Late Oct: Put together letter and resume.
Early Nov: Applied to position.
Late Nov: Phone interview with recruiter.
Early Dec: Phone interview with hiring manager.
Mid Dec: Second phone interview with hiring manager's team.
Late Dec: On-site.
Early Jan: Second on-site.
Mid Jan: Offer.
Early Feb: Negotiated offer and acceptance.
Early Mar: Started.
This process was a four person local and 2 person international team to decide hiring and needing the VP of R&D's permission. They needed someone to do the job, they posted a specific position, and quickly filled it to get work done. For my academic search, here's how quickly things have been shaping up for the position I'm furthest in on.
Mid Sept: Started putting together materials
Mid Oct: Applied.
Early Dec: Got request for phone interview.
Early Jan: Phone interview.
Now: Expressed interest in bringing me in for on-site.
By now I had a written offer from industry after 3 phone interviews and 2 on-sites from the job I eventually accepted. What the heck takes academia so long? After the two schools that have said they'd like to bring me on campus told me so, I responded to the email with something like "Great! Please let me know which dates work best for you, as I have some international travel coming up to test some new devices." I threw in the devices thing 1. Because it's true, and 2. Because I want to hammer in the point that they want someone with my experience. This was a couple weeks ago.
The two schools that have said they are interested in bringing me out seem to be holding still. So what could possibly be taking so long? In industry, I got emails saying "unfortunately, we had to go with someone else", or "how does INSERT DATE HERE work for you?". But no response since my response to their interest-emails. Not even an email saying, "we will let you know more details as get closer to scheduling". Bear in mind that they have already gone out of their way to say they want to bring me out. I'm bewildered as to what's taking so long (although maybe ~2 weeks isn't that long?). Maybe I just operate on a much shorter time scale than most other people I know. I know if I took this long to get candidates together, short-list them, and bring them in I would be in deep trouble from my boss wondering what the heck is taking so long. I've said it before, and I'll say it again:
I'll never understand how this process works.
This happened to me. In my experience it either means that they're too yellow bellied to tell you, OR the committee is fighting amoung one another to figure out who to bring out.
ReplyDeleteAcademia is sloooooow. And many departments are kind of dysfunctional. Bear in mind that the semester just started and they may actually have to get the lists of candidates to bring in approved by all tenured faculty and/or the dean, and there were no meetings till this week.
ReplyDeleteWhen I interviewed, there was a place that contacted me, then waited for over two months to schedule interview and wanted me to come out ASAP (that last minute ticket cost $1000 which is insanity); I didn't particularly like them or care for the insane timescales and luckily didn't have to take the position.
My postdoc recently faced quite a bit of stringing along by a couple of institutions. The one where they promised him the moon and the stars was eventually ignoring his emails until pretty late in the game it fell through.
So they might be stringing you along. But they may be just delayed and disorganized, neither of which is a good thing.
Stay put for another couple of weeks, then nudge them again.
I'm going through this right now. Words can't describe how helpless I feel I think I'm in the running, but maybe they're waiting for their number to turn them down before calling. I honestly can't do another year of postdocing
ReplyDeleteMy old advisor just told me that if they got back to me in two weeks they would get the award for Fastest Drpartment Ever. I don't mind being strung out or waiting since I'm in a good position right now and I'm not desperate (yet) for a faculty post. I'm sure if I was a post-doc right now then I would be singing a different tune. I'll give it a month then spam their inboxes :)
ReplyDeleteI think the timeline you have been kept waiting on is entirely normal. When I interviewed a few years ago, all my first onsite interviews were in March/April.
ReplyDeleteI think you are being impatient. Give these people at least a month. My first on-site was late February last year. And I was getting interview offers through March even.
ReplyDelete