

Rejection Letters for a faculty position - markchang
http://markchang.tumblr.com/post/25971748022/26-rejection-letters
A tale of faculty-search woe :).
======
rudyfink
As the author got the 1 job he wanted out of 30+ applications, I feel this
point is appropriate.

The college I went to had a pub with the policy that a rejection letter (for a
job, post graduate position, etc) could be traded for one free beer. It was a
brilliant policy for encouraging people to try. From one perspective 30+
letters of rejection to get what you want is depressing. From my perspective
that would have been getting the thing you wanted along with thirty free
drinks.

~~~
markchang
That pub has a brilliant idea!

~~~
mkopinsky
Well, if you had traded in all your rejection letters back then, we would not
be reading them now 8 years later...

~~~
tsotha
Also, he might have been drinking too much to get around to applying for all
30.

~~~
mkopinsky
Unless he did them in batch mode. Apply to 30 positions in January, go
drinking for free 26 times in March-May.

~~~
chris_wot
"I am sorry to inform you that we have a strict no-drinking workplace policy
and therefore unfortunately the position advertised does not seem to be
aligned with your interests. We wish you all the best in your future
endeavours."

------
inopinatus
Having written a few of these in my time I'd like to pick out the best and the
worst.

The worst is surely from the University of Colorado at Boulder. I find the
prose florid and demeaning. Lowlights include implying that many "well
qualified individuals" applied, using a sentence structure that clearly
suggests you are not counted amongst them.

Yale runs a close second worst, for their brutal and brief suggestion that you
go "elsewhere".

The best is from the Colorado School of Mines. It is pleasant, warm,
apologetic. In particular, it bothers to express appreciation of time & energy
invested, and it speaks of a "closer match" of the shortlisted candidates
rather than pompously announce how grand their field was.

~~~
exim
I really liked one from ETH, Zurich. It was a personal letter (i.e. not
generated) mentioning that for the particular job they found another person,
whose skills were more appropriate at the moment. And the sender asked me to
keep an eye for further openings.

------
mironathetin
A faculty position right after finishing the PhD? Isn't it a bit too early to
retire so soon?

I am in germany, so my experience may not compare. But at my institute we have
many international postdocs. As far as I see it, there is NO way to get a
faculty position without an international research record. Some of our
postdocs get a professorship though, but it may be in Korea or China, never in
Europe or in the United States so far.

When I thought about my career during my PhD time, I felt like it was a one
way ticket to think about science positions only. They were very rare and the
competition is hard. What is to gain except a mediocre salary for a lifetime?
At least in Europe it is also tough to go back from a research institute and
work for a business again.

So I decided to develop software (I am a physicist). That is closer to my
interests than science. I finally landed in space projects and write
scientific software, have free access to great data (that no scientist in the
world can see so early) and I can really focus on my work. The professors, on
the other hand, spend their day giving and preparing lectures, organizing
money for the research and don't have time to do some research themselves.

There are always ways to go. If one way is tough, it will most likely remain
tough all the way. It opens the mind to think about alternatives and this
chance should be taken, imho.

~~~
_delirium
True w.r.t. international research record, but in computer science and
engineering in the US/Canada it's fairly common to build such a record while
getting the PhD, and then get an Assistant Professor position directly. North
American PhDs typically take 5-8 years, so it's quite possible (and
increasingly expected) to publish ~10 conference papers and 1-2 journal
articles before you graduate. It's less common in the natural sciences, where
2-3 years postdoc seems quasi-obligatory.

------
chime
It would be nice if more startups did this. Just a nice letter saying "While
your qualifications are outstanding, we regret to inform you that your
expertise-in-X is not what we are looking for at this time." If someone takes
the time to fill out a five page web-based form and goes through your online
fizzbuzz tests, a customized letter is only appropriate.

~~~
inopinatus
Having worn a interviewing & selecting hat for <corporation>, I can say my
objectives for rejection communication were:

(1) conveying the fact of it politely and unequivocally, (2) ensuring that the
process halts immediately, and (3) leaving an impression such that the
candidate's likelihood of thinking & speaking ill of us in future is
minimised.

