Collaborating with the Competition: Professional Support for the Job Market

The elation of successfully defending my dissertation and of earning my PhD was overshadowed by the agonizing uncertainty of the job market. I applied for the same positions as a half-dozen of my own cohort, often with the same faculty members providing our letters of recommendation. At a time when I most needed professional support, I was moving across the country for a visiting position and attempting to integrate myself temporarily into this new community, socially and professionally. A quick perusal of online job forums revealed cut-throat competition, rampant anxiety, and outright toxicity rather than collegial dialogues. Inside our group, members were also competing for the same positions, but we interpreted job postings together, read and critiqued each other’s research and teaching portfolios, hosted online mock job talks and teaching demonstrations, and developed interview questions and negotiation skills. After investing for years in each other’s graduate research, writing, and teaching, we were often better able to articulate one another’s strengths than we could our own. Victory cupcakes were now sent by long-distance delivery rather than shared in person, but the transformation of our graduate writing group into an increasingly online but regular academic community was essential. My talk discusses the necessity of shared practical expertise and collective experience in navigating the job market. Not only did this support facilitate individual successes on the job market but also our transitions into professional careers as we began to cultivate professional networks in our new institutions.