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 job market course, and we're really excited to have her on the podcast today. Welcome.

Claire Kamp Dush 0:32
Thank you.

Mike Walker 0:34
Thank you for joining us for the conclusion of our conversation with Claire Kamp Dush.

Kelly Cherwin 0:36
Again, you're reading my mind. I want to circle back to some things that you said at the beginning. You said you didn't get a couple jobs and it sounds like you reflected on them, which I absolutely love. I think jobseekers need to do. It can't be like I didn't get that job. It's it's all on them. It's their fault. And then the other thing you said that was interesting to me was you were dating the departments. And I love that because it sounds like obviously you you had to take some time and some thought and some research and like to see what was the best fit. So I think these are all great things for job candidates to do. So can you talk a bit more about some of those jobs that you didn't get? And reflecting back, why do you have advice for our job seekers?

Claire Kamp Dush 1:17
Well, first of all, let's say that I know the academic job market is very competitive to be an assistant professor. And I just want to remind everybody listening to this that you are just as smart and just as incredible and just as wonderful if you don't end up as an assistant professor. And it turns out that even if you don't get to your tech job, you're still totally worthy of love and there's joy in the world. And so I just want to remind everybody of that. That said, when I didn't get those jobs, like one of them I didn't get because they hired the former grad student of the department chair and that person already had tenure. And I remember the department chair being, like, really apologetic, like, I'm so sorry, you know, like almost apologizing that I did a good job on the interview. One of them, I do think, because he knew he was going to hire his former student, one of them I didn't get because they're opening up a center related to not what I do, but I guess they've had to bring in so many people in. And I was one of the people that got brought in. And so it was like an international child development. And I study marriage and relationships, so I didn't get that job. Another one, I just didn't vibe with the department chair. Like, I remember her saying to me, I seem really green and I didn't get a ton of advice either from my advisor about the job market or like almost no advice. So it was when I got to Cornell, it's my postdoc that I got the piece of advice from a colleague to do my homework. And he told me that whenever I go in to meet with a faculty member, if I'm on campus, he said that when he was interviewing, he was looking to move jobs and ended up at Cornell. And he said every time he met with somebody, they would be like, Oh, you know, Ithaca is such a great place to live. And he would say, Yeah, I'm excited about Ithaca, but actually I read your work and here's how it interacts with my work and showed a lot of interest. And I've gotten every job that I've made it to an on campus interview from since I've used that advice. And plus, it's not fake for me because I actually do care about people and like people. So he did it so well that his department asked him to do an overview of the whole department his first year when he got there. They're all like, you know, everything that I do. And he didn't have the heart to tell them he had to go immediately, forgot it because he was also doing several other interviews. So in terms of that piece, you don't know why you're not getting a job and it can be a lot of different reasons why you're not getting it. And it's important to not take that super personally. You know, like I said, when I didn't get the job I have now the first two times, I think there's a different variety of reasons why that happened. And I'm glad that I didn't take it personally, that they somehow didn't like me or whatever. And when it was the right fit, it was the right fit. Regarding the dating departments, most people don't have the luxury of doing that for a faculty position. You know that one department hiring and mine, the half of the appointment is at the center and half the appointment could be in any department. And my date with sociology kind of went the best. And that's how I kind of ended up in sociology. But I could have ended up in a lot of places. One of the questions I asked when I had tenure and I was considering moving is what am I going to complain about at happy hour? And I wanted to make sure with my move that what I was complaining about at happy hour was going to be less annoying than whatever I was complaining about, though. I guess I'll just remind everybody there's no perfect job, you know, There's no perfect job. There's lots of different reasons that we end up in the job that we end in, and you're always going to have some things to complain about. A happy hour. And I wanted to complain about Happy Hour was less annoying than what I was currently complaining about. The happy hour ended with.

Kelly Cherwin 4:49
I like that.

Andy Hibel 4:49
And there's also no perfect candidate. So when you're going around, like there's not a person out there who interviews for every job, who's the best candidate for every job they interview for, and that's who everybody wants to hire. So when you're looking at yourself like, maybe I'm not the perfect candidate here, there is no perfect candidate. There's candidates who have different strengths and different ways of being evaluated. And depending on the priorities of the department or organization, it's how you fit within that. And what you're hoping for is the candidate that gets the position is all those values are aligning between the parties. And if that's what's happening, then you have a chance to have a huge recipe for success. But if you're not fitting within, they're saying, Well, I got the job. Maybe I wasn't the perfect candidate, but this is going to work out great and make a bet that can't work itself out. They're not going to put as much money on the bet. It's going to work out just the way you want it to be because values are not aligning.

