Tenure-Track Job Applicants, Google Yourself Before Applying: Tips From a Search Committee Chair

My friend and CSULB Associate Professor Ragan Fox posted some tips for folks on the job market for tenure-track positions. Good advice, much of which I'd recommend for writing cover letters for said jobs: know your audience, mention the department's courses and curriculum in your letter and link it to your own teaching strengths, note the impact of your research, etc. One tip I would add is to manage your impression, before even arriving on campus (provided you're fortunate enough to get an interview). The best way to do this: be aware of your online profile.

Managing Your Impression Online

I think most tenure-track applicants probably have some kind of online profile, whether it's a facebook account, a twitter feed, or a website. But what will the hiring committee see when looking for you online and, more importantly, what will they think about they find? Will they find your Walking Dead commentary as pithy as you do?

I've chaired and been on search committees, and I have Googled every single interview candidate as well as many of our second tier choices. Below I list the results I've encountered, from best result to what I consider the least desirable result:

Online Search Results of Tenure-Track Job Applicants: From Best to Worst

1a. Sometimes I'll come across a professional website that's near the top of the search results. As a search committee member, this is the best possible outcome of such a search: a decent-looking website with professional information on it: CV, publications, jobs, etc. This could also hold true for a person's listing on a faculty or graduate student page at a university. Mine's been around a while and isn't great, but it gets the job done. Search my name and it's one of the first sites to come up.

1b. An Academia.edu site. These seem to be taking the place of some faculty's professional websites. A good resource.

1c. A Linkedin profile. Yes, Jack Donaghy makes fun of it, but as a search committee member wanting information on an applicant, it's better than nothing.

2. The next best result is a listing of article links or publication titles. Sure, I could get this if I search Google Scholar, but having some kind of hit: citations for articles, popular press articles, mentions in the media, stories about awards given (maybe on a university's website), etc. tells me that this person is active academically-speaking. The same is true if I click on "Books" and search the candidate's name: Did they write a book? Awesome. Are they cited in books? Great.

3. A professional-looking Google profile is the next best result. Sure, it may not be "academic" in the sense of number 1 or 2, but it shows me that at least the candidate is aware of their online profile enough to care what people see in a search and to take care to manage that impression.

4. It wouldn't count as a negative (to me) to see a listing of facebook and/or twitter links in the search results. Not as good as the above, but not too bad. It doesn't show a lot of care taken to manage one's online impression, but it doesn't necessarily indicate obliviousness.

5. However, if I click on one of these links and get a facebook page with pics of partying with fraternity or sorority members, girlfriends at the bar, guys acting foolish (given particular privacy settings)... Well, I have to wonder. There's certainly nothing wrong with this, and I wouldn't think less of the person, but remember: this is a committee member researching a job applicant, and simply: This is my first impression of you as a candidate. Is that what you want?

6. Still, the worst possible result (provided there are no mug shots, arrest records, or news stories about the applicant running naked through the streets) is a listing of random links to random comments and sites that I can't tell whether or not belong to the job applicant. This tells me nothing about the applicant, and I don't have time to click every link and see if it the applicant. I'm not going to cyber stalk every one of our 100-plus job applicants.

So, numbers 5 and 6 above: Is that really what you want your impression to be for the person making decisions about whether to interview you and hire you? Granted, a strong vita and application packet would nullify any of that (usually except arrest records and mug shots) and get you into the interview. But as a committee member, I can't say wouldn't think about that first impression I had if the decision was a close one. Would this negative online impression be a deciding factor? No, probably not. Would it be in the back of my mind as I read your file? Definitely. I speak from experience.

Googling Yourself Isn't Just for Celebrities

What, then, should job applicants do? Create a website? Yes. That's my recommendation. Its too easy nowadays not to have a website.

Additionally, I suggest doing a search every so often by entering your name into multiple search engines. Try and get your desired site to come up first. At the least, know what others see of you and about you when they search your name as it appears on your vita. With all the applicants on the tenure-track job hunt, why leave anything to chance?

Reflections on Conference Going Part Two: Embodying the Conference Experience in the Classroom

Just got back from giving a couple talks and a performance about an ongoing research and writing project, having just gotten back from another conference and getting ready to head out again, barely having taken the time to reflect on yet another one down, lessons learned, work done, connections made, etc.

I enjoy going to conferences for a number of reasons: seeing old friends, being in a new city, catching up with past students. But this most recent spate conference-going had a few sharp moments of insight that made it additionally worthwhile for me. These moments had to do with the teacher-graduate student relationship.

