs.

Society for the Social Studies of Science

The Society for the Social Studies of Science Positions website lists jobs across the interdisciplinary field of science and technology studies. A separate page lists fellowships and other funded opportunities, including postdocs.

General Academic Job Databases

Academic Keys

Academic Keys tends to post jobs in administration — they can be fairly high level and bureaucratic.

Academic Positions

Academic Positions posts jobs for the EU (primarily), and follows the European job market (more spring than fall).

The Chronicle of Higher Ed

The Chronicle tends to post a lot of jobs in community colleges, liberal arts institutions, and second and third tier research universities — it can be good to locate adjunct positions in your area. It has also increasingly become the one-stop listing for many academic jobs, and is worth setting up alerts for.

Euraxxes

Euraxxes is a pretty comprehensive list of academic positions (from funded Ph.D.s through senior level tenure-line jobs), mostly in the EU.

H-Net Job Postings

H-Net posts a wide variety of kinds of jobs, tending towards research universities. It’s also a reliable venue for late announcements (often visiting positions to fill vacancies). Because it’s free, most jobs will appear here.

Inside Higher Ed

Inside Higher Education hosts an all-purpose job board — much like the Chronicle for Higher Ed.

Jobs.Ac.Uk

Jobs.ac.uk is a general academic jobs database for academic positions, mostly in the UK (although positions in China and the EU sometimes show up).

University Affairs

University Affairs seems to include all academic positions in Canada, including senior level positions in administration and Canadian Research Chairs.

Last updated 23.10.23.