*Concerns of Young Mathematicians* Volume 3, Issue 25 August 30, 1995 An electronically distributed digest for discussions of the issues of concern to mathematicians at the beginning of their careers. Please direct submissions and questions to Emil Volcheck volcheck@acm.org , editor for the month of September. Next issue: Wednesday, 13 September 1995. July/August Editor: Kevin Madigan madigan@aol.com September Editor: Emil Volcheck (volcheck@acm.org) To subscribe: Contact Charles Yeomans at cyeomans@ms.uky.edu Back issues and other information are available via anonymous FTP to ftp.ms.uky.edu, in pub3/mailing.lists/ymn-list. Or connect to the YMN homepage on the WWW, the URL: http://math34.gatech.edu:8080/YMN/ymn.html The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of the administrative board or membership of the Young Mathematicians' Network. The editorial policy of this newsletter is to encourage discussion of issues, and facilitate the dissemination of information, relevant to the concerns of young mathematicians. Table of Contents Item # Title ------ ----- 1 Suggestions for Job Searching 2 YMN at the AMS Summer Research Institute in Algebraic Geometry 3 More on "Who pays" 4 Closing Credits _______________________________________________________________ Item #1 Suggestions for Job Searching Dale Skrien Others in previous articles in the YMN Newsletter have made many good suggestions for those of you currently in the job market. For example, Jack Goldfeather at Carleton College wrote some very good advice in an article that appeared in the YMN Newsletter on 12/20/94. I would like to add a few suggestions to what Mr. Goldfeather and others have said, and I would like to repeat a couple of their suggestions that deserve special mention. The fact that these suggestions are not already known (or at least not taken into account) by applicants became apparent to us as we conducted our three searches at Colby College in the 1994-95 school year. One of our three searches was for a pure mathematician at the entry level, one for a computer scientist, and one for a senior-level mathematician or computer scientist to fill an endowed position. We received over 800 applications for the entry-level pure mathematics position. When faced with weeding down this pile to the top 100 applications, our first steps were quite straightforward because there were two basic flaws with many of the applications: 1. Many of the applications were late. In our case, late applications were not thrown out, but they did not necessarily receive the full consideration that earlier applications received. Some arrived after we had already completed our on-campus interviews, made an offer, and had the offer accepted. Suggestion: Don't mail your application two months after the date at which the search committee begins its review of applications. Make sure it arrives before the date at which review of applications begins. 2. We never received letters of recommendation for some applicants. Suggestion: Do everything possible to make sure that your references send in their letters of recommendation by the deadline. This is not always easy. I realize that it would help if the colleges receiving the applications would acknowledge all recommendation letters and keep all applicants informed of the status of their applications. However, in our case, the amount of work involved was simply overwhelming. Since there were over 2000 such letters, we just couldn't acknowledge them all. Once we had weeded the application pool down, the search committee studied the 100 remaining applications carefully. About two dozen of the applicants were selected to be interviewed, if possible, at the Joint Math Meetings. After the Math Meetings, the committee selected 4 candidates to be brought to Colby for interviews. One of those candidates was then offered the job and he accepted. There are several things to keep in mind to ensure that your application makes it as far as possible through this process. As I said above, this is not meant to be an exhaustive list. It only contains items that I did not see mentioned in earlier articles in the YMN Newsletter or items that are worth repeating. 1. You and your references should type all your letters in 12-point font or larger, and use one-and-a-half spacing for easy readability. After 2000 letters, our eyes were getting pretty bleary reading small, closely-packed lines of characters. Despite the fact that we make every effort to focus on the content, and not the appearance, of your application, the latter is bound to have an effect, if only a subliminal one. There is no reason to risk annoying the person reading your application. 2. For each educational degree you have, be sure and specify your major ("mathematics", "applied mathematics", "computer science", etc.). Just because you are applying for a mathematics position doesn't mean your Ph.D. is in mathematics. We need to know what your majors are. 3. Please try to avoid expecting a lot of individual attention by sending e-mail asking for information. If you have a legitimate request, then please let us know. We tried to answer inquiries as thoroughly and quickly as possible, especially because we realize how important your application is to you (as well as to us). However, the search committee chair is extremely busy. Let him or her concentrate on the job of running the search and don't try to get noticed by asking the search committee to do something unnecessary. 