The Professor Is In: The Essential Guide To Turning Your Ph.D. Into a Job

by Karen Kelsky

Overview

The definitive career guide for grad students, adjuncts, post-docs and anyone else eager to get tenure or turn their Ph.D.  into their ideal job
 
Each year tens of thousands of students will, after years of hard work and enormous amounts of money, earn their Ph.D. And each year only a small percentage of them will land a job that justifies and rewards their investment. For every comfortably tenured professor or well-paid former academic, there are countless underpaid and overworked adjuncts, and many more who simply give up in frustration.
 
Those who do make it share an important asset that separates them from the pack: they have a plan. They understand exactly what they need to do to set themselves up for success.  They know what really moves the needle in academic job searches, how to avoid the all-too-common mistakes that sink so many of their peers, and how to decide when to point their Ph.D. toward other, non-academic options.
 
Karen Kelsky has made it her mission to help readers join the select few who get the most out of their Ph.D. As a former tenured professor and department head who oversaw numerous academic job searches, she knows from experience exactly what gets an academic applicant a job. And as the creator of the popular and widely respected advice site The Professor is In, she has helped countless Ph.D.’s turn themselves into stronger applicants and land their dream careers.
 
Now, for the first time ever, Karen has poured all her best advice into a single handy guide that addresses the most important issues facing any Ph.D., including:
 
-When, where, and what to publish
-Writing a foolproof grant application
-Cultivating references and crafting the perfect CV
-Acing the job talk and campus interview
-Avoiding the adjunct trap
-Making the leap to nonacademic work, when the time is right
 
The Professor Is In addresses all of these issues, and many more.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780553419429
Publisher:	Crown Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/04/2015
Pages:	448
Sales rank:	199,924
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

KAREN KELSKY has run The Professor Is In blog and business since 2010, and today, she is the most widely recognized expert in the highly engaged world of Ph.D.'s attempting to navigate the transition to the job market. A former tenured professor and department head at two major research institutions, she knows (and shares) the insider knowledge of academic hiring.

Read an Excerpt

One
(Continues…)

---

Excerpted from "The Professor Is In"
by .
Copyright © 2015 Karen Kelsky.
Excerpted by permission of Crown/Archetype.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

Table of Contents

Part I Dark Times in the Academy

1 The End of an Era 3

2 Breaking Out of the Ivory Tower 13

3 The Myths Grad Students Believe 23

Part II Getting Your Head in the Game

4 The Tenure Track Job Search Process Explained 31

5 Stop Acting Like a Grad Student! 38

6 The Attributes of a Competitive Tenure Track Candidate 46

7 Building a Competitive Record 52

8 Your Campaign Platform 61

9 Why They Want to Reject You 65

10 When to Go on the Market and How Long to Try 69

11 Where Are the Jobs? Institution Types and Ranks 75

12 Where and How to Find Reliable Advice 81

13 Why "Yourself" Is the Last Person You Should Be 86

Part III The Nuts and Bolts of a Competitive Record

14 Take Control of Your CV 93

15 Getting Teaching Experience 99

16 Publish This, Not That 103

17 Why You Want and Need Grants 110

18 Cultivating Your References 114

19 Applying to Conferences 118

20 HOW to Work the Conference 123

Part IV Job Documents That Work

21 The Academic Skepticism Principle 133

22 What's Wrong with Your Cover Letter 140

23 Tailoring with Dignity 151

24 Rules of the Academic CV 156

25 Just Say No to the Weepy Teaching Statement 164

26 Evidence of Teaching Effectiveness 173

27 The Research Statement 179

28 What Is a Diversity Statement, Anyway? 185

29 The Dissertation Abstract 191

Part V Techniques of the Academic Interview

30 Academic Job Interview Basics 199

31 The Key Questions in an Academic Interview 207

32 The Conference Interview (Including Phone and Skype) 222

33 The Campus Visit 227

34 The Job Talk 234

35 The Teaching Demo 240

36 How to Talk to the Dean 243

37 They Said What? Handling Outrageous Questions 247

38 Waiting, Wondering, Wiki 254

Part VI Navigating the Job Market Minefield

39 Good Job Candidates Gone Bad 261

40 Fear of the Inside Candidate 271

41 Wrangling Recalcitrant References 274

42 Managing Your Online Presence 278

43 Evaluating Campus Climate 283

44 When You Feel Like You Don't Belong 286

45 What If You're Pregnant? 296

46 What Not to Wear 299

47 Covering the Costs 308

Part VII Negotiating an Offer

48 Don't Be Afraid to Negotiate 315

49 The Rare and Elusive Partner Hire 324

50 The Rescinded Offer-Who Is In the Wrong? 327

Part VIII Grants and Postdocs

51 The Foolproof Grant Template 337

52 Proving Your Project Is Worthy 345

53 The Postdoc Application: How It's Different and Why 349

54 The Good and the Bad of Postdocs 355

Part IX Some Advice About Advisors

55 Best Advisors, Worst Advisors 361

56 A Good Advisor Is Not Nice 367

57 Ph.D. Debt and Ethical Advising 370

Part X Leaving the Cult

58 It's OK to Quit 385

59 Let Yourself Dream 390

60 100+ Skills That Translate Outside the Academy 396

61 Collecting Information 403

62 Applying While Ph.D. 407

63 Breaking Free: The Path of the Entrepreneur 412

Conclusion. Declaring Independence 417

Acknowledgments 421

Notes 425

Index 433

Editorial Reviews

“Kelsky offers wide-ranging, valuable advice and an important perspective for job seekers.” - Booklist

