Do you want to find a job in academia after your PhD? The Econ Job Market is a platform designed to help you. Even though it may be stressful at times, according to Diya Abraham, a PhD student at the Department of Public Economics, joining it definitely pays off.
The Econ Job Market or EJM is a centralized portal for job ads in Economics. Potential employers post job ads for people who have or are close to getting their PhD in Economics. Academic as well as non-academic positions are posted there. Universities post ads with deadlines in November for positions starting the following September. Potential applicants can register on the EJM platform and upload their CV, job market paper, teaching and research statements and letters of reference. These documents are referred to as the “job market package” of the applicant. The letters of reference are strictly confidential – they are added by the applicant’s referees, who need to have their own account on the EJM in order to upload their letters. Once they have done so, the applicant will see that the letters have been uploaded but will not be able to view the content of these letters. Once the package is ready, applicants can send it to potential employers with just a few clicks.
The first round of interviews is the next step. These are usually scheduled in early December. In the last few years, this first round took place online. Each interview typically lasts for about 20 or 30 minutes, during which the candidate delivers their “spiel” which is the summary of their job market paper, which is an academic paper written by the candidate, and gets asked questions about research and/or teaching. If the candidate passes this round, the prospective employer flies them out for an on-campus interview. This usually happens in January and February. Offers are made shortly after. As far as I know, most universities who use the EJM receive at least 100 applications, often even more. They may call about 20 people for the first-stage interview, and about 7 of them would progress to the next “fly out” stage.
I learnt about the EJM in the second year of my PhD. At the time, it was just sinking in for me that there are a lot more people with PhDs in Economics who want to remain in academia than there are tenured professor positions in Economics. Before I went on the market, I heard about “job market boot camps” that prepared PhD candidates for the job market. I never went through a job market boot camp, and I still think this is a bit dramatic and unnecessary, but it gives you a sense of how important this period is for PhD graduates. In my case, I got my job market package ready, submitted it to many places and then just waited to see if I would get any interview calls. I had a fairly good experience on the market compared to some stories I’ve heard.
There was quite a bit of rejection but in the end, I think it was totally worth it. I applied to roughly 110 positions and received interview calls from about 25 of them. Three of these I needed to turn down because the interview calls came after I had already accepted a position and withdrawn from the market. Of the remaining 22 interviews I went for, 10 of them invited me for the second “fly-out” stage and 5 made offers. This year, the first stage interviews were all virtual, and half of my “fly-outs” were virtual as well. I went to four places in person – Luxembourg, Verona, Budapest, and Sydney. I was supposed to go to Reading, UK, but could not get a visa in time so ended up doing my Reading interview via Zoom from Verona! All these online and in-person fly-outs took place in January and February, so these months were action-packed and very stressful.
I did not hear back from the large majority of places I applied to. Since the marginal cost of applying to any position is very low, most employers will receive well over a hundred applications, so they mostly just write back to the people who they select for the interview. To tell the truth, I preferred places not getting back to me at all to receiving a rejection letter from them – rejection is a hard pill to swallow. I remember receiving a rejection letter as I was heading into a job talk, and this was difficult because I had to appear happy and enthusiastic about research when inside I felt anything but.
The ones who got back to me before the first stage interview did so within three weeks. But after the first stage interview is when the rejection really stings. This is because before that, you can imagine that your application just got lost in the pile. But after the interview, after they have met you and talked with you for twenty minutes or so, you start to wonder what you did wrong and why you weren’t good enough. The truth is that it is often just not in the candidate’s control and there is a lot of luck involved. There needs to be a good fit between the candidate’s research agenda and that of the department. By the fifth rejection, I did not take it personally anymore.
I received offers from the IESEG School of Management in Paris, Corvinus University in Budapest, University of Reading in the UK, Tilburg University and University of Bologna.
