Andy Hibel 0:03
Welcome to the HigherEdJobs podcast. I'm Andy Hibel, the chief operating officer, one of the co-founders of HigherEdJobs.

Kelly Cherwin 0:10
And I'm Kelly Cherwin, the director of editorial strategy. Today, we're happy to be joined by Professor Claire Kamp Dush. She's a sociology professor and a co-director at the Minnesota Population Center. She's a family demographer who studies intimate relationships and their intersection with human development. In addition, she teaches a PHD job market course, and we're really excited to have her on the podcast today. Welcome.

Claire Kamp Dush 0:32
Thank you. I'm excited to be here.

Kelly Cherwin 0:35
We are excited to have this conversation. So to get started, could you tell a bit about your career path and how your research and your work have contributed to your expertise on the workplace issues and job search realm?

Claire Kamp Dush 0:46
Okay. Well, I have an undergrad from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. And I'm a first generation college student. I took a human development and family studies class. My first year of my undergrad and fell in love with it and then ended up getting involved in research and was shocked that you could get paid to do that and was super excited about that possibility. And I had a series of great mentors, and also I worked really hard because I don't like to attribute accomplishment to luck, but periods of great mentors ended up going to Penn State. My PhD is actually in human development and family studies. So I kind of cross the disciplines of psychology, sociology, public health. I do a lot of different kinds of work related to the job market. I went on the job market my last year of grad school, and I had four on campus interviews and didn't get any of the jobs and then ended up with a post-doc at Cornell. Got some other advice and some varied experiences there, and then ended up in my first tenure track job at Ohio State. Did a few other interviews along the way. I had another job offer while I was on the tenure track at one point and then ended up getting recruited to the University of Minnesota. As I was going up for a full professor and my appointments half in a center, the Minnesota Population Center and half in sociology. So kind of dated departments to figure out where my tenure line would be and my date with sociology went the better. And that's how I'm now in sociology. And through all those moves, I will say that I had two kids in grad school. So when I was on the job market in my last year, I was pregnant with my second child and then two kids on the tenure track too. So kind of positioning all of this as a mother and, you know, moved four kids across the country during the pandemic for this job in Minnesota. And my husband is not an academic. He is a pharmacist. So I brag about that whenever I'm on the job market have a dual hire issue. Or we can talk about dual hires issues maybe at some point during the conversation. But I have been lucky that he is a super supportive spouse and, you know, has taken his pharmacy exam three times now. I think he's licensed to an exam in three or four different states for me, as though.

Kelly Cherwin 3:15
Sounds like you have a good support system. That's nice.

Andy Hibel 3:17
That does sound wonderful, except the part about moving four kids across the country during the pandemic. I would have passed on that personally.

Claire Kamp Dush 3:25
But I made the decision to move before the pandemic hit. So little did we know what spring 2020 held in store for our family.

Andy Hibel 3:33
Well, thank you for that roadmap. And just as a fellow Illini undergrad and while I never went to Penn State, the company was actually founded because the three co-founders were working in the basement of Old Main in Penn State, where we started the company. I like kind of how our paths have crossed as far as venue goes, and two of the most lovely schools I've had a chance to interact with. It's interesting you've presented at how to authentically promote yourself at work and your talks title started with, quote, Don't be humble, unquote. This is a multipart question and feel free to tackle as you want. What are your tips for job seekers who want to assert themselves but may struggle with finding the right formula? And and I actually think to me, being an introvert or an extrovert is just kind of is who you are. And I think there's absolute strengths in both of them. And there's other places where being able to demonstrate yourself is a little bit more difficult than the other side of the coin. But what happens in the case of an introvert when you're kind of saying, Hey, don't be humble, how do they go about it?

