Advice from Ken Hiltner on the Job Letter

From UCSB English Department Knowledge Base

The following is a copy of an email sent to englgrad by Ken Hiltner, the current grad advisor, on August 5, 2008:

HI Everyone,

As you may know, this year we have a bumper crop of folks going on the job market, some of whom have already come to me with questions regarding the process. While this year we have an excellent job-placement workshop, run by Aranye, Enda, and Stephanie L, as Graduate Advisor I will from time to time be sending you my own thoughts on the subject. If you are not on the market, please feel free to ignore what follows.

Since the cover letter is often the first document that members of the hiring committee read, let me start with it. The most important thing to realize is that hiring committees have a number of concerns, fears really, that need to be addressed in the cover letter. They are worried that you may not

1. be able to finish your dissertation by June, and hence will not be able to take the job they may offer,

2. convert your dissertation into a book, and therefore will eventually be denied tenure,

3. be a very active scholar who regularly publishes articles and presents papers,

4. have an idea for a second book, and thus will never advance to full professor at most institutions,

5. be committed to teaching, and hence may be an ineffective instructor who is unable to fill a classroom,

6. shoulder your share of the administrative workload, or do it properly,

7. accept the job they offer because they are just your "safety school."

Any one of these eventualities could result in a huge inconvenience for a dept. I unfortunately know of instances when each has happened. None were pretty. In the letter, your job is to convince the hiring committee that all are very unlikely in your case. Only then can they move on without misgivings as to your other materials, and fairly evaluate your work and intellectual abilities. Here is a possible breakdown of paragraphs based on addressing the above concerns:

Graph 1: Tell who you are, where you did your PhD, who was on your committee and who chaired it, and, most importantly, that you definitely expect to have your PhD in hand (even if this is unlikely!) in June. Remember, you may be competing for the job against postdocs and assistant professors who have had their PhDs for some time. Consequently, giving the impression that you may have trouble completing the PhD by the end of the year can be the kiss of death, and the rest of the application, however impressive, may not receive serious attention.

Graph #2: Summarize your dissertation. The tried and true formula is to present your dissertation as a solution to a glaring problem. So, "Although ________ is a major problem in literary studies for ________, ________, and ________ reasons, scholars have, quite remarkably, never [or not adequately] addressed the issue. My dissertation fills this void by doing the following: ________, ________, and ________."

If possible, in this paragraph try to subtly give the impression that your dissertation is not far from being publishable. (Usually the best way to do this is to draw attention to the fact that a chapter or two has already been published. This can also be done in paragraph #3.) This will help calm a major concern that depts have: that they will hire someone who cannot convert their dissertation to a book, who will therefore not make tenure and will likely have to be dismissed, leaving the exasperated dept with nothing to do but start the hiring process all over again.

Graph #3: List your publications and presentation history. The main thing to do here is play up your publications (which are more important than presentations) and then fill in with presentations. It is fine to mention essays that are out for review. (In fact, if you are short of publications, you might want to consider sending out an article in Aug or Sept--even if you are not exceptionally confident in it being published--in the hope that the editor will send it to readers, so that in late Oct you can list it as "out to readers for the journal ______.")

Graph #4: Talk about your next project, the one beyond the dissertation, in concrete terms. The reason that this is important is related to the above point, regarding having a publishable dissertation. In the academic world everyone is also afraid of hiring a one-hit (one-book) wonder, who can make it to associate professor by publishing his or her dissertation as a book, but then have his or her career stalled by the lack of a second book, and hence can never make full prof.

Graph #5: So that you do not seem overly concerned with research (since the last four paragraphs have implied that you will be a publishing powerhouse!), explain here why teaching is very, very important to you. Even R1 research universities are hiring you for your ability to teach as well as to publish. Make it seem as if you are truly unsure whether teaching or research matter most to you, as you are (of course!) deeply passionate about both. If you have strong teaching evals, mention them concisely, perhaps like this: "When asked to evaluate the overall quality of my teaching, over 90% of my students awarded me the highest possible rating available to them."

Graph #6: This paragraph should outline your academic service and involvement: things like coordinating conferences, serving on committees, and so forth. The underlying idea here is to give them the impression that you are a super involved person who, as a faculty member, will jump at the chance to serve on any sort of committee, or do any other needed job. Because some professors avoid dept obligations like the plague, as they cut into their teaching and research time, you want to give the impression that you are different. In short, in paragraphs 2-6 you want to give the impression that you are, in almost equal proportions, highly enthused about research, teaching, and (gasp) administration!

Graph #7: This closing paragraph should be tailor-made to the school to which you are applying. It should let them know that they are not reading a form letter--which gives the impression that you are applying broadly and rank their position so low that you care little about their particular position--and hence they are likely just a "safety school" whose job you will in all probability not take if offered. In short, you need to communicate that you really, really want to be there, and would both thrive at, as well as strengthen, their department. You will need to research the school and the dept in order to be specific here.

I hope that this helps. You do not, of course, need to follow this particular formula, but it would be a good idea to keep these issues in mind. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to send them my way. Also, while my office hours over the summer are officially from 3-5pm on Mondays, I am in the dept quite a bit and would be happy to set up other times to meet.

Good luck to everyone on the market!

Ken