Not what you know, but if you "fit" with who you know

From: Robin Hanson (hanson@econ.berkeley.edu)
Date: Thu Mar 04 1999 - 16:21:21 MST


I just completed a grueling academic job search, and will
probably stay where I'm going (George Mason Univ econ) for
quite some time. I learned something in the process:
the biggest barrier to innovation in academia is "fit."

In academia most all jobs are publicly announced, and
someone reads all the applications that come in. In
economics it is all synchronized; job ads come out in
October, applications are due about the end of November,
and then each school interviews ~20-30 candidates for
~ 1/2 hour each at the annual ASSA conference. Each
school then picks ~4-6 candidates to fly out for a day
long visit. Then a lucky few get job offers.

Last time around, two years ago, my advisor insisted
I send out no more than 70 applications. I had ~ 8 ASSA
interviews, but no flyouts resulted. I did get some
political science flyouts, at Northwestern, MIT, &
U Rochester, but no offers there. Luckily I got this
postdoc, because a theorist here believed my theorist
advisor that I was sharp.

This time I got no political science flyouts, largely
I think because one of my references was six weeks late
with his letter. I hoped to do better due to my Berkeley
affiliation & new health policy expertize. I sent out
200 applications and got ~23 ASSA interviews, many of
them health related.

But the flyouts I got were not health related, and were
due to people I had know for a long time. Hal Varian
here at UC Berkeley and David Levy at GMU had long liked
my idea futures concept. I had worked with Dave Porter
at Caltech before he moved to U Arizona. Pat Parker at
Naval Postgraduate School was told great things by my
futurist friends. I got flyouts at UCB, GMU, UAriz, NPS.

At lots of places there were people who liked me and
thought I was smart, interesting, and productive. But
they had trouble seeing how I'd fit with the rest of
their group, in terms of working on similar problems,
and how my research fit into standard categories.
At GMU, however, the influential and widely ranging
Tyler Cowan saw my breadth as a strength. They are
making GMU into, in part, a place for broader ranging
economists who don't "fit" elsewhere.

One lesson is this: if you see an idea/approach you admire
that academia seems to neglect, don't conclude this is
because almost no academics think the idea interesting or
promising. Maybe it is because this approach doesn't
"fit" anywhere, even though lots of individuals grant
its merits. Each journal thinks it should be published
somewhere else, etc.

And if you have been doing such oddball research, perhaps
your main hope is to develop personal relationships which
convince specific academics of your ability, and then to
hope that one of those people will be at a group adopting
the contrarian strategy of collecting rejected oddballs.

Robin Hanson
hanson@econ.berkeley.edu http://hanson.berkeley.edu/
RWJF Health Policy Scholar FAX: 510-643-8614
140 Warren Hall, UC Berkeley, CA 94720-7360 510-643-1884
after 8/99: Assist. Prof. Economics, George Mason Univ.



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