Claire Kamp Dush 4:41
Well, I guess one thing I would say is I think even extroverts can have a hard time of this. So I think that that talk is about grad students promoting their accomplishments. And, you know, a lot of us have these threads, and I almost did it myself when I was introducing myself of luck got us where we are. And that, you know, I was in the right place at the right time. And we don't acknowledge the fact that there's a lot of hard work behind our accomplishments. And that's what Don't Be Humble is about, is about that we need to be promoting our work. And it's okay to be humble, but we shouldn't be humble and not promote our papers, not let people know what we're working on. Not let people know about our accomplishments. And there are people who are better at asking for things. So right before I got on here, I was on Twitter and I saw, there's some kind of new paper coming out that look that fathers income of the Nobel laureates, and they're more likely to have fathers with higher income. And the first thing I thought to myself is that I bet they were better promoting themselves. They're better at owning their accomplishments. They learned. And these families with more resources that maybe they learn to be better at self-promotion. And so as postdocs for everyone who's on the job market, it can be really hard to ask for an award nomination. Right. It can be really hard to tweet about your paper. You don't want to come off as like, braggy. But the thing is that other people are doing that and it can impede your accomplishments. So asking for award nominations. You know, some of us might see an award come up in our email. My department has a weekly email where different announcements are made, and maybe there's an announcement in there that says there's a call for nominations for this award, and perhaps you don't get an email about that from your advisor and you feel bad. You're thinking, Oh, my advisor doesn't think I'm qualified for this award. They don't think that I should get nominated for it. And it's probably just the fact that your advisor super busy and didn't even notice it. And so some people see that and they think to themselves, that would really advance my career if I got that award. I'm going to take that risk and email my advisor and other people will see it and think the fact that they didn't hear from their advisor about it does a statement on their accomplishments. And so it's okay to ask for award nominations. It's okay to ask for, you know, letters of reference from people. You know, I'm so happy to nominate people for awards when I get the opportunity. And sometimes I reach out to folks and say, Hey, can I nominate you for this award? And other times people reach out to me and say, Hey, would you nominate me for this award? And I would be very happy to do that. And so that's what not being humble is about. Coming back to that introversion versus extroversion. First of all, if you ask for something like you ask for an award nomination or you ask for something, the worst thing that you're going to hear is no. And as academics, we all know, getting rejected happens all the time and we have to get used to rejection. My sister has a saying get rejected on a regular basis. So when you get rejected more, you just get kind of used to it. Also, they're probably not going to say no. And then secondly to that is if they do say yes, then you have an award nomination, your advisor has a letter for you for an award, and maybe they can use it for a different kind of award. So it can be hard when you're an introvert or an extrovert for that matter, to be able to ask for things like, Would you nominate me for X, Y, z, or would you put me up for this? But the thing is that other people are asking for those things. And one question I would have is like, Well, why should someone else get that? And you should it. And also it turns out that we're still worthy of love even if we get rejected. I've been rejected so much and you can still have joy and have fun and still be rejected. My big project that I have, I always talk about. I submitted the grant for it five times and I'm sitting in front of my futon right now, which is one of the places I'd like to do my shame spirals and lay on the floor and just feel really bad about myself. And I'm never going to get anything again. And, you know, get social support for those shame spirals. And so getting used to rejection, we all go through it. And putting yourself out there, you know what? If you get the award right. What if you get that fellowship? What if you get this thing that you're trying for? That would be amazing. It could be transformational. So go for it.

Andy Hibel 9:00
That's so wonderful to put it that way. I think for folks who are seeing rejection and failure as the opposite of success, I would posit success has failure and rejection as key ingredients. So, hey, that's progress on the way to success if you're seeing that because you're putting yourself out there. I think what's interesting to me is the part in this question that I just think kind of nails the opposites within people and the incongruity is trying to present yourself authentically when for most folks out there, not being humble is not authentic to who you are. How do you suggest folks try to reconcile those two feelings? Yes, you need to be authentic, but also you need to own your accomplishments and I know it's kind of a bad term in our space. But sell it yourself here. Yeah, Sell what you can do. How can somebody do that when humility is what's been beaten into us for decades?

