Customer Reviews

Surviving Your Academic Job Hunt: Advice for Humanities Ph.D.s

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For the last 4 years I've been involved in helping our English graduate students find academic jobs. Hume's book was of immense help in this regard. As the placement chair, I ordered it for our department, but I also encouraged our job seekers to get their own copies. It is simply the best book out there right now covering all the ins and outs of the humanities job market. Hume's advice, always provided in clear and direct language, is deeply rooted in both her own experience as a long-time professor at Penn State who has seen many job candidates come and go and the experience of the many students with whom she successfully worked as Penn State's placement advisor. In addition to excellent insights into the dos and don'ts of writing one's job application materials--letters, c.v.'s, teaching portfolios, follow-up communications, etc.--one of the greatest strengths of the book is its presentation of the feed-back Hume received from "her" job seekers in form of long lists of questions people were asked at MLA interviews or on campus, for instance. Working with "my" graduate students, I frequently staged mock interviews with them based on a sampling of the questions provided in Hume's book. Many of our students commented to me that one of the main reasons they felt they did well at MLA or on campus in terms of handling the various and varying questions they had to engage was that they were never really caught off-guard because Hume's book seems to cover every conceivable question one could possibly be asked. Also of great help are the many sample-documents Hume included in her book--again directly taken from her successful seekers. In short, if you at all wonder about the academic job market--what it is like, how you should prepare for it, how you might want to negotiate its various stages, and even how to handle yourself in case of success (negotiating your job offer, becoming a new faculty member)--you could not do better than get your hands on this book. There might be a question or two that the book doesn't touch on--but I can't think of any right now.

This book is an excellent resource for any doctoral student's job search. The advice about interviewing, putting together a job application packet, and making the transition from a graduate student to a faculty member is very timely and helpful. The sample documents, which range from c.v.'s to cover letters, are the best feature of the book. I would highly recommend it to anyone on the job market in the humanities or thinking about the process in the future.

Hume's book is an invaluable asset for anyone even considering going on the market. It covers every detail of the job search: application packets, interviews, campus visits, follow-ups, and negotiating. Moreover, it provides specific advice for landing a position at both research and teaching institutions. Particularly helpful are the lengthy lists of interview questions and the sample documents--which go well beyond the simple CV-and-Cover-Letter combination. Make reading this book the first step of your job search, and refer to it regularly as you work through the process.

I'm a tenured English professor working happily in my field at a state university, thanks to the advice found in this book (first edition). Without it, I would have been lost. The second edition contains important updates, but the value of the content remains the same. You can't simply follow your own intuition when entering the crazy world of academic job hunting, as Hume shows. Her guidance on how to prepare application documents is priceless. She gives numerous valuable tips on how to prepare for a cattle-call conference interview and also on how to handle on-campus interviews. The book contains wonderfully specific advice on how to ask questions, including what not to ask or say (like never responding to an interviewer's query with "that's a good question"). All of these tips worked beautifully for me, and they are not the kinds of things that I was likely to think of on my own. The many examples given in the book also helped to take the stress out of the whole process. I followed Hume's instructions to the letter and received several job offers for tenure-track positions in my first year on the job market. Now that I have been on the other side of the interviewing process, I value this book even more and recommend it to my graduate students. Hume's advice on "the politics of being an assistant professor" can also help you to avoid some of the pitfalls that are easy to fall into when you are new to a department and university. Achieving tenure is about more than just being a good scholar, as Hume makes clear; it's also about navigating in a new environment. If you want a job as a professor in the humanities, and you want to do well after you get hired, your first step should be to buy this book and read it cover to cover.

Don't know what I would have done without this during the job search this year. Tons of vital information and advice for everything from the various parts of the application to the actual interviews, as well as a short section on jobs outside academia. Doing everything Hume suggests would be close to impossible, but doing as much as possible gets you well prepared for the job search. Even if the interview questions and scenarios you end up facing are unlike any covered in the book, the prep gives you confidence, which is one of the key ingredients to making a successful transition from grad student to full-fledged academic colleague. Hume's dry humor is also refreshing.