“Every graduate student in academe should read this book. But also: if you teach graduate students, if you mentor graduate students, if you worry about graduate students, and even if you’re thinking about becoming a graduate student, you should read this book too. It’s just that indispensable.”– Michael Bérubé, Director, Institute for the Arts and Humanities, Penn State University
 
"Kelsky offers smart, frank, and often witty advice to lead applicants through the complicated process of securing a tenure-track position..this cogent, illuminating book will be indispensable." - Kirkus Reviews
 
“It's tough out there, but no one understands how academic jobs are landed better than Karen Kelsky. If you are a graduate student, The Professor Is In offers sound, realistic advice, and it may be the most valuable book you ever read if you intend to have an academic career.  – William Pannapacker, Professor of English at Hope College and columnist for the Chronicle of Higher Education
 
“Karen Kelsky levels the playing field, providing practical insider knowledge to demystify the job market and help you improve the odds. - David M. Perry, Columnist, Chronicle of Higher Education, and Director of Undergraduate Research, Dominican University
 
“Explains in exquisite detail exactly how to land a tenure track job. In her genial yet unabashedly thorough book, Kelsky coaches readers through the critical topics they need to know. I wouldn’t want to navigate the inhospitable weirdness of the academic job market without it.” – Adam Ruben, author of Surviving Your Stupid, Stupid Decision to Go to Grad School
 
 
“Getting a job is about more than being smart; read this book if you want to be prepared, professional, and on your game.”-Elizabeth Reis, Professor and Chair, Women's and Gender Studies Department, University of Oregon
 
“A realistic account of what it takes to turn a Ph.D. into a job when all the jobs seem to be disappearing, The Professor is In offers sobering, impeccable advice from one of the most honest voices in higher education today.”—Greg M. Colón Semenza, Author, with Garrett Sullivan, of How to Build a Life in the Humanities: Meditations on the Academic Work-Life Balance
 
“This is the book I wish I had when I was a grad student. As The Professor Is In, Karen Kelsky delivers generous, savvy advice for academic job seekers. Unflinching, supportive, and honest, there is no other book like it. All Ph.D. students (and their advisors) should have a copy on their shelf.” -Carole McGranahan, Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Colorado
 
 
 
 

From the Publisher

06/01/2015
Kelsky, a former tenured anthropology professor and department head and current principal of the eponymous "The Professor Is In" blog and career guidance service, delivers straightforward advice to those considering or preparing for a tenure-track faculty position in U.S. colleges and universities. The author pulls no punches in her candid and often irreverent description of the arcane tenure track job search process in an environment of rapidly dwindling opportunities owing to academic budget shortfalls and the resultant proliferation of nontenure track faculty, adjunct instructors, and graduate teaching assistants. Likening the process to a political campaign, Kelsky's detailed five-year plan is replete with advice on building a competitive record, both where and where not to publish, from whom to solicit guidance, cultivating references, writing effective application materials, navigating the job market, negotiating offers, and more. VERDICT Primarily directed to PhD candidates and alumni in the humanities and social sciences, the advice illuminated here will benefit all doctoral students and adjuncts contemplating or pursuing a tenure-track career.—Alan Farber, Univ, of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Library Journal

2015-04-15
Practical advice for job-seeking graduate students. In 2010, after 15 years as a tenured anthropology professor and department head, Kelsky (Women on the Verge: Japanese Women, Western Dreams, 2001) left academia to found The Professor Is In, a counseling service and blog aimed at helping graduate students mount a job search. Aware of the current competitive job market, with colleges and universities increasingly trying to save money by staffing departments with part-time adjuncts, Kelsky offers smart, frank, and often witty advice to lead applicants through the complicated process of securing a tenure-track position. She has no illusions about her readers' ability to do this on their own. Graduate study is infantilizing, she maintains, a process of hazing that leaves students "insecure, defensive, paranoid, beset by feelings of inadequacy, pretentious, self-involved, communicatively challenged, and fixated on minutiae." Advisers range from moderately helpful to neglectful to downright discouraging. They may not have any idea of the realities of the market into which they are sending students, which Kelsky thinks is "terribly, patently unfair, in that several generations of Ph.D.'s are now victims of an exploitative system that trains them for jobs that no longer exist, and denies that fact." The author covers in detail every aspect of the job search: building a strong record through carefully chosen publications (prestigious peer-review journals are the gold standard, and in the humanities and social sciences, a book contract is crucial); going after grants; presenting at national conferences; honing a CV; writing a succinct, sophisticated cover letter and teaching statement; presenting oneself in an interview and during a campus visit; and negotiating an offer. "Grad students," she writes, "remain in an extended juvenile status long after their peers outside of academia have moved on to fully adult lives." For those students—and anyone who cares about them—this cogent, illuminating book will be indispensable.

Kirkus Reviews

Blogger Karen Kelsky is writing for a niche: people in academia who want to snag the few tenure track jobs available in an ever-tightening market. Elizabeth Wiley takes on the voice of the authoritative narrator as former professor Kelsky guides listeners through the hoops of interviewing, publishing, and making career decisions. Wiley's tone is generally concerned and helpful, although she can occasionally come across as chastising or sarcastic. Listeners may be discouraged by some advice: She sometimes suggests that another path might be a good idea. Much of the material is specific to academia, such as the discussion of setting dissertation deadlines, but there’s also general advice for job seekers, especially if they're considering a new path. J.A.S. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine

FEBRUARY 2016 - AudioFile