The fact is, rejection usually amounts to disappointment and in some people
that means they're about to pass through the stages of grief, often quite
quickly. As the rejector you have a chance of being on the receiving end of
the anger & bargaining stages from a rejectee.

This creates an incentive to give away as little as possible. If one states
that the candidate was weak in a specific area, there are a few - just a few
but it's enough to be a major deterrent - that will treat this as an
invitation to negotiation over that and/or related points. In the worst case
this led to a large volume of unsolicited communication that proved
challenging to curtail.

Thus goals (1) and (2) had not been achieved and goal (3) was abandoned in the
interests of time.

From another dimension, IANAL but I have also been advised by Ms.IAAL that
being specific also opens the door to a risk of being wrong (or even being
simply perceived to be wrong), and thus a liability concern.

~~~
stellar678
I think the most-needed advice for people advertising positions is: (pre-1)
send any kind of rejection communication at all.

~~~
chime
That was my point. Not the specific reason but just a good, respectful
letter/email.

------
lancewiggs
Many of the letters started with an apology for being slow, which is a very
bad sign. All of them were form letters.

Once an interview occurs then I would hope a far more personal approach gets
used. The benchmark for this was McKinsey (I was there 10 years ago). I went
through the recruitment process there from both sides, and we had a simple
policy to call the person back within 24 hours, letting let them know
immediately whether they were in the next step or not. We would also offer to
give constructive feedback (and have it to give) to both successful and
unsuccessful candidates.

~~~
blahedo
The reason for the "slow" apology (which I have now been on both sides of) is
that when you're running a faculty search, you don't want to close the
applicant pool until your chosen candidate has accepted the offer, signed the
contract, picked their textbooks, rented an apartment, and moved to town.
Well, I exaggerate slightly. But there's always this lurking worry that if you
send the rejections too early, you may have to re-open the pile if your hire
backs out.

That said, June is still ridiculously late. The search should be done by March
or so at the latest, with maybe some contract details lingering until April if
there's a hard negotiation.

I've often thought that it would be nice to keep candidates a _little_ more
apprised of where they stand, but another problem that faculty search
committees run into here is that in our litigious culture (in the US at
least), we have to be very, very, very careful what we say for fear of a
lawsuit. Sigh.

------
john_horton
There's an understandably human tendency to highlight our accomplishments and
bury our failures, which can give inexperienced outsiders/novices in some
field a warped perception of what's "normal," exacerbating their self-doubt. I
think it's admirable that he posted the letters and was honest about how they
made him feel.

------
rlu
I applied to Waterloo in Canada knowing I wouldn't get in but figured it
couldn't hurt.

As such when I got the rejection letter it didn't ruin my day at all, I really
wasn't surprised. What did surprise me was the way it was phrased. It was a
while ago so I don't remember verbatim, but it was something like this:

 _you are not of high enough caliber to be admitted into Waterloo_

the word caliber was definitely used. What a cold, cold way to reject someone.
I can only imagine having gotten that letter thinking I might have a chance of
getting in. Would have been devastating.

Talk about not sugar coating anything :)

------
mdwelsh
Mark - thanks for posting these. I was the recipient of my own batch of such
rejection letters during my faculty search in 2002, so I know the feeling
exactly. I ended up going to Harvard (not bad!) but the sting of rejection
still hurts, no matter where it's from. These days I take it most universities
do everything by email, but back in 2002 it was still almost exclusively done
by paper mail. Somehow a paper rejection letter feels "nicer" than a rejection
email.

