D-U-N Done!

Well, almost. I still have one packet to mail out. I tried to submit it via e-mail, but was told that electronic submissions were not being accepted. Still, the packet is made up, addressed, and stamped. So you can stick a fork in me.

Of course, now the hard part is here: the waiting. Even if departments start looking at the packets before Thanksgiving (and not all of them do), it seems like the earliest I could expect a call or e-mail to schedule an interview in Atlanta would be around the second week in December. That means I have almost a month to wait and hope and worry. That doesn't seem like a lot of fun.

As for the application process, I didn't like physically mailing out packets, mainly because I felt I was sending them into the void. There's no response of "Hey, thanks, we got your packet." I may have to call a few places next week and ask if they received it, just to be on the safe side. The e-mail applications were my favorite. Not only were they the easiest (although econjobmarket.org was pretty easy too), but they often e-mailed back and said thanks for applying, we got your stuff. Very nice.

I still have a bit of (minor) work I would like to do on my paper before my interviews and any flyouts. Also, I need to work on my job paper talk. I had a sort of pre-interview with the Federal Reserve Board last week and I found myself jumping around too much in explaining my work. I'll have to write something down and practice a bit so it's a little more understandable.

Applications, Application, Applications

So, I'm also done with my applications. I'm applying to more than 100 jobs, including a lot of liberal arts colleges, a lot of universities, and a bunch of government agencies (including most of the Fed banks). I'm also applying to a handful of research institutes that focus on interesting areas.

I first sent out the 34 applications that required hard copies. A lot of the liberal arts colleges wanted hard copy applications which generally included a letter, cv, teaching evaluations, and my job market paper. Some also wanted a teaching statement, research statement, and graduate transcript. I printed everything out at home (so my printer needs a new toner cartridge) and sent them out priority or first class. All together, it only cost about $40 (plus the toner cartridge).

Then I filled out the web site applications. The ones that were on econjobmarket.org (started by our own John Rust) were fairly easy, although there wasn't always a place to put a cover letter. Maybe they didn't want letters. The applications that had their own web form to fill out was a bigger pain. They all seemed to have bought the same software package which had four to five separate pages to fill out and had mostly (but not completely) the same questions.

Finally, I'm sending out the applications that just want an e-mail with attachments. These are fairly easy, and I only have about 10 left. The one thing I keep trying (mostly successfully) not to screw up is the cover letter. So far I haven't (to my knowledge) sent a cover letter to one school with another school's name in it, but I may have said I was including something that the last school wanted and this school didn't. Hopefully, they won't notice.

With over 100 applications, and a fairly wide net, I'm hoping to get at least 10-15 interviews in January. We'll see if I can keep my fingers crossed until then.