Surviving The Econ Job Market {Part 2}

This time last month, we were packing up the car to head to Boston for the job market. I thought that was stressful, but man oh man, it was nothing compared to the four weeks of waiting we’ve experienced since then.

BTW – to catch up on the job market, read HERE and HERE.

We got home from Boston on a Monday night knowing that we shouldn’t expect any calls (for second interviews) until the following week. We were thrown for a bit of a loop when we found out that a few schools started making calls on that Thursday. From that moment on, every time the phone rang or we heard the buzz of a new e-mail, we both spazed for a couple of seconds. We were totally overreacting, I mean, it’s only the rest of our lives, right?

I watched Bridemaids last weekend and I'm on a KW kick.

So far The Professor has received calls from 7 schools to attend a fly out (what they call the second interview). The schools will fly the candidate out to the campus to meet with the faculty and students, present research, and sometimes even teach a class.

We decided to use RED STARS on the map to mark the fly outs. We’re saving silver stars for job offers and a gold star for THE ONE.

Since I've been in Pittsburgh, The Professor has been in charge of the map. Like a good blog fiancé, he kept it [mostly] up to date and sent pictures so I could post this :)

The Professor was in Michigan last week, Georgia this week, will be in Pennsylvania twice next week, and Rhode Island the week after that! #frequentflyermiles

Did I mention that right smack dab in the middle of all of those interviews I’m making him come to Pittsburgh and move me back to Kentucky? NBD. Who needs sleep?

I’m glad that all of his fly outs are close together, but I’m not looking forward to the next few weeks of waiting for job offer calls. In less than 8 weeks, we will know where our future home is going to be! I, for one, will be very glad to be finished with this whole ‘waiting thing.’ It’s entirely overrated.

Luckily, we have a few things to distract us while we wait:

1. Moving in together aka ‘finding space for all of Kim’s stuff’

2. Writing a dissertation and teaching 2 spring semester classes (him, not me)

3. Working 50+ hours a week launching a new paint brand nationwide (me, not him)

4. LAUNCHING A NEW BLOG!!! (you can guess which one of us this is)

What is your favorite airline to fly?

I always choose Southwest if I can.

On a scale of 1-10, how patient are you?

I’m a -3. 

We Survived the Econ Job Market

I just finished a marathon in Boston. No – not the Boston Marathon (yet!), the 2014 ASSA Econ Job Market marathon. The Boy is on the Job Market this year and it has been an interesting and exciting experience. For those of you outside of the Econ world, I feel like I need to explain how the job market works.

I’m writing this post as the soon-to-be-spouse AKA an outside observer AKA not an expert on the job market or economics (although I was forced to take 2 econ classes in my MBA program haha). There are plenty of resources out there in the interwebs for information on the Econ Job Market. I hope that someday, someone might find mine useful…but these might be even more useful:

• John Crawley's Job Market Advice Paper
• Noah Smith's "How I Survived the Econ Job Market" 
• J Anthony Cookson's "Job Market Memoir"

When a PhD candidate is in the 5^th year of their program, they begin to apply for jobs. The Boy is on the academic job market but obviously economists can have jobs outside of academia as well.  The Boy applied for almost 100 jobs (you can read about that HERE). He’s a micro guy and enjoys research on environmental and education topics. Teaching is his passion and applied to smaller liberal arts schools as well as larger research institutions. The Boy landed TWENTY-FIVE interviews. TWENTY-FIVE. Considering the average is 6 or 7, I’d say that’s pretty good :)

What’s cool about this round of interviews is that they are all held in one place – this year it was Boston. The interviews take place during the 3-day AEA conference. We weren’t able to get a room at the official conference hotel (they sell out fast!), but we were about two blocks away. ADVICE: hotel location is clutch. There are 25+ conference hotels and a candidate can have interviews at any of the locations. We were lucky to be right in the mix which made it easy to get from interview to interview. We arrived in Boston a day early and took the time to map out our routes for the 3 days. We knew there were a couple of transitions that would be tight so we walked them the night before so that we would be prepared. Before we walked the route, we had a Sam Adams (Boston, duh).

