I’d been meaning, for a while now, to write a post about how I got my permanent job. It lands a bit differently now that I’ve given that job up, but I think the post is still worth making.

Note that, while I know how things felt like, I don’t have “inside information” here. I don’t know why the hiring committee chose me, I never really got to the point where I could comfortably ask that. And I didn’t get to the point where I was on a hiring committee myself, so I never saw from the inside how they work.

Even if I had, “how I got a job” isn’t the kind of thing that has one simple answer. Academic jobs aren’t like commercial airlines or nuclear power plants, where every fail-safe has to go wrong to cause disaster. They aren’t like the highest reaches of competition in things like athletics, where a single mistake will doom you. They’re a mess of circumstances, dozens of people making idiosyncratic decisions, circumstances and effort pulling one way or another. There’s nothing you can do to guarantee yourself a job, nothing you can do so badly to screw up your chance of ever finding one, and no-one who can credibly calculate your chances.

What I can tell you is what happened, and what I eventually did differently. I started applying for permanent and tenure-track jobs in Fall 2019. I applied to four jobs that year, plus one fixed-term one: I still had funding for the next year, so I could afford to be picky. The next year, my funding was going to run out, so I applied more widely. I sent twenty-three applications, some to permanent or tenure-track jobs, but some to shorter-term positions. I got one tenure-track interview (where I did terribly), and two offers for short-term positions. I ended up turning both down after getting a surprise one-year extension where I was.

The next year was a blur of applications. From August 2021 to June 2022, I applied to at least one job every month, 45 jobs in total, and got either rejected or ghosted by all of them. I got a single interview, for a temporary position (where I again did pretty poorly). I was exhausted and heartsick, and when I was offered another one-year extension I didn’t know what to think about it.

So, I took a breath, and I stopped.

I talked to a trusted mentor, who mentioned my publications had slowed. To remedy that, I went back to three results and polished them up, speeding them out to the arXiv paper server in September. Readers of this blog know them as my cabinet of curiosities.

I got some advice from family, and friends of family. I’m descended from a long line of scientists, so this is more practically useful than it would be for most.

More important than either of those, though, I got some therapy. I started thinking about what I cared about, what mattered to me. And I think that there, from that, I figured out my real secret, the thing that ended up making the biggest difference. It wasn’t something I did, but how I thought and felt about it.

My secret to finding an academic job? Knowing you don’t need one.

I’m not saying I didn’t want the position. There were things I wanted to accomplish, things that get a lot easier with the right permanent academic job. But I realized that if I didn’t get it, it wasn’t the end of the world. I had other things I could look into, other paths that would make me happy. On one level, I almost relished the idea of the search not working, of getting some time to rediscover myself and learn something new.

If you’ve ever been lonely, someone has warned you against appearing too desperate. This always seemed patently unfair, as if people are bigoted against those who need companionship the most. But from this job search, I’ve realized there’s another reason.

During that year of applications, the most exhausting part was tailoring. In order for an application to have a chance, I’d need to look up what the other professors in the place I was applying did, come up with a story for how we might collaborate, and edit those stories in to my application materials. This took time, but worse, it felt demeaning. I was applying because I wanted a job, any job, not because I wanted to work with those particular people. It felt like I was being forced to pretend to be someone else, to feign interest in the interests of more powerful people, again and again, when almost all of them weren’t even going to consider my application in the first place.

Then, after realizing I didn’t need the jobs? I tailored more.

I read up on the research the other profs were doing. I read up on the courses the department taught, and the system to propose new courses. I read up on the outreach projects, and even the diversity initiatives.

How did I stand that, how did I stomach it? Because my motivation was different.

Once I knew I didn’t need the job, I read with a very different question in mind: not “how do I pretend I’m good enough for the job”, but, “is the job good enough for me?”

In that final search, I applied to a lot fewer positions: just ten, in the end. But for each position, I was able to find specific reasons why it would be good for me, for the goals I had and what I wanted to accomplish. I was able to tolerate the reading, to get through the boilerplate and even write a DEI essay I wasn’t totally ashamed of, because I looked at each step as a filter: not a filter that would filter me out, but a filter that would get rid of jobs that I didn’t actually want.

I don’t know for certain if this helped: academic jobs are still as random as they come, and in the end I still only got one interview. But it felt like it helped. It gave me a confidence others lacked. It let me survive applying that one more time. And because I asked the right questions, questions based on what I actually cared about, I flattered people much more effectively than I could have done by intentionally trying to flatter them.

(I think that’s an insight that carries over to dating too, by the way. Someone trying to figure out what they want is much more appealing than someone just trying to get anyone they can, because the former asks the right questions.)

In the end, I suspect my problem is that I didn’t take this attitude far enough. I got excited that I was invited to interview, excited that everyone seemed positive and friendly, and I stopped asking the right questions. I didn’t spend time touring the area, trying to figure out if there were good places to live and functional transit. I pushed aside warning signs, vibes in the group and bureaucracy in the approach. I didn’t do the research I should have to figure out if my wife and I could actually make it work.

And I’m paying for it. Going back to Denmark after six months in France is not nearly as easy, not nearly as straightforward, as just not accepting the job and looking for industry jobs in Copenhagen would have been. There’s what my wife endured in those six months, of course. But also, we won’t have the same life that we did. My wife had to quit her job, a very good long-term role. She’ll have to find something else, taking a step back in her career. We were almost able to apply for permanent residency. We should talk to an immigration lawyer, but I’m guessing we’ll have to start again from scratch. We were saving up for an apartment, but Danish banks get skittish about giving loans if you’re new to the country. (Though as I’ve learned on my job search, some of these banks are considering changing how they evaluate credit risk…so maybe there’s some hope?)

So my secret is also my warning. Whatever you’re searching for in life, remember that you can always do without it. Figure out what works for you. Don’t get locked into assuming you only have one option, that you have to accept any offer you get. You have choices, you have options. And you can always try something new.