I was talking to my wife the other day about job postings (or lack of them) and I mentioned that Stanford was looking for faculty. She asked “Are you going to put in an application?” and I gave her a flat “No way”.
I just don’t have enough journal articles. After all, zero is a very round number.
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I’m a little late to this party, but academic results are predominantly measured in publications, and to some degree, incoming research dollars. For instance, take a look at this and this. In particular, journal articles, which are peer reviewed, are generally considered the gold standard. The more, the better. That’s why most faculty have publications predominantly listed on their home page. It is a kind of “this is what I’ve done, this is what my academic status is”.
The general guideline I’ve heard in terms of getting hired for a tenure track faculty position is at least two to three journal articles. I thought I had zero, then realized that some of my undergraduate research was actually published in a journal (my advisor did not even involve me in the writing of the paper, although I was responsible for a lot of the implementation and some of the theory). Still, though, that is almost ten years old. Either way, if I were to apply for a tenure track position now, especially at a top notch university, there’s no way I would be hired with the given economic climate (read: competition), and I doubt I’d even get past the first round.
Sure, I’ve got plenty of conference articles, but conference articles count for nothing in academic circles (with a few notable exceptions). I swear, they’ll let anybody who can string a few words together into most conferences, as long as a registration fee is paid. Hell, I’ve gotten a 100% approval rating! Sometimes I wonder if conferences are, at best, excuses for academics to get together and party on the university dime and, at worst, fundraisers. But maybe I’m a little too pessimistic!
Either way, I need to get a journal article or two from my dissertation pronto, which is why I am at work today.
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Next week I start my consulting job at Hansen Medical. I really like the company (heck, they even use the brand of pens I like — Uniball Vision!) and I really like the people, but the consulting status takes a bit of the fun out of it simply because I don’t have the security that a “real job” gives. Don’t get me wrong, I understand the reasoning and I’m happy for the consulting, but the prospect of continuing the job search through the next few months is not very pleasant.
Obviously, I’m not going to talk about Hansen here because private companies lob NDAs like hand grenades.
Once I start next week, I’ll have very little time for putting together this journal article (or maybe two, if I can stretch my dissertation to do so). Which is why I am putting in some time today and Monday.
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I also have to admit that I am mostly in the dark on what it takes to get a tenure track faculty job. Usually, these are questions you ask your advisor, but Advisor has a research position, so things are a little different for him. I should probably have a conversation with him soon (plus I need to talk to him about this pesky video he wants me to do).
In the mean time, I’ll continue reading about my impending faculty position search (which will happen in one to three years, I hope). This post proved to be pretty useful. Although it does mention a guideline of 10 journal articles and a book to get tenure (!).