Claire Kamp Dush 9:59
Yeah. I do like being humble. So, like, you know, I do think that's important to be humble. But when I talk about this with my undergrads, because I'll talk about negotiating job offers, I talk about it in just a lot of different spaces of issue. If you have a hard time doing it for yourself, do it for other people. Like when I was negotiating my job here at Minnesota, I tried to make as much money as I possibly could when I was like, negotiating this job offer. It's hard to get raises. You need to come in at a good salary. And even though it felt uncomfortable, I'm like doing this for my family. I'm doing this for our family. And so sometimes I'll say to people, okay, so if you don't want to do this for yourself, if you don't want to go for those awards for yourself, do you want to contribute to the gender pay gap? Like, I don't want to contribute to the gender pay gap. I'm, you know, so maybe you can find the motivation to do it. Like all women need to have accomplishments. Like the more I accomplish all women are going to you know, it's going to look it's going to help the gender pay gap at the entire university if I make more money. So, like, maybe you can try or my family like my going to do this for my family. And maybe you're maybe you don't have kids, but maybe, you know, having more money, like, what are you going to do with more money? Are you going to do better things with it than other people are going to do with it? Why should you make less money or the same amount of work and those accomplishments you can think about in the same way? Like I'm telling people about my work? First of all, we're doing our work because it's important, right? Like a lot of us really believe in the work that we're doing. I don't think most of us just are trying to do it for the ivory tower. And so if people don't know about your work, how is it going to make an influence? How is it going to make a difference? So I have people sometimes will email me their papers. I have people ask me for, you know, letters, grad students, other faculty ask me for references, asking me to promote them. I've had people ask me to tweet something for them. And usually sometimes those are accomplished people and they're probably accomplished because they are asking people to promote them. So I guess that would be one of my suggestions. And one other thing I just wanted to mention related to the rejection thing is, you know, sometimes feeling rejected, it can like hurt your pride. You know, you can feel kind of bad and hurt your self-esteem. But also, if you can get over that, it can be really rewarding. And so one thing that came to mind for me is I applied for the job that I'm currently in at least three times at Minnesota. I applied once, I think, before I had tenure or around when I got tenure, and then once the year before I got this job. And if I had let my hurt feelings from not being considered at other times I applied for it. I wouldn't have my job. And I love my job and I have a great job and just trying to manage pride and, you know, it's okay to get rejected and that's okay. And I really like my job and I don't think anyone at work thinks anything less about me and my job. I mean, there was a difference the second time I applied here. None of my grants got awarded and then they got awarded. And then I got way more important at work. So that did help me get my job like or the difference between my first application and my second application. But if I had given up on those five submissions of that freaking grant, I also wouldn't have this job if I had like just laid in my shame spiral and never came out of it.

Kelly Cherwin 13:07
Claire I think you read my mind because actually I was going to circle back to the shame spiral and the rejection, and I love that you're telling people it's okay to be hurt. It does hurt, but don't stay on the floor in that shame spiral and give up because your proof that you had to keep going, try again because, yes, you're in a position now that you love and are happy and are valued. So that's that's awesome. So thank you for that. I'm going to kind of tie a few points that we've talked about in the previous questions. I know you talked a lot about like how important it is to promote yourself. And we talked about, you know, having that that support system. So this is going to kind of tie this together. So Andy and I talk a lot about, you know, advocating for yourself, your career, because as you were saying, you know, if you don't, then someone else might not know even what you're doing. So how important it is to have that support system or those allies in the workplace to promote what you're doing.

Claire Kamp Dush 13:59
I'm so glad you asked about that, because I always talk about if you're in your shame spiral, be careful who you call. And if you're calling somebody, it better be the person that like that review committee is just they've lost their minds. Why didn't they fund you? They are ridiculous. You want to call the person that's going to make you feel better. If someone's like putting you further into your shame, they get to go off of a list of people to call for support. And so, you know, I have had a great support network. It starts with my spouse, friends from work, colleagues. I've definitely commiserated with my close work colleague Wendy Manning about different rejections. I've definitely called her from the futon and she always makes me feel better. And Wendy is super fancy and amazing, and even when people look like they look on paper, like they're just have it all together and so productive. And I know it seems ironic because people would look at my CV and be like, You're so productive. I could totally be more productive. I love wasting time, you know, And you know, but I just don't let myself in the shame spiral. That line, like with my job at Minnesota, you know, I could have thought to myself, Well, they don't want me last year. They didn't want me the first time I applied. And I'm glad I didn't let my pride get in the way of taking risks. And I think that part of the reason I don't let my pride get in the way is because I'm confident in the fact that I have people that care about me. And it's okay if I get rejected because it's not like people aren't going to care about me anymore or respect me anymore.

Kelly Cherwin 15:28
That's awesome. And and honestly, do any of us have it all together? I mean, yeah, we might look like we do on paper, but I'll be the first to say I don't.