There are 100ish schools that host their interviews in “the big zoo.” Each school had a table in this huge conference room and we were given a map when we registered for the conference. I laughed at the awkwardness of it. It is so weird that you could interview with a school and a few hours later be interviewing with another school WITHIN EARSHOT of the first interview. Oh well – I guess it works!

The Boy (should I start calling him The Professor?) also had interviews at other hotels. In the other hotels, the interviews were held in the actual hotel rooms. At most places, I was able to camp out in the lobby while he interviewed. At some hotels, the lobby was PACKED with other candidates and we had to camp out in hallways. #classy

Interviews lasted an average of 30-45 minutes. This gave us 15-30 minutes to get from hotel to hotel. ADVICE: try to schedule interviews happening at the same hotel next to each other. The Boy did this and it was a lifesaver. It worked out well because he usually had a few minutes in between interviews to read his notes and prep. There were 2 interviews on Saturday that we literally had to run to. It was late in the day, we were tired, and it was snowing. I was laughing so hard, I could barely run! We were late to one of his interviews, but he called beforehand and the school was really understanding.

We were so tired at the end of each day it was all we could do to eat dinner and change into our pajamas. I am so proud of this guy – I don’t know how he survived. I was exhausted and all I had to do was keep the coffee coming and read my book :) He actually had to interview!

Our next step is to wait for flyouts. Over the next 2-3 weeks, the schools will be calling candidates for second interviews. Most schools interview 15-20 candidates in the first round and they fly their top 3 candidates out to visit the campus, meet the rest of the department, and present their research. The average number of flyouts a candidate receives is 2-3 (based on the 6-7 average first interviews). I have a feeling The Boy (The Professor?) will get more than that!

We have silver stars waiting to go on the map and are so ready to find out where we might be living next year. In the meantime, it’s back to the real world after a whirlwind “vacation.” Work for me – teaching and dissertation writing for The Boy.

Here are a few Job Market tips from the candidate himself

 (reworded and written by me):

• Be prepared for slow elevators. Interviews begin and end at the same time which means candidates are trying to enter and exit at the same time. Take the escalator if you can!
• Schedule your most important interviews earlier in the day when the interview committee {and you!} are fresh and energized.
• Take a travel buddy and make sure they have a copy of your schedule. Your brain will start to get fried and it’s nice to have someone who can get you to the next place on time.
• Have a backpack stocked with water, snacks, cell phone charger, towel, extra tie (The Boy is a spiller), etc
• Know about the people who will be interviewing you and be prepared with a list of specific questions for each school.
• Be yourself (but smooth your rough edges!). Remember that this is a match program and fitting in at the school and with the people is key to success.
• Have fun, laugh, and drink a beer at the end of the day.

Good luck to everyone on the market this year (and to everyone who is currently in the job search process).

Introducing: THE MAP

I haven’t talked about The Boy in a few posts so I figured I should give you an update on what he’s been up to down there in Kentucky.

He’s [FINALLY] starting to wrap up his PhD program at UT while teaching at Centre College. When he’s not busy researching or teaching, he’s starting to apply for jobs! His application process is unlike any other job application process I’ve ever heard of. For those of you who don’t know, The Boy wants to be a college professor [#NERD] and has been busting his butt these last few years to become the best Econ professor in the world!

Source: yes, you can actually buy this... 

In this strange world The Boy is living in, you start applying for the 2015 academic year in the fall of 2014. That means he started applying for jobs back in September. The average Job Market Candidate applies to over 100 schools while job searching. To keep track of all the schools The Boy applied to, we hung up: THE MAP.

Although it started with one little blue star, the map slowly started to fill up as Justin sent in applications all across the county. We are excited that there are tons of schools in PA and near KY that have job openings for 2015. 