Claire Kamp Dush 5:49
So I'll just mention but if you end up in the wrong place, it can be hard to move. You know, it's not like you're going to easily get another tenure track job, for example. I mean, it's a lot of work to move. You know, you have to be you have to have a CV that makes somebody else want you over the place. That clearly doesn't seem like it's not where you want to live. Nowhere near it doesn't seem like it's going to be a very supportive environment. People seem kind of miserable. Well, maybe you'd be better off in a non academic job. I don't know. And that's what makes me frustrated about elevating academic job so much that for some people they might have more joy and a better life if they don't take that job because they really want to have it for their job. So I'll just mention that.

Andy Hibel 6:31
I think that's an excellent point to also highlight there that particularly with a lot of great institutions, that's who you're going to work for. If you move to that location. So I think we're going to transition a bit to a topic we haven't covered yet, which is cover letters, which within the process of this podcast we've had folks come out very, very, very pro cover letter and folks come out very, very, very anti cover letter. But you've written blog posts such as what's wrong with your cover letter tailoring with dignity cover letters that will get you hired. Our formal position here is whether you're pro cover letter or anti cover letter, the stuff that can be covered in a cover letter can also be incorporated into if you're a resume or CV person only can be incorporated there. So the principles are universally applicable. So could you share, irrespective of where you enter this debate, whether you're Coke or Pepsi on this one? Can you share a few takeaways with our audience regarding writing that cover letter or amplifying in your resume or CV things that will help solidify your candidacy?

Claire Kamp Dush 7:38
Well, I do think some of those blog posts are things I find in my syllabus, so hopefully we'll post that someplace where people can add those to the thoughts on my blog. Let's start with the fact that at least in sociology and I would also say in Human Development and Women's Studies, which is my former department, it's competitive out there to get a job. So honestly, the first round of everything is just looking to see do they have publications or not? Like if you're a research one, you know, like what's on the CV? Like do they have the record to rise to the top if it's not a research one university And it's like, you know, I'm more of a liberal arts college, you know, you're probably looking at teaching experience. So I think sometimes one thing that's hard is that a lot of us are ones to get our PhDs right, you know, big research institutions, and we see a certain kind of CV moving forward. But that's not necessarily the CV that's going to move forward everywhere, though, with the cover letters, we start looking at cover letters after you kind of go through and you're doing you're looking at everyone's lives and you kind of get through that first cut, then you're looking at cover letters. So for us, like for our sociology position that I led last year, some people were applying that didn't have a Ph.D. in sociology. And one thing they did that was really smart was they how they were sociological. We were doing a climate hire, so we had some people that had more of a interest in climate that weren't necessarily sociologist, but they could have fit the job. And so for them it was showing that they are sociological, they think like a sociologist and tailoring it. So I guess that's a that's a big point. Tailoring it for the job you get. It's really hard to write a generic job letter for every job if you're a more of a research to university, you know, you're kind of one of those. You have some research that if you go there, you're going to have maybe, you know, you might have a tutor teaching load, though they're not super known for their research and maybe they want to be, you know, they're I'm going to be emphasizing that I'm going to be a great teacher. And I'm really excited about research and I'm really excited about this institution specifically because sometimes people can feel like people don't respect my institution. So tailoring the letter, I'm really excited to consider working with X, Y, Z Center, but sometimes people can feel like they're a department thought well respected. And so actually doing your homework and really signaling that another thing that can be helpful, I applied for a job that was near my parents and I had a whole paragraph at the end of my cover letter about how I'm familiar with the institution and I'm from the area. We've had people signal that at Minnesota, you know, we think to ourselves, So does anybody want to move to Minnesota? People always just think it's so cold here. It's actually a very, very lovely. But you're kind of worried that they're just applying to get a raise at their current job or they're just applying, but they actually, you know, aren't really interested. And so if you are interested, they know that like I have family in the area. So I think there can be things that you can signal by doing your homework that you're really because, you know, we don't want to waste our money bringing somebody in who wouldn't actually come here. You know, we can only bring three people to campus and we want to make sure those those three people actually would like to come here. So if you can signal that you're one of the people that would actually like to be there, that's really useful.

Kelly Cherwin 11:00
I love that. All those signals, personalizing, tailoring. All that's great.

Claire Kamp Dush 11:04
And also the questions are a signal, too. So if you do make it to that Zoom interview, your questions are signal by what you're asking and paying attention to what's on the website and signal like if it's a teaching college and you know, they're mentioning their online teaching program, even if it's not the job ad, I would mention that I would look at the website. Either they teach teaching online and it's that like, did they just start a online master's degree, do your homework? And that also signals that you're really serious about that job.

Kelly Cherwin 11:29
Fantastic point. I love that advice.