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Andy Hibel 16:10
I think we want to shift gears here just a little bit. Referring back to your Ph.D. job Market Course syllabus, there was a part of that where you covered questions that may not be either legally appropriate or actually just personally appropriate, and how somebody within an interview could handle that. I would probably add on to that a little bit. How do you take a question like that, be able to, instead of defending yourself in those instances and say, well, that's not really a question I can answer, but kind of go on the offensive and say, I'm not really sure I can quite address what you said, but what I can't tell you about myself, because I think it gets to the heart of the matter is fill in the blank. How do you take one of those questions, not be evasive with it, but sidestep from it, but kind of address what the concern might be with the inappropriate or illegal question?

Claire Kamp Dush 17:02
Yeah, I mean, it's hard. That's why I said it. I'm on the my whole department. I led a search last year and it was like, don't ask these questions. They're illegal and here's what to do if you accidentally ask them, because sometimes it's kind of hard, you know, especially for like, are you married and things like that because you're, you know, you're hopefully you're in a good conversation with people and things are casual. And, you know, you're talking about, oh, Minneapolis is such a great place to live. And, you know, we have such great schools and then you accidentally end up like, you know, implying that you want to know if they have kids or not. So the first thing I always say is if you're on the hiring side is just say, you know what, I'm so sorry. I ask that question like, don't even answer it. But just so you know, you know, whether you have kids or whether you're single, we're the perfect place for you or whatever. So I'll just start with saying that when you're the one asked it, I remember one time I was at a lunch with a candidate when I was at my former job, and one of my colleagues asked the candidate if they're married, like directly asked it. And I thought to myself, Oh gosh, that's illegal. And she answered the question that she was single. She was actually not married. But it's so hard to handle it. I'm trying to think, you know, so if someone says, like, oh, do you have kids, you might, you know, maybe I'll say something like, well, you know, kids are so great. And, you know, it's so it's so nice to interact with kids. And what's it like for kids around here? Like maybe asking it. But then, of course, it implies that you have kids because why would you be asking that? I don't know. It's really hard when you get asked those questions. I guess something you would say is, Oh, do you have kids? Maybe that's one way to kind of turn it around and like, ask them if they had kids or about being married. You know, if someone says, oh, are you married? You know, you could say something like, oh, I don't like, you know, oh, are you married? Like, maybe that's the way to to like, turn around. People love to talk about themselves and then hopefully they'll talk about themselves and then you can like change the subject. But it's really, really hard when you get asked those questions not to answer it. If you are somebody who's married and your spouse is not an academic, I would totally say that because it can help you on the job market. If you're looking for a PhD, like if you're looking for an academic job, because then the hiring committee is like, Oh great, we don't have to deal with a spousal hire. So, you know, I would often mention, Oh, my husband's a pharmacist, just to let everybody know that you're not going to find my husband a job. And so I don't know. The job market's really competitive. I feel bad telling everybody to brag. And if you do have a joint hire, I would just try not to bring it up. The fact that you're married and that your spouse also is gay, you need a job. And you know what? Like just go for it and try to get the job. And hopefully if you do get it, they'll find a job for your spouse, too. And so if you have a spousal hire issue or I don't think people need to know you have kids, people have a bias against. We have a lot of research about the motherhood penalty and bias that people have against kids and mothers. So I think it's best to not signal that if you can, as somebody who was literally pregnant on the job market and was breastfeeding. And when I interviewed for my tenure track job that I had at Ohio State, I had to stop and do pumping. So you can do it. But it's I mean, you could also think about this way if you have kids and people find out you have kids or you actually say you have kids, do you really want to be someplace that's going to hold? Having kids against you?