Too often I've tried to keep the worlds separate, as if my personal life were entwined with my work life in strands that are frayed and apart from my teaching life. Obviously, I know teaching is my work, a large part of it, but I've often thought my conference-going experiences had little to say about teaching or mentoring unless they were the subject of a paper or panel. Maybe I've kept them separate in an attempt to keep things "professional": not getting too chummy with students, graduate or undergraduate. In short, I've never really considered the way I embody conference going how I might bring that embodiment into classroom interactions.

Queering the Student-Teacher Relationship
But to talk about queering the teacher-student relationship (which is what came up in one particular panel and subsequent conversation), something I haven't as readily embraced as the process of "queering" in research, has taken on new meanings. Setting aside for a moment the political and academic use of the "queering" (I've had discussions, for example, as to whether heterosexual male scholars can do queer theory), I've realized the queering of such relationships, and the power disruptions and even inversions that go along with this approach, can be a valuable mentoring tool. I'm not just talking about, for example, using informal forms of address or even disclosing more of one's personal life to students. I'm talking about showing vulnerabilities in terms of confusion about one's research and teaching, not pretending to have all the answers and not pretending that I know I don't have all the answers (or that I avoid double negatives in a sentence).

Embodying Vulnerabilities in the Classroom

Given my desire for tight control and professionalism in my teaching, supervision, mentoring, etc. this is something I'm still thinking about in terms of how to integrate it into my everyday practice--my classroom embodiment. I tell our graduate student teacher that it's okay to admit to students you don't have all the answers. But I've always envisioned this interaction still cloaked in an air of control, a strategic vulnerability of sorts that not only makes the teacher seem human but also discursively acknowledges the teachable moments that are part and parcel of classroom interaction. There's been some great stuff written on this already, and I'm thinking in particular about Trethewey's "Sexuality, eros, and pedagogy: Desiring laughter in the classroom" in Women and Language. I've tried to do this in a recent piece of my own.

Embodying the Mentoring Relationship
But for some reason my most recent conference experience enabled me to consider this notion of embodiment in a way I hadn't before. Conferences allow for a sort of informal interaction in which one can let the facade down. It certainly can become an extension of the classroom. But in a broader way, it's also a way of embodying the mentoring relationship. And students are interested in what happens there, as the number of inquiries I got upon my return indicated: What happened? What was like? In general, what goes on at these places and what does it mean for us in the classroom? I don't know. Yet. And that's okay.

Social Media as Embodiment
I do, however, think social media--blogs, twitter, etc.--might play a role in that. At least, that's what I'm beginning to find. I have another conference coming up, so we'll see. Maybe students will read about it here. Or in a tweet.

Top COMM 103 Student Tweets (So Far) of Fall 2011 (NSFW)

Ironic that although some tweets aren't safe for work, I've read them and counted them as part of my work as a university professor teaching communication and media literacy to mostly first-year students.

Using Student Tweets to Illustrate Media Literacy Concepts
I've had a debate with some teacher friends on facebook as to whether I should take students to task for their tweets. I find it useful to use some examples of questionable tweets in class as a way of teaching media literacy. It helps me illustrate: 1) there's not such thing as "privacy" or "anonymity" on the web; 2) you need to mindful of multiple audiences with social media messages; and 3) you must be mindful of possible unintended messages when using social media.

Now, I never call out specific students, and I don't intend to put them "on blast," as the students like to say (and get no shortage of laughs hearing me say it in class). I should note that I make it clear on our  BlackBoard site as well as on the syllabus that there is a class Twitter account. In most cases I use publicly accessible tweets (i.e., tweets that aren't locked and only available for followers, and tweets that can be found through a simple term search on twitter). In other cases, I use the tweets of students who chose to follow our COMM 103 class, thereby giving me access to their tweets. I use their tweets in class lectures in an attempt to teach students to be more mindful of the messages they send out into the amorphous universe of electronic media.

Why Not? Blurring Classroom Boundaries for Better or Worse
So, what's the debate? Well, some friends say that I shouldn't hold students accountable for what they say on twitter because, although I have a twitter account for class and many students choose to follow me, it's not really classroom communication. I disagree. The classroom is wherever students and teachers interact. Now, that may be an unfairly broad definition which may prompt the questions, "So, if you see a student at Target should you expect them to act like a student (e.g., respectful, polite)? And in turn, should you be expected to answer their questions about class at said Target store?"

 These are good questions. And although social media has certainly blurred the boundaries of in-class and out-of-class, is it fair for me to (re)define those boundaries in a way convenient for me? I don't have an easy answer.

So, my response to tweets isn't necessarily one of chastising but usually silence (and somehow referencing it in class) or measured responses. Below are some examples.

