4th Year Workshop

Preparing your materials

Ian McCarthy, Emory University

Economics PhD Professionalism Workshop

Job Market Materials

Now is the time to start gathering and organizing your materials. The goal should be to have everything together and on your website before you submit your first application. When you say, “I’m on the market”, you should be ready for people to see your stuff.

The job market will take a ton of your time! Save yourself some stress by having all of your materials ready in advance.

Materials: Bio

Think about…

  • Why did you decide to study economics?
  • What fields are you most interested in?
  • Can you relate your work to those fields?
  • Where is your comparative advantage?

These will be important parts of your interviews and will help guide a lot of your other materials

Materials: CV

  • You need a complete CV on the market
  • Should be in PDF and easily accessible on website
  • Academic CV: contact info, education, field(s) of interest, professional experience, teaching experience, any publications, any awards, current/ongoing work, and committee info
  • Non-academic CV: add any specific skills or experiences that may be relevant, consider removing teaching
  • Should be 1 page, or at least have a 1 page version ready
  • See resources page for some templates

Keep track of everything you do…some may not end up on CV, but it’s good practice.

Materials: Research

  • Have an abstract to display on your website for all completed papers
  • Should list completed papers/drafts and maybe working papers (with actual work done)
  • Do not list “ideas” as working papers or projects

Materials: Teaching

  • Show that you’ve given your teaching some real thought
  • Consider creating a course website if you’re teaching in the 5th year
  • Non-academic jobs will look at teaching as a way to gauge your communication skills
  • Liberal arts schools care greatly about teaching
  • See resources page for some good teaching websites as potential templates

Your JMP

  • Most important part of your application and job search
  • Present wherever you can, as much as you can (see conferences in last set of slides)
  • Practice, practice, practice
  • Organize informal workshop with other graduate students

Materials: Letters

  • Should already have list of letter writers approved
  • Keep letter writers apprised of job market and research progress