It is difficult to truly describe the extent to which this book is a God-send for academic job seekers. Hume has been on the job market advice scene for many years, and is therefore able to offer an astute reading of trends in academic hiring and a no-nonsense approach to getting and keeping a job, in additiont to outlining the nuts and bolts of what search committees are looking for. I would say that this book should be required reading for anyone even CONSIDERING going to grad school, because it provides a practical picture of the profession that few of us, sadly, did not get when we first signed on as bright-eyed neophytes.

I bought Hume's book the year before I went on the job market, and I am glad I did. I used Hume's advice during each step of my job search this year -- from the application process, to the campus interview stage -- with much success. Also, I found Hume's list of potential MLA convention questions incredibly useful: I practiced many of them for weeks before the conference. Because of this book, I felt prepared and confident. This is a must-buy for academic job hunters!

This guide was invaluable during my recent successful academic job search. My heavily underlined copy of the first edition was so well used that I bought a second copy when the spine broke. I own a couple of other guides for academic job hunters and this is the best one for humanities PhDs by far. The other ones often get bogged down in material on STEM fields that's just not relevant for humanists.

Hume demystifies the academic job market using anecdotes and examples drawn from her experiences as a placement director. The book clearly lays out what job hunters should expect at every stage of the process from the appearance of job ads in the fall to negotiating your first job offer. She provides concrete and straightforward advice on how to draft your job documents (with examples), prepare for conference/phone interviews, and even navigate your new department as an assistant professor. The lists of interview questions that one might encounter are particularly useful (practice, practice, practice!). I would even go so far as to recommend that new PhD students read this, along with Gregory Colon Semenza's Graduate Study for the Twenty-First Century, their first year of graduate school so that they get a good understanding of what they'll encounter in a few years.

This book is a road map through the often confusing, sometimes brutal humanities job market, and I honestly can't imagine being on the market without it.

Kathryn Hume's book is incredible--combining sage wisdom with very practical advice about things I wouldn't have even thought to ask. In addition to looking at the big picture questions such as how to pitch one's cover letter and CV to different kinds of schools, she also looks at very mundane things, such as the fact that one is more likely to get sick during interview-season, and so one needs to prepare in advance to avoid that. She covers a huge amount of information in a short and highly readable book. I could not have successfully survived the job market and gained a tenure track job in literature without this book. I am very grateful to it and have loaned it to friends who also found it useful.

In addition to Hume's book that addresses the particular concerns of humanities, I also bought The Academic Job Search Handbook, which is more broad. That's also a pretty good book, but I hardly used it, because Hume's book was more relevant to my needs and covered everything. So, if you are choosing among several job search guides and aren't sure which to buy, I'd strongly recommend Hume's.

Surviving the Academic Job Hunt is the best purchase I have made as I am preparing for the academic job search. It does not only provide information which one will need when one is about to go on the job market but it also gives one great advice on how to maneuver successfully through the politics within one's department. The book provided an answer to me of how to do this with dignity and without sabotaging myself. I wish someone pointed me to this book when I was starting grad school. One of the most important features of the book is the solid list of questions which one might get asked at an interview as well as possible questions one might want to ask.

I hope there's a new edition of the book to reflect the current job market, and by saying this I do not mean to imply that the book is not useful as is. It's a very realistic guide for those interested in academic jobs but without an ivy league school next to their name. It also focuses on the humanities, so you do not get the irrelevant and unrealistic advice applicable for those in the sciences.

It's a book which I can't recommend enough. If I could, I would give it six stars. I think it's unfair to give only five since I have to give one star to products I hate, and this book is one's greatest help during the job hunt ordeal. As I read the book, I felt that I had a trusted and wise mentor next to me.