It seems like only a blink of an eye ago that I was on the job market, scared silly about the future and hoping to establish the knowledge, skill set and track record (and have enough plain luck) to land a faculty position. For a young physicist, during one of possibly several postdocs, those are both exhilarating and terrifying times, during which one has precious little else to do apart from one’s research, but has absolutely no job security whatsoever.
For many people in this position (most of us, let’s be honest), part of their “free time” is spent trying to figure out who among their peers is being interviewed for which jobs, and, if it is a job for which they themselves have interviewed, whether the job has been offered to someone else yet.
Once, this might have been a lengthy task, involving surreptitious phone calls, sometimes through intermediaries, to glean whatever information one could from the organic “rumor mill”. However, by the time I started looking for jobs, the process had become much easier thanks, naturally, to the Internet.
The prime source for information about jobs in theoretical particle physics groups is the Theoretical Particle Physics Jobs Rumor Mill, which was the main site I would visit for gossip when I was on the market. I think it was somewhat later that the Astrophysics Jobs Rumor Mill came along, which was also occasionally relevant to me and certainly involved a lot of people I know. Since then, rumor sites have sprung up in Austria/Germany/Switzerland/Denmark, Greece, New Zealand and the U.K.. Other subfields have also followed suit, in Nuclear Physics and Condensed Matter/AMO Physics.
The rumor mill sites elicit mixed reactions in the community. Most people who are on the market seem to like them and find them to provide a desirable service. Among search committee members feelings are less homogeneous; some are unperturbed about their, and others’, shortlists being public, while some clearly feel they have a right to keep the information secret.
There are a couple of different worries that I have heard some candidates and more people on the other side express about the rumor mills. The first is merely that the deliberations of hiring committees and the resulting offers they make are the private business of the universities and the candidates and nobody else’s business. They understandably don’t like the idea that, for example, if they make an offer to their first choice candidate and are turned down, then when they make their next offer it will be to someone who knows they weren’t the first choice.
The second worry is that there is a fear of a herd mentality developing, in which once it becomes clear that a couple of universities have decided on the same number one choice, this may influence the decisions at other institutions. After all, several fine institutions can’t all be wrong about a particular person being the best choice, can they?
From my perspective, having been on both sides of the hiring process, there is some merit to each of these worries. There is often very little separating the exceptional people who make it to an ordered list of people to whom a position will be offered, and if one is, say, third on the list and is ultimately offered the job, it is seldom a reflection on your absolute talent. I think the rumor mills can make it harder to see past that, when the information is clearly out there for anyone to see.
A herd mentality can sometimes develop, it is true. Often its only effect is to slow down the process as one person garners multiple offers and then sits on them for a while negotiating with the various institutions. Sometimes, however, this can derail the hiring process at some places. On the other hand, if an institution does not follow the herd, the information provided by the rumor mill can be invaluable, enabling the hiring committee to make an attractive offer to someone else, and to snap them up while other institutions are tied up playing the waiting game.
However, my attitude to the rumor mills has always been that the various pros and cons I’ve identified above are, at the end of the day, irrelevant. If one thing is clear on the Internet, it is that information that is out there will be made public whether one likes it or not. All that technology does in this situation is to formalize, simplify and make very efficient, the dissemination of the kind of gossip that people have always shared in the community. Like it or not, one just has to live with it – what are you gonna do?
This week, I learned from my friends at Berkeley – cosmologists Martin White and Joanne Cohn – that rumor mill technology is taking another leap forward. Joanne and Martin have set up an Astrophysics Job Rumor Mill wiki which, rather than individuals emailing in their information to a moderator, as they do now, can be directly edited by all contributors. As Martin put it
The idea is to take some of the burden off of the person(s) running the Astrophysics Job Rumour Mill by letting lots of different people edit a Wiki. A successful Wiki could result in an accurate and up-to-date page with little work for any one person if the community embraces it.
If you’re interested in how our rumors get propagated, take a look; and if you’re in the field and use the rumor mills, I’m sure Martin and Joanne would be interested in any feedback you might have.
