The 2010 Job Market So Far

I'm having a hard time whipping up enthusiasm, either positive or negative, about the job market this year. One reason is that there aren't very many jobs I'm especially excited about. (Although I would be totally, completely stoked about any tenure-track job offer; there just isn't much in the way of "dream school" or "dream location" jobs this year. At least that I have a nonzero probability of getting.) Another, I think, is that there are so few jobs that it's hard to feel like I have a serious chance at getting anything. Looking at this JFP, it is simply not possible to send out a significant number of applications. Like last year. These facts seem to me to explain why I'm not feeling very positive. The other thing is, I feel like my file is much, much stronger than it has been in the past. I've had some significant professional accomplishments over the past year, and for the first time I feel like a legitimate contender for a tenure-line job (or, I would be if it weren't for the fact that there are no jobs and a billion people on the market who would normally have been hired in the last three years but weren't). So I don't feel particularly bad about things this year, either. I feel very medium.

The other thing is that I've blogged my way through the process before. Looking at the numbers, we've clearly got a lot of readers who weren't with us last year, but still. As a job market old-timer, I don't feel like I have a fresh perspective on this. It's sort of hard for me to believe that anyone is the least bit interested in reading what "Mr. Zero" thinks about anything; it's all the more difficult for me to believe that there is an audience for a second annual post about how much I hate the online-application process. On the other hand, maybe there is an audience for this, and maybe the whole point of being an anonymous blogger is that I get to write about whatever I want, whether anybody is interested in reading it or not. So maybe there's an "I hate online job applications, part II" coming up.

So anyways, that's kind of where I'm at right now, and that's kind of why I haven't been posting much, even though this is our big time of year, readership-wise.

--Mr. Zero