Andy Hibel 20:29
I think that's that that's the part about authenticity I'd come back to here, like whether they like it or not, if they hire you, yeah, this is what they're getting. And to a certain degree, flipping that question in that fashion that you suggested, hey, is is this a family friendly place? If there are kids, do you want to know the answer to that? That's great. And if this is a place like no, we despise children in our department. We like if you have four kids or ten kids or a dozen kids, you know, that's not going to be the place for you. You're not going to thrive there. So finding that out now is great. I had an interview way back when with an organization wasn't a higher ed institution. Somebody stopped me in the stairwell in between floors where no other colleagues were there and said to me, Do not under any circumstance take this job here. If they offer it to you, you do not want to work here. Guess what? I wasn't taking that job. Like, if somebody is willing to put their own job at risk to do that, there is probably something going on here, that. As much as I might want that job, and maybe if I was at a different position of like, I have to take this job and then I'll figure it out, I get why you might want to do it then, but I was not in a position to upend my life and move many miles away from where I'm located for a job where somebody was willing to put themselves on the line like that. Those are things that I think are worth factoring in. And I think it's interesting to kind of I'm very cognizant of this is being male that particularly with children, I think it's different. I think that the implicit and, I'm not going to say prejudice but bias that people have a whole bunch of assumptions about a professional woman and having children, that's different than a professional male and having children. And I think they're I don't want to take kind of that position as a male to say that, hey, go ahead, do it. I do think there's a difference. There's also different expectations. If a male say, yes, I'm involved with my kids and I'm coaching, whatever it might be, well, that's perfectly acceptable. It's it's not necessarily acceptable for a male for a great job. Yeah, exactly. And it just, I think, being sensitive about how friendly or unfriendly of an environment you're putting yourself into is something that's your job to ascertain through the process.

Claire Kamp Dush 22:51
Right? I agree. And I also say a few things following up on this. So, first of all, a lot of people are doing Zoom interviews now. And so one piece of advice that I actually have, like a blog post I'm kind of working on, I have a post on my blog for a while, but I need to get it together. But like, be careful what's in your background. You know, don't have kid toys in your background. Like, I would not want to signal anything about my personal life or my background. Your social media. My sister was on the job market, a different sister than the one I mentioned before. I have three sisters and one of them was on the job market year and I was like, Don't put your kid in your profile photo. The thing is that we grew up in a society that has certain ideas about men and women and mothers and fathers, where fathers can walk down the street with their baby in a stroller and everybody's like, I think you're the best dad. And if a woman did that, it's just like, okay, that's just what she does. You know? Like, men just get a whole level of credit that women don't get in terms of parenting. Once I had a job, I didn't worry about it as much. But one of the jobs I didn't get that last year of grad school when I was pregnant, I saw the department chair and they had been so flattering when I was interviewing. That was before I knew that's what departments do. So everybody keep that in mind and also do your homework. I did not do my homework. That was before I did my homework as much on the job market. So make sure that you're doing your homework and you know everything about everybody and you make sure that they feel really special and flattered when you meet with them. But what I was quite I didn't know that advice yet. They went on the interview. I was the one getting flattered. I didn't know to read Everybody's research and to make sure I'm asking them questions about themselves. So the researchers in the department wanted me, and the non researchers didn't want me. They wanted the other candidate and the department chair. When I saw her the next year at a conference, she was like, I'm so sorry about last year. We were so excited about you. And they were split vote and I didn't want to bring somebody in to the department that the vote was split. And she said during the meeting, they said that you flipped your hair too much during your job talk and that you were flighty. And then I responded to them, Oh, she's pregnant. So there are so many things that were wrong about that conversation. But afterwards I was telling my friends and my are like, Well, at least you didn't get the job because of your CV. And so let's all be really glad that I didn't go there because I ended up with a great job. And I'm not where I'm at because of the opportunities I had. And I wouldn't have had those opportunities that I taken in that job. So sometimes things work out the way they're supposed to, but I totally got told that I was flight. I think it's partly because I'm bubbly and I just can't help that I'm bubbly and that's just who I am. So

Kelly Cherwin 25:25
How dare you be bubbly and energetic?

Claire Kamp Dush 25:28
I know I can't help it, my energy, but it was interesting that she responded, Oh, she's pregnant. And I just like started shaking and I was like, Oh ha. I acted like it wasn't a big deal. And I completely freaked out on my friends. So I just try to be careful because a lot of the times it's not our fault, you know, sometimes that we have the idea that we have about gender and race and everything else. That's from all the media and growing up here and everything that we're exposed to and socialization. And so we got to push against that. And some people are pushing against it and some people aren't.

Kelly Cherwin 26:03
Well, thank you for all that. That was that was fantastic. I actually touched on it a little bit. Again, you're reading my mind. I want to circle back to some things that you said at the beginning. You said you do you.

F8 S4 26:13
Join us next time for the conclusion of our conversation with Claire Kamp Dush. If you have any questions or comments, email us at podcast@HigherEdJobs.com or send us a direct message on X @higheredcareers. Thanks for listening. We look forward to talking soon.