EconSpark - Recent questions in Job Market - JOE

How to know if application is sent?

Wed, 03 Nov 2021 16:18:07 +0000

Hello, how can I know if a complete application has been sent to the university? The candidate dashboard indicates that an application is complete, but does this mean that it has been sent to the university? Thanks!

Why does JOE charge on a per word basis for ads?

Mon, 07 Oct 2019 15:23:05 +0000

The JOE pricing scheme charges on a per word basis (more accurately $400 per 200 words). Many schools and, I suspect state schools specifically, face institutional constraints on what they must include in their ads. At my school, ads must be approved at the central university level and include a lot of institutional boiler-plate over which we have no discretion and there are requirements to post the ad in full. This leads to an ad of over 1,000 words and a listing fee on JOE of $2,400: around the cost of an additional fly-out. It means that this year we won't list on JOE and will instead just run with econjobmarket.org. I suspect that we are not alone in this predicament and that this issue hits more-bureaucratized state universities particularly hard. I don't see a compelling rationale for the current pricing scheme for posting a digital ad.

How to deal with the silence after the AEA interviews, or after flyouts....?

Sat, 05 Jan 2019 21:05:26 +0000

This is really more a comment, with other comments being welcome.

The next part of the job market can be the toughest part in part because of the waiting/silence.
Both after the AEAs there is some waiting. Then after you do a flyout there might be more waiting.

In this time period while you wait, you might ask what you did wrong. The answer generally is nothing at all. I've been on numerous search committees at this point and most people do really well in their interview. But we can't fly out 25 people. And usually we can't offer jobs to all of the 3-4 who visit per line. So unfortunately there are a TON of great candidates that we interview that we never get to flyout. And likewise when individuals visit for a flyout most people are "above the bar" whenever we have discussed how to make offers. I'd usually love to hire 10-15 people coming out of the meetings, but we don't have the budget for it (and if we made 15 offers, probably only 1/3 to 1/2 would strongly consider it).

Patience is key. Control what you can control. Work on your slides. Work on your next paper. Stalking the AEA job market list, or the job wiki won't help. Focus what is endogenous to you (what you work on, and your mental health) and ignore the exogenous parts.

The good news is that even the market clusters a bit (the flyout distribution is really skewed), even the most talented people can only take 1 job. So eventually stuff speeds up. To everyone who is stressed, excited, and waiting I feel your pain, and so does nearly everyone else no on the demand side. On the rejection front, I feel your pain too. Even as a senior person, I've been rejected for jobs I've been solicited to apply to (including 1 where I was solicited to apply in consecutive years). When rejection happens, it doesn't mean you don't have huge fans in the department or that the majority of people didn't want to hire you. It just means collective preferences are weird to aggregate.

What should I put in "message to employer" when signaling?

Wed, 28 Nov 2018 01:18:27 +0000

There is a box that says "message to employer" when filling out the signaling form. If I recall correctly, this box was not there when I was on the market two years ago. Should I put something in it? I think that my cover letter should convey my interest and fit, so I'm not sure what this will add.

Matching Recommender System for the Econ Job Market

Mon, 05 Nov 2018 18:45:16 +0000

The job market involves common difficulties for both hiring committees and job candidates. Sometimes, search committees shoot too high, leaving the department with few options when those candidates fall through. Other times, departments bypass candidates they thought were out of reach, and they learn, too late, that the candidate would have preferred their offer to the one they accepted.

In parallel, candidates struggle because they have limited tools to credibly signal interest in jobs, a fact that makes both sides of the market worse off. It's particularly difficult for job candidates to signal useful information because they don't know what their option set will be; their interest in any particular job is contingent on available alternatives.

We've made a tool that helps solve these issues for both search committees and job candidates. The tool (EconMatch.com) takes preference-rankings from employers and candidates, after the AEA interviews (by midnight January 8), and then uses them to recommend each employer the top five “gettable” candidates using an adaption of the traditional matching algorithm. These recommendations represent an employer’s best (most preferred) attainable candidates. Moreover, the process allows candidates to credibly signal interest to their favorite, attainable employers.

Some candidates might worry that employers will learn they were not the candidates’ top choice. We preserve candidates’ privacy by limiting the recommended list to five names and blurring out one in five recommendations. Therefore, the hiring committee cannot infer that the candidate was not interested in the position if a candidate is not recommended. So participation helps you when recommended and doesn't reveal your preferences when you aren't.

We're rolling out a fully functional beta version of the tool this Fall, and we have gotten encouraging responses from several departments as well as a few interested economic associations. If you’re a candidate or search chair this year, we would value your feedback as you participate in the match. We’ve learned a lot just from questions and concerns people have posed. Feel free to post here or email me directly at econmatch@gmail.com.

If you're anything like me, you might find our five-minute video for candidates (https://youtu.be/YKkQzdIUX7k) and for employers (https://youtu.be/w8qGv0g6VAY) clarifying how to use the tool and why it's useful.

Thank you very much, and I look forward to learning from your suggestions. We hope to help you have a better job market.

EconTrack is up

Thu, 25 Oct 2018 13:24:47 +0000

Seems that no one has mentioned here that the AEA has made a start at a new service, EconTrack, which posts employer-by-employer information about the progress of the job market. The url is https://www.aeaweb.org/econtrack/posts/table.

What is a good way to get the attention of an appealing employer through JOE?

Thu, 23 Aug 2018 16:34:25 +0000

I am looking for tips to get my foot in the door with an employer. I plan on attending ASSA 2019 already, but would like to stand out before that point. Has anyone had any interesting interactions that led to success on the JOE platform?