Wednesday, November 24, 2010  Notes From the Other Side of the
Job Market  In my first 3 years at my current position, I served
on 2 tenure-track search committees, a process that literally
took up every spare moment of my time (and many non-spare
moments) for the 4 or 5 months that it lasted. Although I
certainly learned a lot in my time on SLAC Search Committees--
including, among other things, that "SLAC" stands for "Small
Liberal Arts College"-- I am well aware that the last couple of
years were a very strange time to be doing this for the first
time. A tanked economy, a new President, a panicked
constituency, an inflated applicant pool and a
discipline/profession under siege are certainly not the standard
job-market fare as I had been led to understand it. As someone
who was on the market herself not that long ago, I feel like I
can say with some confidence that it is just as time-consuming
and labor-intensive on the "other" (i.e., hiring) side of the
job market. And, arguably, it's very close to being j