1. First, of course, determine whether you're ready to go on the market. One thing to bear in mind is that, over the past decade, having a substantially complete dissertation has emerged as a sine qua non. Used to be, you could promise to finish over the course of the year, and that was good enough. Not any more. A good rule of thumb is, if you can now schedule a dissertation defense around winter break, you're on track. If not, you may want to wait till next year.

2. Early in the fall, join the APA. You'll need to do this to have access to the online listings and attend the convention. If you join early enough, and check the right box, they'll send the paper version of Jobs for Philosophers (JFP) to you when it comes out.

3. Early in the fall, investigate postdocs. There are postdocs that are going to be better than some of the jobs out there, and some of them have early application deadlines (e.g., mid-October).

4. Your application should be ready to go by late October. You will need:
   1. Your CV. (Sample.)

      This sample should be modified, for these purposes, in two ways. Your cv should include a half-page description of your doctoral dissertation (making sure to motivate it for people who aren't in your field). And you want to keep it to three pages, tops. The rule of thumb for determining what counts as areas of specialization/competence: if you're about to publish in it, or if you're up for teaching a seminar in it with a summer's advance notice, it's an area of specialization; if you're up for teaching a middle level undergraduate course in it, with a summer's advance notice, it's an area of competence.

   2. Letters of recommendation (4). (Read my guide to letters of recommendation.) I suggest asking your recommenders to forward a copy of the letter to me for review well ahead of time; tell them it's at my request.

      Have the letters sent to Sunday Stanley. You will need to make sure she has a signed waiver form; she won't send out the packet without it.

   3. Your writing sample. My guidelines for graduate school application writing samples for the most part apply to job search samples as well, mutatis mutandis. Take the polish level completely seriously; if your sample isn't resume-perfect, you're just wasting your postage.

   4. If your transcript is presentable, have a copy of it included in the dossier. Not all schools want it, but enough will insist to make mailing them one by one a hassle.

   5. Teaching Portfolio. These vary, but may include
      • Syllabi of courses for which you've been the primary instructor
      • Course evaluations
      • Statement of Teaching Interests, or alternatively, your "Teaching Philosophy"
      • A summary of student commentary (usually written up by someone else)
      • Photocopies of student response forms

   6. Other supporting documents, if any (e.g., offprints of publications).

5. Schedule a Rosenblatt Junior presentation at which you will read your writing sample or job talk to assorted locals.

6. When the JFP arrives, sort the listings that match your AOSs and AOCs into three or four rough equivalence classes. (E.g., 'I'd really like these', 'I'd be happy if I ended up there', 'I guess so', and 'Ugh!'.) Then consult with the Placement Officer to determine which jobs it makes sense for you to apply for.

   Give Sunday Stanley a list, ordered by deadlines, of the places to which you are applying and the addresses to which your letters should be sent.

7. To each place at which you are applying, mail a packet containing everything but your confidential letters of recommendation (the department sends those out). You can do this yourself or have a service do it. It should include a letter of application; this should be short and to the point. (If there's a piece of information you need to convey, such as that you won't be around to interview, this might be the place to do it. But don't try to tell them why they should hire you; and don't make it lengthy. I'm not sure anyone reads these things at all, but they certainly don't read them when they look lengthy.)

8. Make hotel reservations at the Eastern APA. This should be done fairly early, since the student rate rooms tend to run out. Reservation forms can be found in the APA Proceedings or JFP.

9. Plane reservations should also be made early; it's a crowded time of the year to travel. Check APA publications for group rates.

10. Schedule a mock interview. I expect we'll be doing these mid-December or so. Expect to do badly in your mock interview; that's what it's for.

    Try not to be defensive. Remember that the interviews are not oral exams, but opportunities for you and your interviewers to see how much you like talking to each other.

    For interviews (mock and actual) you should prepare:

    1. A short (five minute) spiel about your thesis.

    2. Blurbs about how you would teach courses in your areas of specialization and competence. (Be ready to explain not only how you would teach some course, but why you would teach it that way. Why would you assign these texts, and not others? Do they form some sort of natural progression? Is starting the course the way you plan to a good way to engage students from the outset? Etc.) You should be able to describe courses at introductory and middle levels. One common mistake in preparing course descriptions is to target them too high. Choose readings that will seem accessible and interesting to freshmen, or whatever. You want to display pedagogical awareness.

    3. An answer to the question, "What are your post-thesis research interests likely to be?"

    4. An answer to the question, "What courses would you like to teach?"

    Please give the Placement Director copies of your cv, writing sample, and research statement or dissertation overview, to distribute to the interviewers.

11. Don't expect much by way of schools calling to set up interviews before mid-December. Interview scheduling will be pretty much over by December 20th or so.

    A point to bear in mind in scheduling interviews: Regardless of preparation, expect the first interview to go poorly. There's a steep learning curve that trades off with accumulating fatigue.

    Keep the Placement Director informed of what interviews you have as they turn up, and also of which interviews you've had, and how they went.

12. If all goes well, you should have callbacks -- that is, departments calling you to arrange flyouts to their school. Timing varies. A few places will actually make up their minds at the convention, and call you on the last day of the convention, or shortly thereafter. Most will wait until they reconvene after Christmas vacation, meaning that most of the callbacks will have happened by January 15th or so.

    Have the title of your job talk ready to give to departments that are calling you back.

Good luck!