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Employment CenterPast Employment Center applicants have offered the following advice for future applicants. Keep in mind that these comments reflect opinions of a wide variety of applicants, and not all advice mentioned here is applicable to all candidates.Should you go? If one is serious about finding a teaching-emphasized position, he/she is strongly advised to attend the Joint Meetings. Besides, it is about a rare opportunity to experience interviews and sharpen your interview skills. I strongly recommend (and the AMS brochures did this) applicants who are interested in research or postdoctoral positions to not use the employment center at all. This is a great service that anyone on the job market should use to their advantage. Although some employers will not use this service, it is still worth your time to be able to use the message center and to find out about jobs you otherwise may not have heard about. Just be sure to leave some time in your schedule to rest between interviews! Not worth the money. You are better off contacting the schools directly and setting up outside interviews. Use this center to learn how to interview, but don't expect any real consideration there. Apply through ams.org and mathjobs.org for your job. It is an expensive way to learn about what is going on. If you want to find a teaching position and you have a teaching award, then you should go. other wise, you are wasting your time and money. Since potential future colleagues at small colleges want to know that they can get along well with you, the more personal interaction you have with them the better. The Employment Center is a great opportunity to get this personal interaction with lots of departments at once. don't use it. your best bet is to use the meetings to meet with people outside of the employment center. Take advantage of this very helpful service! You get to meet a number of representatives from a variety of employers, something you wouldn't be able to do under other circumstances. The Employment Center is an excellent opportunity for meeting potential employers, gaining interview experience, and developing aquaintence with other mathematicians who are also searching for jobs. USE IT - was great! I felt as though I was looking at a cloth at a garment shop. There could have been more filterations from the schools prior to choosing their candidates. I got 10 interviews and none offered to consider me again - this only shows how desparate the schools are and how unprepared they are in selecting a candidate - waste of students' time. My advice is to avoid it, save money and do something else with your time/energy. Good experience with the job market. get to see what the people are looking for, although in my case i was interested mainly in Postdoctoral positions. But still, i got two campus interviews at good schools and one job offer from a very good place. I was very happy with the overall experience!!! It was a great place for a first interview. Having so many (17) interviews in such a short time was exhausting but it was great to gage the appropriate school. I walked away confident that I will not only get a job but that I will not settle for the wrong one. What's it like to be there? The employment center is not for postdoctoral positions, and you will find very few research universities sending representatives. The feel of desperation at the center is almost papable. It's a very stressful environment, for both employers and prospective employees. The Center tries to do its best to make it user-friendly, but it feels like a cattle call. If you have a chance to speak with your prospective employer on the phone before meeting in the center it might make the event somewhat more human. At the employment center, I learned about several positions that were quite interesting that I'd not heard of previously. It's too loud to have reasonable conversations, and I didn't find it particularly worthwhile. I probably wouldn't take part if I were looking primarily for research jobs. The process is scary and there *are* unwritten rules. Go slow, emphasize meeting people and asking questions, and look at all the possibilities. Everyone I knew who was looking for an academic job did find something that suited them, but we all made compromises as well. It was a waste of time, money and hopes. No one even looked to the CV's I placed in my folder. I was never contacted after the 2 computer schedule interviews, though I think I did a pretty good job. The computer interviews are only 15 minutes long, with tired and bored people interviewing you. The whole thing it's like a bad joke. I did not find my experience with the Employment Center to be very useful. The idea of organizing an event for lots of employers and potential employees is good and I appreciate the efforts of the AMS. The quality of the interviews seemed to suffer due to the (potential) quantity. Maybe something as simple as having several smaller rooms would make the process a bit more sane. Next time I am looking for a job I will not take part in the Employment Center. The entire process can be quite draining. My advice would be to interview at places that you are actually interested in so that you aren't wasting your time or the time of your interviewers. Who does well there? It may help your search significantly if you possess background in