Looking for more conversations in higher ed, we invite you to join the HigherEdMilitary community as we discuss issues, best practices, news in general, trends affecting our institutions, and the higher ed military affiliated community inspired by the deep commitment to service that veterans and military connected faculty, staff and leaders have towards the academic community. We at HigherEdJobs established, HigherEdMilitary as a resource for both original and curated news and information, as well as job opportunities from colleges and universities actively recruiting military connected professionals. Visit us at HigherEdMilitary.com on Facebook and LinkedIn.

Okay, So we're going to move over to talking about promoting yourself. And one way to do that is highlighting transferable skills. So this is a common question we actually get from a lot of our readers and our listeners that might want to get into higher education or maybe want to switch institutions. So what kind of advice do you have for people to use their transferable skills to get into that next role?

Claire Kamp Dush 12:27
Well, if we're thinking about the target audience as grad students, so starting with grad students, I think a lot of times that they totally underestimate their skill set And actually let's just be real. Everybody underestimates their skills like a lot of us don't recognize how incredible our skills are. You know, we have them presenting, they're teaching, they're explaining if they're quantitative sociologists around all these analysis. And so I think that it's important that people recognize how wide their skill set is and how many things they can actually do. You know, there's those classic research showing that whenever job ads come out, women think they need, but every single thing on the list to apply for a job. And men feel like they only need half of it and they're going to apply for a job. And actually, my sister moved into a new role. And when she quit her job and she was looking for her next job, she was surprised, like she made it all the way to the final four people for a chief information officer position and she didn't think she was necessarily there yet, but she almost got it. So it kind of told her like she was underestimating her skillset and what she had. So to try to counter that, I think there's some things you can do. One is like make a list of things that you do during a week. Think about your skills. If you're teaching a class like what are the different skills you're using? If you're on LinkedIn and I use LinkedIn as like, I'll connect to everybody in the whole wide world on LinkedIn. So if you're on there, feel free to connect to me because I just want my students and my grad students to have a lot of connections and people and ask for recommendations on there. Hey, would you would you endorse me for this? Ask for that. That's okay. Sometimes those endorsements will come up higher when recruiters are doing searches on their because sometimes recruiters can get more out of their LinkedIn search than they can get from the people that actually apply to the job. So make sure if you're looking for a job that you have that little thing clicked on, that you're open opportunities and make sure you're listing a wide variety of skills. I see a lot of grad students will say, Oh, I can do this super fancy sexual equation model or hierarchical linear modeling, and they won't say they can do something really simple, like a correlation. Like, you know, there's jargon, jargon changes across disciplines. So the non academic job market that has quantity of skills has a different jargon than the quantitative job market with different skills. And because your professors don't know these things, because a lot of them, especially in the social sciences, aren't familiar with the non academic job market, you have to try to figure out what those keywords are and make sure you're listing a ton of keywords and don't underestimate your skill set and apply for those jobs where you have 50% again, practicing job interviews if you make it to the interview. You know, I had a colleague tell me he was interviewing for a job. He was in my old college and I was surprised he was interviewing for this job he was interviewing for. And I was like, Oh, I'm surprised you're interviewing for that job. And he said, Oh, I hadn't interviewed for a job for like five years. A few years ago I interviewed again and I was totally rusty and it didn't go well. And I promised myself, I'm going to try to interview for a job every year just to keep those skills up. And so, again, coming back all the way back to getting rejected, you know, it's okay to get rejected and it's okay to put yourself out there. And don't underestimate those skills that you have. So I guess that's actually true for everybody. It's true for grad students and it's true for those of us that aren't grad students. We have wide skill bases and we should be making sure that we recognize how wide our skills are and documenting them and putting them out there and writing them on LinkedIn so that we come up higher in searches when people are looking for somebody.

Andy Hibel 15:55
Thank you. That's wonderful advice, I think, for folks who are out there using LinkedIn. It's interesting saying, hey, I'll connect with anybody on LinkedIn. Were the best things I heard in the early days of LinkedIn is, if you'd shake somebody's hand when you meet them, accept their connection. At LinkedIn, it's just a virtual handshake. If you've met somebody and see if there's opportunities. Now, yes, of course. Things and invitations on LinkedIn may be more than just that. A lot of people use LinkedIn as more of a lead generation sort of process. You'll know when somebody is reaching out to you in a genuine way to get to know you a little bit better. Consider it a handshake in the conversation.

Claire Kamp Dush 16:34
Yeah, I'll also say this that sometimes people in positions, they might get a bonus if they recommend you, you know, like my sister, one of my sisters has worked at a company before where she got like $1,000 bonus or something if they ended up hiring someone, she suggested. And so you might think to yourself, Oh, you know, that person's not going to be interested in me. Well, they might get something out of recommending you. And so you should not be shy about reaching out to people on LinkedIn and asking questions and saying, Hey, can we connect? Because they might actually get something themselves out of that connection. So I'll just say that like, don't be shy about reaching out to people because I'm always like, Oh wow, you can get a bonus. Like, who doesn't want $1,000? That would be great.

