Brian W. O'Shea - Academic Job Searches


home
news
join us! research
teaching
gallery
contact
links
software
misc.
cv / bio

A (hopefully practical and useful) guide to getting a faculty job

On June 6, 2017, I gave a talk at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics 2017 Frontiers In Nuclear Astrophysics Meeting (specifically, at the Junior Researchers workshop that takes place immediately preceeding it) on "a guide to getting a faculty job." I spent quite a bit of time soliciting feedback from a variety of colleagues who have experiences many aspects of academic job searches, and incorporated that into the talk. I gave a significantly updated and expanded version of this at a workshop for the MSU Postdoctoral Association on May 7, 2020. As a reference for the people who attended the talk/workshop, and in hope that this is useful to a broader audience, I'm collecting everything here:

Talk slides (2020 talk) (pdf).

Extended outline of the 2020 MSU PDA talk, which has much more text (and possibly more bullet points and useful information) than the slides.

Note: here are the talk slides and Extended outline from the 2017 talk.

Useful resources (I will update this as I find more)

Information on writing diversity statements

Places to look for jobs

Some acknowledgments

Many, many thanks to Ed Brown, Danny Caballero, Vashti Sawtelle, Elizabeth Simmons, Jay Strader, and Steve Zepf for giving thoughtful feedback on my talk outline! Also, thanks to the organizers of the JINA Young Investigators meeting for inviting me to give a talk on this, which gave me the opportunity to distill the wisdom of my various colleagues.