The Job Market in the Academy

Abstract

At a recent workshop during the 2019 meeting of the AAR in San Diego, California, Dr. Russell McCutcheon offered valuable advice to graduate students seeking employment after graduation. As the job market, particularly the academic job market, tightens, it has become increasingly difficult for any to find a job in the specialty their dissertation prepared them for. The solution McCutcheon suggested is rooted from his experience with the field itself: reinvention. His workshop on writing CVs illustrated the need in this changing market for graduate students to be able to describe the skills they have obtained in a way that makes their interests applicable to a wide range of jobs in the field rather than limiting themselves to a niche specialty that may limit potential jobs.