Kelly Cherwin 17:22
So, Claire, I know, you, you said you have three sisters. Have you referenced all three of them? To be fair, I know you've talked about a couple of them.

Claire Kamp Dush 17:30
I've talked about two of them and a third one hasn't come up. Yeah, but she's also incredible and amazing

Andy Hibel 17:35
Do you want to take this opportunity to highlight something that folks can learn from your third sister.

Claire Kamp Dush 17:39
I'm trying to figure out that, so what has she been doing. And she's been taking some risk, you know, and really doing incredible at her job too, that other sister. And as I'm sure and I'm sure something like I'm up related to her.

Andy Hibel 17:53
Oh, okay. Okay. We're going to end with one final question. What are some of the most insightful questions you've received from either graduate students or other peers who are looking for work in the academic job market as they head into it? And what can others learn from those insightful questions?

Claire Kamp Dush 18:13
Right. Just think of like last year when we were hiring some of the questions people asked. And the thing is that when I come back to those questions as a signal, you know, if you look at our center, our center is partly driven by NIH grants, right? Like we need people to be applying for grants so that we build our portfolio. Though it's smart when people ask questions that signal like a good question for someone to ask us. If you're applying to our center, is what's the grant support look like? How do you help people write grants? Because a lot of people don't learn how to write a grant in grad school. What kind of support do you have for that? And that shows that you paid a ton enough attention or that you know enough to know that this may be something that we're going to be expecting? Another smart question is part of getting promoted is research the good questions are what does protected research time look like? Do you have opportunities to have a research semester? I guess that would be more of a question when I get on campus on a Zoom interview to try to get to campus. I'm really passionate about my research and I know that research is going to be part of my appointment here. What kind of research support do you have with social scientists or do you have grants that can help people collect data or find the time to hire a grad student to help with data collection? So I guess I would be asking things, or if I'm at a teaching college, I would be asking. I'm really excited about the possibility of online teaching. What learning management system do you work with? And then, you know, whatever they say. I've been working with campus and I really like these features in it and you know, I found these to be really useful for my students. The signaling that you're going to come in and hit the ground running and be there.

Kelly Cherwin 20:00
And signaling that you've done the research, too. It sounds like and, Andy and I often tell our audience that you are interviewing that employer just as much as they are interviewing you. So all those examples of questions to to look ahead like, what would my life be like if I were here are key. So thank you for those.

Claire Kamp Dush 20:20
I do like the happy hour question, though. I don't know when. I know if people can ask about, but like recognizing there's no perfect job, what are the things? I don't know if you can somehow get it. If you're like, let's say you already have a job, especially if you already have a job. You know, I had a great job whenever I moved to Minnesota at Ohio State. I liked my job, but there were some things that I didn't like. And, you know, if you're looking for a new job, trying to figure out what are the things that people are not liking, and like my department, they're so sweet and so wonderful. I locked myself slightly when they complained because what we're complaining about is nothing compared to my old department and what you think about. And so I like, you know, respectfully, like, oh my.

Kelly Cherwin 21:02
Like where should we order lunch from or something like that?

Claire Kamp Dush 21:05
Not exactly that. But what we're complaining about is very minimal and very few, but different higher ed institutions are very different in terms of resources, different departments are very different. Different colleges are very different. So where do you see this department in five years? Where do you see this college in five years? How many majors do you have? Are you worried about majors? What's the budget model that based on credit hours? How is your credit hours? Where do you stand in the college? You think you're going to be getting more positions there and, you know, things like that. Like if you think you're going to have choices about where you go, understanding what the endowment look like, if it's a liberal arts college, they have a big endowment. Am I going to be stressed out about every single undergrad and making sure they never leave? You know, all the liberal arts colleges and all the research universities are not all created the same. And so just trying to understand, you know, if you are going to have choices, what that will look like.

Andy Hibel 21:57
Thank you, Claire. This has been amazingly wonderful to be able to have this conversation with you. If you have questions for Claire or for anybody here at the HigherEdJobs team, please feel free to email them, at podcast@HigherEdJobs.com. We also welcome comments or thoughts or reflections, or you could actually send us a direct message on X @higheredcareers. Thank you, Claire. It's been wonderful to have you.

Claire Kamp Dush 22:21
Thank you.

Kelly Cherwin 22:22
Thanks, Claire.

Andy Hibel 22:23
And thank you for listening. We look forward to talk with you again soon.