For professors/lecturers, grad students/postgrads, and anyone else with an interest in academia as a profession.
Job Market for 2017-18
Who wants to comiserate about being on the market? I've gotten a few applications out already, and I'm hoping for more things to start coming up. Double the fun, we're a two body household. I've been doing the trailing spouse thing, but now it's going to be whomever gets an offer first and we'll just hope the other can find something.




We might be too small a community at this point for you to find people in that circumstance, but I definitely support your effort to find some! (My own longago job-hunting experience is mostly just nightmare-fodder these days, but I definitely remember it well, and not fondly.)
If you want, I'd love to hear (as vaguely as you wish to, of course) about the jobs you're currently applying for. What "vibe" do you get from the institutions? Are they in a part of the world you'd be comfortable living? How about the applications your partner has out?
Thought it was worth a shot. I don't really have much of a vibe off these places. I'm just applying for anything I'm qualified for from community colleges through big state universities. After our experience here, we're both being a bit pickier about places. Mine all need to be in decent theatre cities to give my husband a shot at employment outside of the university. His are all in reasonably large places. After moving to a tiny, isolated town, we've learned a lot about what we can and can't tolerate. I definitely shot down the one he found in Alaska, for example. Happily, one of mine is in a town we've lived in before, so we have a group of friends we'd be moving back to. We've yet to find a school this cycle that has openings for both of us. My biggest problem is that I'm a creative writer who's never gotten to teach a creative writing class, and I don't have a book out.
I'm on the job market as well. Since I started while I was ABD, I'm going on over a year of applying for jobs. I got two Skype interviews for one-year positions but that was it for responses for 2016 jobs. I find that my biggest challenge is to continue to work on the scholarly projects that could help (articles, a book proposal based on my dissertation) while I'm in this rather liminal state. That plus a year's worth of rejection makes the situation fairly discouraging.
It is so hard to keep your spirits up. My biggest peeve right now is places that don't give any response at all. I get it for the first round of just general applications, but if you did an interview, you should at least get the courtesy of an email saying "Hey thanks but no thanks."
I was amused by the fact that I was still getting rejection letters sent to me by HR departments in Sept and Oct for jobs that started in August!
I'm ABD and also applying to jobs, with the double whammy of being an international student. So if I don't find a job this season, I have to leave the country and apply from overseas, assuming I still want a job in North America. I just sent out a couple of applications, but when I figure out how to look for jobs in earnest, I'll look anywhere... Asia, Europe, etc.
I feel pretty fortunate in that my degree allows me to be flexible in what departments I can apply to (I'm looking in English, Comp Lit, Asian Studies, Ethnic Studies) but I've never been the kind of person to apply just anywhere, which I think will limit me severely.
A wide net is definitely helpful! But if you know you won't be happy somewhere, it may not be worth it. When my husband took the job he just left, it was like "Yeah, we can deal with being in a super tiny town. It's no big deal to drive an hour to get to a Walmart. We'll have the internet!" And now I can't get out of here fast enough, and population size and proximity to civilization are now much higher priorities. Good luck! I hope you find something. I can't imagine have to job hunt from another continent.
Oh God, this is so true. It sounds so much less awful when you aren't super isolated from everything.
I'm on the market (again) this year, although I'm only 6 months into a 2-year postdoc so it's not as dire as it was last year when I was looking at my then-current postdoc position ending in 6 months. 3 applications in so far, with another dozen or so to go (also so far), although I'm also looking at government jobs this time around, as well.
Market sucks, but hopefully it'll work out! We're also doing the 2-body thing, so it's fun all around.
Woo government jobs! Two body is the worst. At one point I found a site that specifally had a function for 2 body households. You could put in your search, and your spouse's, and it would generate a map showing positions available in relation to each other, with special markers for schools that had two openings. Of course I didn't bookmark it. >.<