There are long lists of things interview committees cannot ask about during an interview, but if the candidate volunteers information (in person or on their webpage, for example) that is different. In theory, such information should typically have no bearing on the hiring process, but in reality committees consist of humans with strong human prejudices about the oddest things. The job search process is a tough one and it is pretty random. I’ve seen lots of dreadful things from both sides of many searches. The reality is that people judge you on lots of ridiculous things.

It’’s worth mentioning that webpages can work both ways, at least to some extent in that when I’ve been on the market in the past, I’ve looked at weblogs to see what institutions may be checking me out. And I noticed what pages they looked at. And what parts of my colleagues’ and some rivals’ pages they look at. Fair or not, candidates need to keep it mind.

Clarification- when I mentioned “professional” web page, I didn’t mean professional as in done by a professional, I meant professional as in “professional behavior”- a simple page with contact info, publications, projects, schedule is a reasonable thing to expect someone to have. The primary thing should be your profession. Sub-pages on your interests are fine but if they dominate the page, that is not a good thing by most people’s standards.

A good read for people interested in academic positions is “Ms. Mentor’s Impeccable Advice for Women in Academia.” It’s funny but true, and it’s got a lot of interesting things in there, many not applicable to science, but many eye-openers across the board. Many of my male colleagues have found it interesting/useful as well, as it really covers a broad spectrum of issues.

Thank you for writing one of these every few months. I just my finished my first year of graduate school so my website must be the 173rd most important thing for me, but I’m sure I’ll spend a few hours going through these sometime around 2010 or 2011.

99.9% of people tenured in 20 years from now won’t care about their web pages as well just because they have other things to worry about. If you are in a field that google is the only source of useful information, you doomed to get random people anyway.

Once I was considering someone for a postdoc. I clicked on his website and all I could find was kitchen recipes (very good ones, at that). I phoned his advisor and the next day the page was fine – and the recipes where still there, which I appreciated. If you have a large extra-academia activity, consider putting it on a non-department page and just add a link.

My own webpage sucks, but I’m tenured so I don’t care .

By the way, when I speak of a “professional” web page, I don’t mean something slick or modern necessarily: bare-bones HTML is fine as long as the content is reasonably serious.

A particularly delicate issue concerns two-body problems. Often, a candidate with a significant two-body problem may not mention it on their application, but it may be quite obvious from their web presence. I’ve been on both sides of this question far too many times and I don’t know the best way of addressing it, but it certainly becomes more likely to become an issue with googling/searching. When I have applied for positions, I typically mentioned explicitly that my partner is also applying for positions at the same department/ same institution/ same city/ same region, but a number of other people work hard to conceal their two-body problems from search committees. Our attitude has been- its going to be an issue eventually, we may as well get it on the table and not go through the hassle of interviews if it is going to be a huge problem later. Other people have felt that any mention of a constraint relegates their application to the circular file. Different strategies have worked well and poorly for people we know, so I can’t recommend one strategy over another, as there are many variables.

So, in my opinion, go ahead and put up salsa dancing pictures. Just avoid the blinking text. If we want to read things that are written in a gray, formalized style and avoid the first-person or any self-expression, we can read the ApJ.