mathematics education or applied mathematics, or if you can demonstrate that you can secure grants or have other means to help defray the cost of your salary. I was overwhelmed with the positive response even though I had been told that American women got the most requests for interviews. I would recommend for someone in a sought after category to be careful how many places they apply! (I had over 20 interviews at the Joint Meetings.) Not really useful for international students (no work permit) with intentions of obtain an academic work. Should I use the computer-scheduled portion of the program? Don't bother with the computer-scheduled interviews; my friends who did these said they were a waste of time. For what it's worth, no one I know was even invited for a campus visit from any of the schools that interviewed them through the employment center. All of the invitations came from informally scheduled interviews, if at all. My personal results are perhaps atypical, since I was a math education candidate. The message centre gave me many opportunities for the money I paid and the sole (on-campus) visit I got actually came from it. The computer-based interview system charged considerably more and only offerred me 2 interviews; think twice before using it. I would not recommend the use the computer schedule, it was a waste of money for how few employers you could choose from. And the interviews were treated like hearding cattle and there was not enough time to get questions answered.\ Don't bother with the computer-scheduling. Be careful with the computer scheduling -- you may not get any interviews you request and yet your time will be taken by interviews with employers who requested you. So, if you choose to use the computer scheduled system, limit the number of time slots you list as available. Do not waste time with the computer scheduled interviews. They are too short to be of use. While the computer interviewing service was nice, the (employer-)scheduled interviews is where it's at. 15 minutes is way to short to exchange any useful information with the interviewer. The computer scheduled interviews are a complete waste of your time and money. If the interview is to be beneficial, you need to know about the school beforehand and they need to know about you. The only real productive interviews are the ones held outside the employment center scheduled with schools you have already applied to. Therefore, the best bet is to apply to schools early and indicate you will be at the Joint Meetings and are available for interviews outside the employment center. How should I prepare? sign up in advance Apply early and, preferably, follow up your application with a more personal communication, like an e-mail. This will yield pre-scheduled interviews (possibly with schools whose reps are in attendance at the meetings but not in the EC) and you may not have to go through the computer-scheduling process. Do not count on seeing many research-focused schools at the Employment Center at all -- brush up on your teaching credentials. Applying to the Universities ahead of time made a difference as I interviewed with all the ones I wanted. Also do not be afraid of saying no to an employer who is offering you an interview so that you can focus on your primary choices; it feels like a marathon so you want to pace yourself. The interviews that are scheduled ahead of time are the most valuable. PRACTICE interviewing; make notes in advance for your answers to predictable questions and learn them. Ask others who have done it before what kinds of questions they received. Know the different calculus texts and philosophies, and be prepared for the possibility that one of your interviewers may be an author of one of those texts. Try to book your room in the same hotel as the Employment Center. It is SO great to be able to just pop up there for a few minutes, lay down, freshen up, change clothes, etc. Oh, and bring a few different shirts--you'll sweat:). Apply to all the positions you are interested in ahead of time. Make sure to indicate in your cover letter that you are attending the meetings, as that is very important for many prospective employers. Apply for positions well in advance, even if the deadline is concurrent or later than the meeting. Schedule your interviews before arriving at the Joint Meetings because it is too chaotic trying the contact employers when you arrive. Have all your application package ready by August. Search for jobs and look for those employers that will come to the Joint Meeting in January. Contact them and tell them you will be there. When you receive the Winter List of Employers, email all places where you want at least a little bit to work. Better select from few offers, than have just few interviews from the beginning. Write them individually, even if this will take a while to do it. At the Joint Meeting, have a lot of application packages with you (cover letter, cv, teaching statement, research statement). Staple them together with a business card and put them in the folders of all the universities or colleges you emailed. Register early, review the winter lists, and be ready for an intense 4 days. Do some research into the schools you are meeting. Write down info on note cards. This allows you to jot down your impressions after meeting with the school. I strongly suggest that future applicants send their application materials to schools well in advance (late November, early December) indicating that they will be attending the Joint Meetings. Because of this, I had many interviews set up ahead of time. Overall, the Employment Center provided an excellent opportunity/location to make contact/interview with many employers in a short period of time. I also liked that during the meeting, employers could see you present your work. I found the computer-scheduled interviews too rushed and merely a chance to learn about the schools rather than to actually be interviewed. Apply for positions before the Joint meetings. Almost no employers will grant interviews to candidates who did not apply specifically for the advertised positions before the joint meetings. 