~~~
skystorm
Hi Matt -- while we're on the topic of academic applications (and the likely
rejections), I wanted to say how insightful I've found your blog posts
regarding the general academia vs. industry matter to be, in particular since
I need to make a similar decision myself very soon. So thanks! :)

~~~
mdwelsh
Thanks!

------
guynamedloren
The college he works at, Olin, is an amazingly innovative institution. It
should be used as a model for all modern engineering programs. Unfortunately,
it is not.

<http://www.olin.edu/about_olin/>

------
alexshye
I went out on the faculty job market 1.5 years (the second year I wasn't as
serious about it so I'll count it as .5). The first year was 60+ applications,
the second was less than 10 if I remember correctly. All of that resulted in 7
interviews, 1 offer that I didn't end up accepting, and a whole lot of
rejections.

My advice to anyone applying out for faculty jobs is just to expect a ton of
rejections. I stopped reading the letters/emails after I knew they were
rejections. Reading more doesn't do any good and it's not like it is a
personal letter anyways. One of the things that made it easier was that I was
once involved in a faculty job search. 400-500 applications were whittled down
to about ~40 that looked good. The process of whittling those down to the 7-8
we interviewed seemed very arbitrary; many of those we didn't interview looked
very good. After the interviews, you could have made clear arguments for a few
candidates. In the end, one got an offer. So, after seeing the number of
applications involved, and the randomness involved in the process, it's pretty
easy to just know there will be a lot of rejections.

------
ajays
I remember, in the early 90s, someone in our department sent out over 500
applications, and got nothing but rejections. He then started putting the
rejection letters outside his office. The department chair politely asked him
to take them down, so that prospective PhD wouldn't be scared off. :-D

~~~
gkuan
500? If there were only that many faculty openings when I was on the job
market... Ever since the dot com bust and more recent state government
delevering, the academic job market for computer science has never been quite
the same. I hear that enrollments are finally starting to rebound.

------
lionhearted
(Off-topic, but surprising to me -- Tumblr isn't blocked in China under the
Great Firewall. I clicked on the link, saw my VPN wasn't on so didn't expect
it to load, and then it works. I wonder why they didn't block it when almost
all blogging platforms are blocked.)

------
olegious
None of these letters served any purpose- all were simply form letters that
offered no information or relevant feedback to the applicant.

~~~
cwb71
They served one pretty important purpose: conveying the information that he
would not be working there.

~~~
alexlande
Exactly. In my experience, it's far more common to not receive a letter at
all. As disappointing as it is to receive a form rejection letter, not hearing
anything is worse.

~~~
tsotha
I'm guessing in some cases they've made a hiring list and you're on it. Just
not at #1. They don't want to reject you and then find out everyone above you
on their list has taken another position.

On the other hand, most of them are probably just jerks.

------
protomyth
The worst rejection reason I ever got was because my high school and
university attended were in the same area code.

------
wingo
How does such a touching, honest article get such terrible comments?
(Referring to the comments on the author's blog.)

In any case I don't see why anyone would allow such lampreys to suck the life
of their own web page.

------
long
The letter from Yale is excruciatingly short and (to my eyes, anyway) kind of
ghetto looking.

~~~
bobbles
It doesn't force you to read through three introductory paragraphs to find out
if the answer is yes or no.

~~~
tsotha
Bah. You already know it's a rejection letter before you open the envelop. If
they're actually interested in hiring you you'll get a packet from HR instead
of a letter all by itself. It's not much different from applying to a college.

------
mkopinsky
Just curious -

I found it interesting that most of the letters (with the exception of two)
referred to you as Mr. Chang rather than Dr. Chang. I just since you had not
technically finished your PhD by that point they were technically accurate.
(The letter from Brown seems to be dated June and begins with an apology for
delay, so maybe by that point you were actually a Dr.)

Did you find it demeaning that they didn't refer to faculty position
applicants as Dr.?

~~~
markchang
Not at all. But then again, I'm not huge into titles. I also didn't defend
until June, so it was technically correct.

~~~
soyummy
I find this surprising. Every professor I've ever had insisted, "I did the
work, and as such, you will refer to me as Dr."

