Students: please read this section long before your final year at Baylor!
If this is your last year, you need to start soon and apply to as many reasonable places as possible. It is highly recommend that you start the process in July!
Mostly you’ll want to talk to your advisor for advice in these matters, but here are some generalities:
- First of all, the deadline for applying to some post-doc & tenure-track positions for the following fall is as early as this September! You’ll need to start right away.
2.) If you want to get a good job, you need to write a good thesis. This typically takes years of sustained daily hard work. You need to start from the beginning working at least 40 hours a week. Find a way to schedule hours and hours of work on your thesis every day. Start from day one.
3.) If you want to get a good job, you also need to find ways to demonstrate your commitment to and skill at teaching. Find programs to join or groups of people to help. Do something special or distinctive for your students. This is important and you need to start as soon as you begin teaching.
5.) In case you haven’t heard the terms, a post-doc is a temporary research position (usually about 2 years) intended for new or recent PhD’s. These are great opportunities to start branching out in new research directions and developing your own research program. A tenure-track position is intended to be a permanent position (assuming you get tenure about 6 years later). More prestigious universities typically do not hire new PhD’s for tenure-track positions and look for people with post-doc experience. On the other hand, smaller colleges are usually looking to hire new PhD’s and don’t care about post-docs.
6.) For your application, you’ll need to have a curriculum vita (resume), an AMScoversheet, a cover letter, about 3 letters of recommendation from professors commenting on your scholarship, a teaching letter of recommendation (probably 2 or more letters if you are applying to a teaching college), a research statement, and a teaching statement. It is a good idea to get your advisor’s input early.
7.) Here are some excellent resources that are worth studying: https://www.ams.org/profession/employment-services/Frayer.pdf, https://math.illinois.edu/system/files/inline-files/job-search-workshop-2015.pdf, https://gradschool.cornell.edu/career-and-professional-development/pathways-to-success/prepare-for-your-career/take-action/, and https://galois.math.ucdavis.edu/doku.php?id=jobhunt.
8.) Most of these documents are now submitted electronically and the best place to start looking for employment information is http://www.ams.org/employment. There are many useful links there and lots of great advice. They also contain many non-academic job listings if your tastes run that way.
9.) Here are some other useful links for job openings that you should check out: http://www.higheredjobs.com/faculty/search.cfm?JobCat=104 and http://chronicle.com/section/Home/5.
10.) You’ll probably want to plan on attending the AMS join meeting in January and, if possible, giving some sort of talk. Make sure to apply for a grant at http://www.ams.org/programs/travel-grants/grad-students/emp-student-JMM. The deadline is usually in September. Again, start doing this before your last year.