4. When you come for an interview, the talk is one of the most important, if not the most important, part of the interview. Practice, practice, practice! I have seen many candidates who looked good on paper give terrible talks and so kill their chances for the job. Practice in front of others. Practice in front of a mirror. Time your talk to be sure it fits into the time frame allotted. Use visual aids if they help make the talk clearer. Be sure to find out exactly the kind of talk that is being asked of you. We try to inform the candidates of this, but inevitably some give talks that are not at the level of the intended audience. 5. Good talks at conferences are an excellent way to get people to remember you as a good speaker. Therefore, if you are giving a talk at a conference, the same suggestion applies as in the preceding item. Practice, practice, practice! 6. In your initial application, be sure and indicate which position you are applying for. We had three positions we were trying to fill and were confused as to what to do with some applications that only said, "I am applying for the position you advertised...". 7. Secure references about your teaching that are as specific as possible. We received a lot of very general remarks from department heads that boil down to "the students didn't give me any grief about this person's teaching". That's far too weak a recommendation. Try to get someone to actually go to one (or several) of your classes so that they can comment specifically on your strengths. Dale Skrien, Chair Department of Mathematics and Computer Science Colby College djskrien@colby.edu _______________________________________________________________ Item #2 YMN at the AMS Summer Research Institute in Algebraic Geometry Frank Sottile and Charles Yeomans We were in attendance at the 1995 AMS Summer Research Institute in Algebraic Geometry held during July in Santa Cruz, CA. While there, conversations with some graduate students led us to believe that presentation entitled "The Job market and other Concerns of Young Mathematicians" would be both useful and appreciated. At the presentation, we begin with some preliminary remarks, then followed with a summary of statistics that were gleaned from recent issues of the Notices (and that had appeared in these pages) The fact that half the Berkeley grads had no job yet (confirmed by a Berkeleyite in the audience) seemed to be a real attention-getter. After this encouraging summary, we solicited questions and comments from the audience. They ranged from useful and interesting to "why can't the AMS do X?". The main point that we tried to get across was that if one counted grad students and compared that to the number of tenure-track jobs at research schools, the pigeonhole principle implied that many pigeons wouldn't find cages. Those pigeons would likely end up in teaching or industry, and either option required some advance planning. Unfortunately, the presentation was scheduled at 9PM; since there had been talks since 9AM, attendance was understandably low. However, some senior mathematicians were in attendance and one of them, Rob Lazarsfeld, made the interesting point that rather than try to present facts on the job market to each new wave of graduate students, it may perhaps be more effective to educate their advisors. During the three week conference, we talked to many people. Perhaps not unexpectedly, there was a greater degree of realism among young post-Ph.D. mathematicians than among graduate students. For instance, we had talked to a grad student who seemed certain that, if nothing great worked out, he would just fall into a big job on Wall Street. He didn't seem to think that his total lack of programming skills would be a problem. Most people were somewhat less complacent than him, but really hadn't considered life after school. Frank Sottile Charles Yeomans _______________________________________________________________ Item #3 More on "who pays" Cary Timar If a department has a limited budget, one option would be for it to invite candidates for interviews, saying something like, "travel expenses reimbursed with receipts, up to a maximum of $x." This reduces the uncertainty for candidates who decide to interview, but at the expense of the "successful candidate," who might otherwise have had all expenses reimbursed. It also encourages the department to be more selective before the invitations. This change would be easy for a department to implement, unless it belongs to a college that insists on some other procedure. Do others see this as preferable to only reimbursing travel expenses for the winner? If so, we could pass this suggestion on the various societies to forward to the departments. -- Cary Timar, Empress Software, Toronto, Canada cctimar @ empress.com _______________________________________________________________ Item #4 Closing Credits Charles Yeomans cyeomans@ms.uky.edu Mark Winstead mwwinst@pic.net Nancy Wilson nwilson@stmarys-ca.edu Emil Volcheck volcheck@acm.com Frank Sottile sottile@math.toronto.edu Vic Perera vicum@math.ohio-state.edu Franklin Mendivil mendivil@math.gatech.edu Kevin Madigan madkev@aol.com Leigh Lunsford lunsford@math.uah.edu Steve Kennedy skennedy@mathcs.carleton.edu Matt Hudelson hudelson@math.washington.edu Silvia Heubach silvi@cinenet.net Greg Dresden dresden@fireant.ma.utexas.edu Bob Dobrow dobrow@cam.nist.gov Lyle Cochran lcochran@fresno.edu Kevin Charlwood kec1@bradley.bradley.edu Wendy Brunzie brunzie@mathfs.math.montana.edu Frank Arlinghaus frank@math.ysu.edu Edward Aboufadel aboufade@gvsu.edu _______________________________________________________________ End of Journal -- Next week: The Discussion Continues