Example One: Why do I need this class?
I talk in class about why, although some communication concepts may seem common sense, it's important to think about these concepts to be mindful of our communication habits and in which contexts those habits might or might not be appropriate.

Somehow, though, the concept of mindfulness didn't seem to resonate with this student:

These tweets are publicly accessible and easily found with a Twitter search of "communicate"

I didn't respond to these specific tweets, though I did to another one about one of our quizzes (I again found it through a search). Although this student didn't go back and delete these posts above (some do with their more "saucy" tweets), this student did respond to me. Hopefully, the interaction generated via Twitter will lodge itself in this student's thinking about media use.

Example Two: I don't need this class; in fact, I hate this class
The tweets below were decidedly more vitriolic:

These are publicly accessible with a simple search of COMM103

Here's how I responded:

I'm not sure if this student still checks this Twitter account. But my response is typical of how I handle such things. I find this approach usually does work with students who might initially seem like they hate the class but are, in actually, just worried, nervous, or otherwise concerned with their class performance. Which leads me to the next example:


Example Three: I sound like I hate this class, but I'm actually just a little overwhelmed
Sometimes, I think students spew some tweets that don't actually mean what they might sound like to a teacher. Case in point, the below exchange, which began with a measured response to an "I hate this class" tweet (like my example above):

These are publicly accessible with a simple search of COMM103

Unlike the above example, though, this student responded to me. And not in the way I expected:

The bottom tweet is the first one in the series

So, I responded in kind:

And this exchange had a (sort of) happy ending. Perhaps the best a teacher could hope for in this asynchronous social media exchange.

Example Four: I actually like this class
There are many positive tweets as well. Below is one:

Obviously, the #COMM103 hashtag, which I encourage students to use, makes this publicly accessible tweet easy to find

To these I usually respond, "Glad you're enjoying it" or something like that, taking a chance that the tweet isn't ironic in its use of multiple exclamation points.

What's It All For? The Future of Social Media in My Classroom
My use of the class Twitter account is a work in progress. But I think its utility and possibly lie in more than just communicating class information to students or answering questions (out of class or, as some instructor now use it, in class with a moderated live feed). Its use, and teachers' framing of its use, is rooted in the concepts of media literacy. We must be vigilant in illustrating to students the ways intention, audience, and tone play complex roles in social media.

Update
I was recently honored for the kind of experiments I detail above. You can read more about this on the SDSU News page.

Five Reasons Teachers Should Use Social Media

I've been thinking about my use of social media in my classes. I've used facebook and twitter for classes for a couple of years, with mixed results Having just presented at SDSU's One Day in May series of talks and workshops about teaching and writing, I've been thinking more and more about what my use of social media has accomplished so far and what I might expect it to accomplish in the future.

The (sort of) good and (sort of) bad
I've caught students cheating by reading their facebook wall. Students can't write about themselves in journal entries or class discussion posts ("I have nothing to write about," "I don't feel comfortable writing about..." X--or Y or Z) but seem to have no qualms about a totally public (as long as you yourself have an account facebook wall) conversations about all manner of topics.

Other positive aspects? Connecting with students (yes, I friend some of them), increasing immediacy between myself and students, and learning all the hip lingo the kids use nowadays. I would use some of said slang phrases here, but--much like a foreign language--I've forgotten it all because I don't use it in conversations.

These experiences have resulted in many of what us teachers call "teachable moments," which is code for: a) how we recover when things don't quite go according to plan; b) how we fake it when things gets really screwed up; or c) what we do when we don't know what the heck is going on but figure there's got to be something worth learning here.

Downsides? I think about the notion of surveillance and how my catching cheaters, while technically not illegal or perhaps even unethical, still conjures up notions of Big Brother watching over the public and private lives of students.

I also think about how applications like Foursquare, in which users "check in" to businesses and locations to accumulate points and free stuff, promote a gaming and consumption model of education. Yes, people use foursquare for teaching, primarily for scavenger hunt-type activities, among other things. This includes my alma mater Arizona State University, who is part of a case study of Foursquare for Universities

All considered, I think there's a lot of potential with social media in (and out) of the classroom. But teachers have begin using it in order to understand how it can be used. So, here are five reasons why teachers should use social media:

Five Reasons Teachers Should Use Social Media
1. You can finally justify the many hours spent playing Bejeweled and Words With Friends

2. You now get to deduct points from students who bother you with facebook farmville requests.

3. Letting your students see your foursquare check-in at Macy’s over the weekend helps them remember to compliment your wardrobe on Monday.

4. Calling your students on twitter “followers” instead of “students” makes you feel like a cult leader, compensating for crappy teacher pay.