I chose the University of Reading because I have family in the UK and being close to them is important to me. It is also in an English-speaking country, and I don’t speak any language other than English. In addition, I value job security. The position at the University of Reading is essentially a tenure-track Assistant Professor position and it is not too difficult to get permanent status at the end of a three-year probation period. Moreover, the position is in an Economics department and they have a behavioural laboratory with researchers doing work similar to what I do now, so lots of scope for collaboration! However, admittedly, if I only cared about research, Tilburg would have been better choice for me than Reading, and if I only cared about money, perhaps it would have been IESEG. But a lot of factors come into play in these types of decisions and in the end, my choice was based not only on my own personal preferences but also on that of my partner and just thinking about where the two of us would be happiest in the long term.
Definitely go on the EJM! You will never know unless you try and there is a high chance that if you take it seriously, you will succeed. I was, quite honestly, very surprised at the response I got, given how competitive I knew the market to be. I went into it thinking I will be happy if I get one offer and ended up with five. It is an amazing feeling to know that people want to work with you. Also, even if luck is not on your side and you don’t end up getting offers, if you have interviews and fly-outs, you will still be building a network by visiting these places and talking with the people there. You will get to present your work to academics in many different fields of economics and they may keep you in mind in case other positions turn up in the future.
First, do a research stay abroad and build your academic network because some day, you might be able to ask the people you met on your research stay to write you a recommendation letter. This will go a long way if they have published well in your field. I had three amazing letter writers who even sent personalized emails to people they knew in many of the places I was applying to in order to make sure my application got noticed. I also had other senior academics who were not my letter writers who did the same thing for me once I told them I was on the market.
The second thing, which is equally important, is to have a compelling job market paper. It is never too early to start working on this. Present it as often as you can before the market starts. Get feedback on all your work whenever you can, but especially on your job market paper. Finally, do mock interviews and mock job talks with people in your field. The advice you get from senior researchers will be invaluable.
It is indeed stressful, and you can even get frustrated with the process. For example, sometimes you may get an “exploding offer,” which means they will give you a deadline to accept or reject the offer. The market moves quickly and they need to move on to the next person on their list in case you reject. For the candidate, this is difficult because it means making a decision about a place before knowing what other offers might come. This happened to me twice and it wasn’t great, especially with the very first offer – it was a very nice offer and it was so tempting to just take it and end all the uncertainty.
There is also plenty of rejection and it is difficult not to take it personally. I will say, however, that for the amount of effort you put in, the payoff will be more than worth it. The EJM is the most efficient way to find a job in academia after a PhD. And one thing that is worth keeping in mind: your academic community will rally around you if you decide to go on the market. Everyone knows that this is not an easy period, and if your professors, mentors, and fellow PhD candidates are anything like mine, they will support you in any way they can. This makes a huge difference.
I am a behavioural and experimental economist and I explore questions related to trust, reciprocity, and cooperative behaviour in a variety of social settings. In my research, I study, with my co-authors, how people behave at work when they feel trusted or distrusted by their employer, what drives individual efforts to mitigate climate change and how to increase the level of trust and trustworthiness in an online marketplace. Most recently, I am working on discrimination – in particular, I am exploring whether people exhibit more discrimination on some dimension of their social identity, be it gender, ethnicity, education level or social class, when they feel excluded or discriminated against themselves on this very dimension.
Absolutely, I will be able to continue my research at Reading! A big part of the reason I chose Reading is that I would be able to continue running laboratory and field studies to explore the questions I am most curious about in a stimulating environment with plenty of people who share my specific research interests.
Diya Abraham is a behavioural and experimental economist. She got her Bachelor in Mathematics from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University and her Master in Economics and Management from Mendel University. She is currently doing her Ph.D. in Economics both at Masaryk University and at the Vienna University of Economics and Business, where she also teaches Game Theory. Diya hopes to submit both her dissertations by the end of May 2023 and conditional on a successful defence will join the University of Reading as a Lecturer in September 2023.
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