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The Benefits of Being Organized Job Search
By Anonymous Hero
Posted Thu Feb 12, 2004 at 05:34:43 PM PDT
After having to suddenly have to polish off my cv and apply for jobs in mid December, I discovered organization from my first job search paid off.

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My job search began in December when a round of new possible faculty cuts were announced at the small liberal arts college where I teach. I discovered some things that I had done after my last search was over and in the meantime made it easier to apply again

Things I'm glad I did:

1) Kept a large expanding folder full of my previous jobs applied to, and applications materials, the most useful being my undergrad transcripts which are a pain to get.

2) Updated my cv yearly. This is required for contract renewal here and I found it very useful.

3) Had notes of exactly which schools I'd done preliminary interviews with last time. Some of them had open positions again, and I'm not sure I would have remembered that I had had a preliminary with them before without that.

4) Had taken all of my files with me when I finished grad school, including for example my generic cover letter LaTeX file.

Things I wish I'd done:

1) Had copies of all of my previous teaching evals. I was missing the semester in which I applied for jobs last.

2) Had a final copy of my graduate transcript. I ended up getting it out of my file at my current position, which I would not recommend.

So after your job search is over, getting organized can help you in the future. Anyone else have any hints?
< Questions to ask when visiting graduate schools. | Jan 2003 Town Meeting Notes >
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The Benefits of Being Organized | 3 comments (3 topical, 0 hidden)
[new] Transcript hint (5.00 / 1) (#1)
by Anonymous Hero on Thu Feb 12, 2004 at 06:57:57 PM PDT

If your grad school offers online transcripts (and many do), be sure to remember your login info! My wife recently "reinvented" herself and needed a transcript, and we had quite a time getting into our old accounts with the registrar. Having remembered those old passwords would have helped a lot. One major key is networking. If you're not regularly going to your sectional meetings (AMS, MAA, whatever others), start going. Make sure people at other nearby institutions know who you are so that when you start applying again, people can put a face to the name.


[new] More benefits of being organized... (none / 0) (#2)
by JHamblin on Tue Mar 02, 2004 at 05:16:22 AM PDT

Another benefit of being organized is, once you have a job, preparing your promotion binder. Now, me giving this advice is a bit specious, since I am not very organized. But at the very least, here's some advice I have (that I myself only kind of follow):
  • Save everything. Any time anyone sends you a positive letter (even if it's a cookie-cutter form letter), save it.
  • Keep your CV up to date. People will need to see your CV for various reasons on short notice. Don't wait until the end of the semeter to catalog all the good stuff you've done. Put it on there now.
  • Have some kind of system. (Note: A big pile on the corner of your desk is NOT a system.) Organize the stuff somehow. Even sorting the documents by semester and year is a good start. You don't want to look back at something a couple of years later and have no idea what it is.
  • Make this a priority. I myself am still a few years away from going up for promotion, so it's hard to think about putting "organizing my promotion stuff" on a "front burner", but it really is important. But, having said that, I admit that I probably won't get to it until the early summer.
So, even though I am a bit of a hypocrite for giving advice I don't even really follow... that doesn't make it bad advice. Promotion is important for all of us, and if you're organized, that will make you less insane when the time comes to assemble your binder (I hope).

JH



The Benefits of Being Organized | 3 comments (3 topical, 0 hidden)
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