1) Be certain to line up interviews beforehand. 2) Stay at the hotel where the Employment Center is held, so that trips to hotel room can be made between interviews. 3) Make notes after each interview as to what was asked, how you felt, etc. 4) Prepare a brief folder for each interview including information about the college, what type of background they are looking for, which of their courses you could teach, etc. 5) Be prepared to answer the question, "Why are you interviewing with us?" 6) Plan to come a day before the conference begins, and leave a day after is ends. 7) Be certain to attend. Borrow the funds if needed - best money you will ever spend to locate an academic position. What to watch out for Be careful to find out teaching load. I found most the colleges who used the employment center had a rather high teaching load. Be aware that a lot of the employers participating in the center are smaller schools that may not otherwise be able to afford interviewing too many candidates. As such, the center will be less useful if you are not interested in working at those kind of schools. Many of the institutions using the Employment Center are seeking to fill positions that are perhaps more teaching-oriented than research-oriented, so if you are a new or soon-to-be graduate seeking a position that will allow you to expand both your research and teaching background, do not limit your search to the Employment Center. It is useful for some and not for others. When you are in a room with several hundred people, all of whom have the same credentials, it can be difficult to make a memorable impression. The interviewers are excited on the first couple of days, but then they get bored. Try to schedule all of your interviews early during the conference. It's very important to let employers know in advance that you will be at the joint meetings. Most of my interviews were made in advance without the computer matching system. It's also important to be prepared to give a good impression about yourself, your research and your teaching in a very brief amount of time. I think I rambled on too much for my first interview. Some employers did not abide by the conditions in the Ad. In the Ad they said citizenship not required then they changed without notifying the applicants. This is not a good service because employers interview so many applicants that there is no way to compare them. Some jobs require American citizenship, some require green card. What to bring Please be prepared with copies of resumes, transcripts and all material deemed important for the job hunt Set up as many appointments ahead of time as possible. Always carry a calender/day planner with you in case you happen to meet someone or are running late to where you going. Most important: wear a watch! 1) Have all of the documents ready (resume, letters of reccomendation etc) ready by October. 2) Register for the employment center as early as possible What to do on site The employment center is an excellent way to gain access to employers in person with whom you might not get to meet otherwise. Sometimes a face-to-face can make the difference between getting an on-site interview or not. If at all possible, try to use the message center to schedule time for informational interviews with prospective employers either before or after you interview with them or even if you don't have an interview. The computer-scheduled interviews are annoyingly short. When self-scheduling interviews, be sure to find out how long the employer expects the interview to take. Certain segments of your schedule are bound to become crowded. Make sure that you schedule interviews yourself and use the message center a lot. Send out applications early. Know about the school you are interviewing with. Try to schedule as many interviews, in advance, as possible. If a school is there that you want to talk to, try to contact them as soon as possible upon arrival. Have spare CVs, cover letters, research statements, teaching statements, pre-prints handy. (In fact, you might want to have cover letters already written for the schools you might want to contact.) Give yourself time between interviews. Look and act sharp at all times. If you meet with someone, make sure you know a bit about their school. (Location, size, size of department, research/teaching interests, etc... You can pick that up from looking at their web page, and you'd be suprised how much smoother an interview will go if you know a little about the university and there is stuff you can talk about without them having to explain anything to you.) It's gruelling and it's a grind and it seems like a meat market, but you still want to be "on top of your game". The volume of it all will make you feel insignificant, but you have to do it. And, if you have a good interview or like a school, don't forget to follow up with a thank you note or email shortly after you return to campus. SMILE, but be genuine about it. Do your research on every school you interview with and prepare a list of personalized questions for each one in addition to a set of stock questions you can ask. Plan to arrive at the meeting early enough to figure out where everything is and how it works. Find all the interview locations and make sure you know where the nearest bathroom is to each of them. Check the message board and your folder soon and often--it's a tight schedule and you don't want to miss anything. Have packets of your CV and other materials already divided and paper-clipped so you can just drop them into the schools' folders. Make the effort to remember the names of the people with whom you interview (write them down if you have to). You may see them later (without their name badges) and you want to make sure to address them by name with a friendly (but not exaggerated) hello. Also, if you get invited for a campus interview you'll see them again and so you'd better remember that you've already met. It's really tempting to try to go the talks, but if you have a lot of interviews scheduled I'd forego those for a little quiet time in your room or a secluded area. You need to be refreshed to be on the top of your game. Be well prepared before the meeting. Fill in the bubble sheet carefully. I registered late and could not be included in the winter book. I had one employer-scheduled interview prior to opening of the employment center and no idea how the center operates. Upon arrival I learned about the computer scheduled interviews and almost missed the deadline. I had 3 computer scheduled interviews and obtained 7 more on the spot due to the message center! It really works! I just put a copy of my resume in some employers' folders along with a short note that I am interested in their positions. To my surprise about 80% of them responded and all but three scheduled an interview with me on the spot. It was a wonderful experience! I could have possibly obtained a lot more on campus interviews, but I did not follow up on many of the on-the-spot scheduled interviews. Ultimately, geographic location was the biggest most important factor for me and luckily my interviews in that direction were going very well, so I ended up accepting my number one choice! My advice: Be confident, know what you want, do not panic if you didn't follow all the rules - it may be to your advantage, it's never too late to register, and stuff these blue folders - it really works! The experience at the employment center increased my confidence as a job candidate! THANK YOU! What to do during an interview Be honest--the places with whom I didn't get campus interviews were places to which I didn't really want to go anyway. Lots of small departments don't adhere to just one philosophy anyway, so you don't need to necessarily agree with the philosophy of your interviewers to get hired. Make sure your responses are clearly understood and that your interviewers leave with the correct understanding of your opinions and methods. It's very easy to misinterpret a short answer to a short question (and so also make sure you understand each question before answering it). Act professional but show your personality too--the interviewers are just as tired as you are, and seeing a little spark and sense of humor will make the interview a lot more enjoyable and memorable and will make them want to see you again. Plus, the people from small departments will be just as concerned with how well you'll get along with everyone as they will be with your qualifications. ACT CONFIDENT--even if you're not, learn how to fake it. It may actually turn into real confidence, and at the very least your potential employers will believe that it is. Some of your interviewers may exude a competitive vibe--don't fall into that trap. Always qualify statements with phrases like, "what works for me" or "what I prefer" or "what I have found to be most successful", unless you do firmly and uncompromisingly believe something and would truly want your entire department to know it. In other words, try not to be too controversial. You don't want to lose out on campus interviews because you came across as too heavy-handed, especially if you aren't really that way. Don't be discouraged by interviews that may not have seemed to go well--sometimes the interviewers are just bad and you still may have shined the most of all the people they saw. If you can think of good reasons why you want to work for an employer, bring them up during the interview. Balance firmness and kindness when dealing with friends who eat into your job-hunting time. Know everything on a school's website that may be pertinent to the interview. In addition, research the community (politics, religious affiliation, demographics, etc.) to speak fluidly with your interviewers. Also, remember that they want to be seen as colleagues, so you are not likely to get grilled. Instead, treat the interview as a dance or flirtation. Compliment them while speaking to your own strengths. Always have questions. For Further Information Return to Main Employment Center page
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