July 17th, 2006 at 8:33 am
The rumor mills are very interesting, and I agree with pretty much everything you’ve said. My own job search happened before the advent of the AMO/CM rumor mill, but it didn’t matter – I knew who my competitors were, and they knew about me. There were about six of us all interviewing for the same jobs, and in the end two folks collected the offers from the most top-ranked schools that were looking. All the schools also knew that those two had multiple offers. They both ended up at one institution with extremely lucrative start-up packages, and the rest of us then locked into place as most schools (presumably) dropped down to their second choices. In a game of such small numbers, one has to get used to the idea of not necessarily being the first choice. My institution had been trying to fill my slot for over two years. In the end, all of us that were part of that cohort get along amicably, and the twinges of jealousy about start-up have faded with time
The whole dynamic is very hard for non-academics to grasp, though – it’s almost like casting a movie or drafting athletes than a typical employment search.
July 17th, 2006 at 9:47 am
Just to note – the Astrophysics Rumour Mill you cite was a latecomer, but the one that made the radical move to publish names.
Pat Hall ran the original Astronomy Rumour Mill which only published status of positions (short-list/interviews/offers/job gone), not the names involved.
The “named” rumour mills are useful, but they also get gamed by the people involved, on both sides, and occasionally make errors that hurt people – although to be fair errors are usually rapidly corrected since they are public.
July 17th, 2006 at 10:10 am
Rumour is that…
Mark at CosmiVariance passes on a rumour that there is a new Astro Job Rumour Wiki…
July 17th, 2006 at 12:02 pm
New Rumour Mill
Are you a physicist, or an astrophysicist, looking for an academic job, mainly in the US? Check the market in the new Astrophysics Rumour Mill, mantained by Martin White. Even better, if you know of some rumour, you can put it there by yourself
. …
July 17th, 2006 at 12:19 pm
I’m in favor of the rumor mills as a general rule, since I think they give power to the job seekers, who otherwise would often find themselves in the completely powerless position of being strung along for months on end with no idea of where they stand. I also think they tend to even the playing field between those with good connections (gregarious advisers, friends in high places, money to travel and hear the gossip at other institutions) and those without. As Mark said, the information will leak out one way or another, so bravo for anything that ensures equal access to it.
Of course, one has always to keep in mind the nature of gossip, which is often inaccurate, malicious, self-serving, and/or incomplete. So I think it’s best not to afford too much significance to rumor-mill information. Accepting its limitations may be the best way to avoid some of the unfortunate effects that any gossip can generate. My personal policy is to post only rumors about myself unless someone else explicitly asks me to post about them (which has happened) or approves my publicizing their information.
I think the astro wiki is a great idea, and can’t wait to see how it develops!
July 17th, 2006 at 1:08 pm
I have been on both sides of the fence, both as a job applicant and search committee member.
The job market is just that — a market, and as a rule markets work more efficiently when all the players are well-informed. The rumor mills are incomplete and occasionally inaccurate, but they do a lot to demystify the process for both the hiring departments and the applicants.
I am very sympathetic to arguments based on personal privacy, and in my experience the rumor mill managers will withold information if someone asks them to do so (particularly in the case where a person with an existing faculty appointment is applying for a job elsewhere). However, my experience is that if you are shortlisted, the department will tell you when it has made an offer elsewhere — especially if they want you to know that you are their “back up” candidate, since they don’t want you to take a job at some other place without checking in with them first.
To my mind, the single “new” piece of information provided by the rumor mill is that it gives you some insight into the inner working of the committee, since the advertisement will usually be couched in fairly broad terms — whereas the shortlist will better reflect the prejudices and aspirations of the committee.
When I was on the market I was on the same short-lists as several close friends and collaborators (one place interviewed me and two of my officemates, and hired one of them). We agreed to share all information that was not explicitly provided to us in confidence, and it kept us happy and civil through the whole process…
July 17th, 2006 at 4:32 pm
the internet is a great equalizer as it tends to even out the information advantage. Most applicants are pretty desperate for a position, so my tiny violins are playing for universities for being unable to hide this fact.
On the other hand, it may prevent situations where the school makes their choice and is simply too lazy to send out a “you are no longer being considered” letter to other candidates, which forces people to hang on to their dreams of landing that job, and perhaps rejecting some other offers, in the process of holding out.
Schools complaining about rumor mills is like life insurance salesman complaining about internet insurance quotes, or car salesman complaining about Carfax Vehicle reports, or home saleseman complaining about zillow.com.
The internet has taken away some of their unfair information advantage against consumer… terrible, terrible times we live in *eye-roll*