5. Haven’t you always wanted to see pictures of your students doing a beer bong?

Looking Forward to the Past: Digital Grieving, Rembering my Brother

My younger brother, Mark, died in a hiking accident in Long Canyon, Sedona, AZ, 10 years ago next month. I wasn't with him when he fell 45 feet from a cliff face onto his head. But I've never met the man who was. I've talked to him on the phone. He told me about his struggle to pull my brother back up by his belt, his panicked yell to an echoing canyon as he felt his grip slipping, his scramble down the mountain to try and resuscitate Mark. But I've never looked him in the eye, shook his hand, or hugged him.

When I cleaned out my brother’s apartment, I found artifacts from a life I barely recognized. Finding this man will help me find my brother. This is my journey to find him, to find both of them, and rediscover the life I had with my only sibling.

Me and Mark at a party in high school
Photo: Gary Kliczinski

After 10 years, I'm not sure what bothers me more: that I didn't hug Mark as he rode away from my apartment on his bike, taking for granted that I'd see him again soon, or that I seem to be losing traces of him in my life. I've got photos, memories, and conversations with family members. But even though he died in 2001, before twitter, facebook, and the deluge of personal web pages, I find myself Googling his name. Maybe I'm expecting to come across someone in cyberspace remembering him via blog, like I am now. Maybe I want some evidence that his life spread out and touched more just the small group of people who knew him.

Maybe. I've since realized this process is a kind of digital grieving. I know I'm not going to find much, if anything at all. His friends and mine have posted some old photos. But I keep searching, because I understand it's the searching that's important, the deferment of finding something that keeps me going, because if I can keep searching, the possibility that I might find something new about his life is always present. Of course, my searching is also my mourning. I don't think I'll ever stop mourning, though my grief has dissipated. I don't know how Mark's friend feels. I can't imagine how he deals with it, but I'd like to find out.

How does this relate to teaching?
Although I teach and publish ethnographic and performative writing on topics like grief, health, gender, and family communication, which certainly includes this project, I'll be shifting digital platforms and continue to keep this one primarily about life in the academy. It's an arbitrary distinction, but one I'm making for the time being.

As for my search for the last person to see my brother alive, you can read about my ongoing journey here.

When research and teaching isn't enough

Getting tenure this past Spring has got me re-evaluating my role of as a professor (Associate Professor, to be more precise). I'm sure everyone who gets tenure goes through a similar process. But this and other events have also prompted me to re-evaluate what it means to be a professor more broadly.

As the higher education system comes under fire, including tenure, tenure-jobs become scarcer, and budget cuts in many states threaten the very foundation of higher education, a lot of teachers have realized they have to look out for themselves as much as for their students.

This chain of thinking is not new and didn't originate with me. Our organizational communication textbooks have consistently discussed the "new social contract" between companies and workers that has resulted in a diminished sense of loyalty on both sides, portable 401/403 k/b etc. plans, and regular attendance at self-help classes, self-improvement seminars, and graduate schools. Certainly, academics aren't exempted from this and may have been some of the first to capitalize on this. After all, what are research agendas, pubs, and grants if not vital parts of a CV one can market to other universities for better pay?

So, I'm sitting on the couch thinking about all this, and my colleague and former office mate appears on television. He's one of the newest house guests on the CBS reality show Big Brother. This person, in addition to being a great writer and super smart, is also adept at self-branding. Again, I'm not the first to make the connection between personal branding and the academy, but I worry (even though I've embraced it to a certain extent).

Maybe I worry because I don't think I'm that good at it. I remember the difficulty I had in "branding" myself in my personal statement as part of my tenure files. Having to articulate and argue a particular research agenda, arc, and coherent body of work was difficult. Not because it wasn't there, or because I hadn't been trained to think that way by my great advisers, but it because it required me to think of myself as something more than a summation of my publications. And it was precisely this "summary thinking" that had prompted me to keep churning out articles.

Now I worry because I don't have much experience translating my ideas to a broader audience, something I think will become vital in the personal branding academics are and will continue to be required to do. Radio and television appearances, social media updates and plugs: all will become increasingly important. Does this mean the watering down of genuine (i.e., complex, problematic, heuristic) ideas? Does it mean a change in what we think of as ideas traditionally in the domain of academics? Both?

Fortunately, many academics are already blazing trails here. From podcast reviews of articles to blogs to more blogs to alternative forms of online scholarship. While not all even roughly fit into this notion of personal branding, they all illustrate the potential to move to more diverse, wider audiences, a necessary consideration in personal branding and marketing.

So, when is research and teaching (and service) not enough? Soon, if not already.