~~~
jholman
I suspect I've taken classes with over 50 professors, and only heard that
once. And in that case she'd repeatedly asked the students to use her first
name, and someone kept calling her "Mrs", and eventually she corrected the
student: "Not Mrs. Either <firstname> or Dr. <lastname>".

~~~
throwaway1979
Haha ... I've never been referred to as Doctor after the friendly "congrats
Dr. X" when I finished my PhD. The funny thing is .. I only cared about it
before I got my PhD. After that, it doesn't matter to me one bit.

Well .. it would be nice if I could put Dr. on my passport or drivers license.
But that doesn't seem to be an option.

------
clarky07
Interesting, I don't think I got any rejection letters when I was job
searching after college a few years ago. If I didn't get the interview I
didn't receive any response at all. Now, the search didn't go too long, so
maybe it was just too small of a sample to judge anything by. I certainly
didn't expect to get any letters though.

------
offenbacher
As a former student of Mark, this should really be "26 schools that totally
missed the boat"

------
hnmember
Thats not bad. I did not even get rejection letters for my faculty
applications.

------
fruchtose
Ouch, being rejected from University of Arizona AND Arizona State University?

------
reader5000
So this guy is an employed PhD (at the job he "wanted most") and writes a blog
post about how emotionally traumatic receiving rejection notices at normal (if
not below normal) rates was. I don't get it.

~~~
heretohelp
Listen people, here's how HN works.

If you disagree with somebody, you reply.

You don't downvote just because you disagree, and you _definitely_ don't
downvote without a reply just because you disagree.

Downvotes are for trolls/rude people.

Explain to this person why you disagree, I want to know.

~~~
endtime
I don't know that people disagree. I didn't downvote him, but I can imagine
that people might have because his comment is a no more than an uninteresting
summary of the blog post. It's not really adding much to the conversation.

~~~
reader5000
Actually what the comment does is simultaneously satirizes the blog post
author as a person of a highly privileged status feeling sorry for himself
because of the "emotional trauma" of his highly successful job search AND
thusly questions the relevance of the post at all. I guess I should have
spelled it out more clearly.

~~~
entropy_
And _that_ is why you got downvoted. Obviously a lot of people find this post
interesting (at 6th position on the front page with 87pts right now).
Furthermore, a lot of people tend to find the "does this even matter" posts
that show up on almost every single comment thread boring and irrelevant.

If you don't like an article or don't find it interesting just ignore it,
that's the whole point of the voting system. Things that are interesting to a
lot of people bubble up, things that aren't, don't. Commenting with "I don't
think this is interesting" isn't helpful.

As for your actual post, the author is saying the rejection letters had a
particular impact on him even though he eventually got what he wanted. Having
been rejected by a few places when applying for graduate studies after having
decided that I didn't want to go anyway(because I had decided against pursuing
further studies and starting to work) I can definitely sympathize with the
author, it still feels bad.

Furthermore, I think the collection of such letters is definitely interesting.
Most people when they get rejected tend to think that their case is unique and
think that this reflects badly on themselves. I think that it's interesting to
see that even people who "made it"(got his dream job, didn't he?) still went
through that. So it's perfectly normal.

------
planetguy
I'm applying for faculty positions at the moment.

I haven't even got one rejection _letter_ yet. A few rejection emails, in each
case many months after I'd given up all hope of getting the job, is all I've
got to show for it.

Sigh. Good thing I'm pretty.

~~~
jorgem
I think times have changed. I haven't gotten a rejection letter in years, now.

I remember sending out of 200 resumes during the recession at the end of the
80's. Back then you'd always get a letter back -- even if you didn't get an
interview!

Now, it's so much easier for companies to send a rejection -- yet most don't
bother. Sigh.

~~~
markchang
Times have definitely changed. Along with each application (at least most of
them), since they were _mailed_ in (yes, physical form), I got an
acknowledgment letter back along with an equal opportunity employment
demographic postcard to fill out.

My wife went through this same process last year. Not one single rejection
letter.

Times _have_ changed.

------
gooddaysir
Sounds like the "academic edition" of the Rejection Therapy game:
<http://rejectiontherapy.com>

But on a more serious note, Mark reframed his rejections into a positive
learning opportunity for many people. Thanks for doing this Mark.