The Boy is still submitting applications, but we’re now partially into Phase II of the process: waiting for interviews. The average Job Market Candidate (what they call students searching for jobs) will get 6 or 7 interviews. These interviews take place at the American Economic Association Annual Conference every year in January. Although it is still early in December, The Boy has already begun to receive calls for interviews from a few schools! We decided to mark the interviews with green stars on our map :)

The next few weeks will be pretty stressful for him as he finishes applying, accepts interviews, and preps for the AEA conference (and continues to teach and research). I’ve got my fingers crossed for a few schools closer to “home” to call him for an interview (home meaning Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Indiana…or pretty much any state in the Midwest…or Florida or California…).

By the time the New Year rolls around, we’ll know all of the schools that The Boy has interviews at and we’ll be heading to Boston for the Job Market so that he can get his interview on. After the first round of interviews, there will be a second round, and then [fingers crossed] the job offers will start rolling in.

Stay tuned for hopefully LOTS of silver and gold stickers in January and February (aka second interviews and job offers!). This process has been quite the adventure for the two of us and we are looking forward to finding out where The Boy will eventually be teaching.

If you could pick any state to live in, where would you live?

Is anyone willing to admit that Economics was their favorite subject in school?

Weekend in the ATL

The Boy and I took a trip down to Atlanta last weekend. He was speaking at the Southern Economic Conference and I tagged along because I love hotels and happy hours.

He loves car rides with me…

Traffic was pretty rough so we didn't get to the hotel until dinner time. We got checked in and headed straight to the local brewery, Max Lager’s. We got a flight of their beers so we could try all of the local brews. Justin liked all of the beers I didn’t and I liked all of the beers he didn’t. #meantforeachother

Justin had to present at 8am on Saturday. I woke up with him at 5:30 so he could run through his presentation one last time…and then I fell back asleep 10 minutes into the presentation. #bestfianceever When I finally decided to wake back up around 8am, I headed down to what I can only describe as the BEST hotel gym I have ever used and ran 3 miles.

Check it out! The Boy is FAMOUS!

I spent then entire day doing homework while Justin attended conference sessions all day. 6:00 took forever to roll around and I was more than ready for Happy Hour. Does anyone remember the Friends episode where they all go to Ross’s conference? 

It was pretty accurate…economists aren't quite as nerdy as TV paleontologists…but they’re a pretty close second :)

My favorite people in the world drove up to stay with us on Saturday night (pretend there is a picture here since I forgot to take one). On Sunday, Justin had to get up and attend more conference sessions while the rest of us slept in and played in the hotel room. 

The 20th Floor is SO HIGH UP!

On Sunday afternoon, we went to the World of Coca-Cola for a tour and tasting. It was a pretty neat place – there were lots of exhibits about the history of Coke and plenty of Coke art to see. I really enjoyed all of the decorated Coke bottles around the building.

We got to see the Coke Vault where the secret formula is locked away. Levi tried to steal it, but was not successful (bummer).

Did you know that in 1995, a Coke dispenser was sent to space on the Discovery shuttle?

We went to a 4D movie (which was a little lame, but probably would have been cool if we were 8) and then it was finally time for the tasting!

There were over 100 flavors of soda to try from around the world. Sodas from Africa were way to sweet. The had one that strait up tasted like toothpaste – so weird. We tried every single one from every single country. There were a few that I liked, but not many I would want to see at my grocery store! It’s pretty crazy how different taste buds are in other countries. Japan even had a “Vegitabeta” flavor.

At the end of the visit, everyone gets a free bottle of Coke! If you visit Atlanta, the World of Coca-Cola is definitely worth the $16 admission fee. After the tour, we had to pack up and head north again. It was a fantastic mini-vacation for me and Justin made a lot of connections at the conference. Now it’s back to the real world for a couple of days before we get a break from Thanksgiving.

Who’s been to Atlanta? World of Coca-Cola?

Who is traveling for Thanksgiving this week?