A Timeline for a Job Search in Mathematics

Author(s):

Cameron Sawyer

As a result of registering for the Employment Center at the Joint Mathematics Meeting you will be sent the List of Employers. Go through this list. Send e-mail stating your interest, and post your application packet to any appealing school where you have not already applied.
Take extra application packets to the Joint Mathematics Meeting for the likely case that you will find jobs that you were unaware of before.
There are some intricacies to understand about interviewing at the AMS meeting. There are self-scheduled (20-30 minute) interviews and computer-scheduled (15-minute) interviews. Before the meeting you may be contacted by schools to arrange self-scheduled interviews. Provide each school with a 30-minute time slot. The logistics of this can be very daunting. Keep in mind that there are 8 computer-scheduled interview sessions on Thursday and Friday (see the Employment Center site for the times and other information). The allowed number of interview requests will be determined based on the number of sessions for which you are available. In other words, if you have a lot of self-scheduled interviews on Thursday and Friday, they won't allow you to request many computer-scheduled interviews. So if you do the computer-scheduled interviewing, Wednesday and Saturday are the ideal days for self-scheduled interviews. [Editor's Note: This assumes a Wednesday to Saturday meeting, a pattern that is broken in 2002, when the meeting will be from Sunday to Wednesday.] With the upturn in the job market, many applicants are forgoing the computer-scheduled interviews. Employers are willing to set up other times and will even fill out special forms and put them in your folder requesting an interview. For more information on the interview process, see Rishel's article, as well as From Both Sides of the Employment Register Table, Tips on How to Get a Job, Interviewing for a Job in Academia, and the other articles on the entire process in the additional reading.