How to Prepare to Apply for a Job in Academia Series, Part 3: Create a Roadmap for Success
Welcome back! You made it to the final part of the series, How to Prepare to Apply for a Job in Academia. If you haven’t gone through the first two parts, you can find them here:
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Part 3: Create a Roadmap for Success
I’m the type of person that loves to plan. I remember, in undergrad, and my roommate can attest to this, what I did every semester. I would plan my future. I would choose the classes I wanted to take for the remaining semesters in great detail as well as my plans for after graduation.
My plans changed each semester but it always made me feel better when I gave myself something to work toward. Like a personal challenge that only I knew about. It always helps to have some type of roadmap.
That’s what we are going to talk about in the final part of this series on How to Prepare to Apply for a Job in Academia.
I know that I said we can’t just look at an application listing and click apply and be done. But we do need to know what to expect in advance.
I remember, in the spring semester of my 4th year of grad school, I was planning my future, as I do. And I decided to look up the types of jobs I wanted to apply for and boy were my eyes opened!
There is so much stuff that goes into an application packet! At least a month’s worth of work!
Where to Find Academic Job Postings
As you know, I’m a mathematician so I went to the AMA website to look for job postings and found mathjobs.org. It’s really the best place to search and apply for math jobs in academia. Not all math jobs are on the site but most are.
Documents of an Academic Job Application Packet
So let me tell you what I learned. There are at least 5 pieces of an academic job application. They can include but are not limited to the following:
CV
Cover Letter
Teaching Statement
Research Statement
Teaching Evaluations
3-4 Letters of Recommendation
Diversity statement (rarely)
That’s a lot of stuff to write! And they all take a lot of time to actually complete.
So what did I do? I created a spreadsheet with all of the jobs that I could possibly be interested in along with which applications required what documents. It was so nice to have it all organized and it helped to keep me on track and ahead of deadlines.
The Job Application Roadmap
I know that applying for jobs can me very overwhelming and stressful, so I’ve created a roadmap for you to follow to help you prepare for the process.
Also, I want to be able to help you even more by walking you through the whole application process with tutorials, spreadsheets, and writing prompts. So I’m creating an online course called Apply to Standout.
Would you be interested in taking a course that walks you through the whole application process with no research on how to write all of those documents above?
Sign up to get notifications when my course is ready.
Thanks for joining me in this series! I hope that you are ready to start preparing yourself for academic job applications.