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In a two-part interview on the HigherEdJobs podcast, co-hosts Andy Hibel and Kelly Cherwin talk with Professor Claire Kamp Dush from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. She has dual appointments in the Minnesota Population Center and the department of sociology and studies topics at the intersection of psychology, sociology, and public health.
Kamp Dush, a first-generation college student, teaches a Ph.D. Job Market course and provides advice on the job search process for graduate students and others seeking their next role in academia.
In the first part of the interview, she discusses how to promote work accomplishments, own your authenticity, and not let rejection get the best of you during a job search.
Kamp Dush said many of us don’t acknowledge that there’s hard work behind our accomplishments. It’s not just luck or good timing.
“It’s okay to be humble, but we shouldn’t be humble and not promote our papers, not let people know what we’re working on,” she said.
Kamp Dush said it is hard to ask your advisor or supervisor to nominate you for an award. It can be hard to tweet about your paper. You don’t want to appear as if you’re bragging.
“But the thing is that other people are doing that, and it can impede your accomplishments” if you don’t follow suit, she said. Asking for a nomination and landing that award could advance your career.
Moving Past Rejection to Resilience
Kamp Dush said that in academia, you must get used to rejection.
“I’ve been rejected so much, and you can still have joy and have fun and still be rejected,” she said. “My big project that I have, I always talk about. I submitted the grant for it five times, and I’m sitting in front of my futon right now, which is one of the places I like to do my ‘shame spirals’ and lay on the floor and just feel really bad about myself.”
Find support through colleagues and friends to get yourself through the shame spirals, Kamp Dush said. You want people in your corner who will help you work through the rejection, not people who make you feel bad about yourself.
Hibel said success has failure and rejection as key ingredients.
“That’s progress on the way to success if you’re seeing that because you’re putting yourself out there,” he said. “You need to be authentic, but you also need to own your accomplishments.”
Tailor Your Cover Letter, Do Your Homework Before the Interview
In the second part of the interview, Kamp Dush offers tips on what to include in your cover letter and how to do your homework before the on-campus interview. She said faculty on a search committee typically review cover letters after the first cut among candidates’ applications.
Kamp Dush recalled a search she led in the department of sociology and how candidates with a doctoral degree outside of sociology explained how they would fit with the team in their cover letters.
“One thing they did that was really smart was they described how they were sociological,” she said. For those candidates, it was about showing that they think like a sociologist and tailoring their application materials.
Other tips include:
- Explain your interest and excitement about working with a department, center, or team.
- Do your homework. At one point during her career, Kamp Dush applied for a job near her parents. In her cover letter, she included a paragraph about her familiarity with the institution and how she was from the area.
Cherwin said it’s important to highlight that you’ve done your research.
“Andy and I often tell our audience that you are interviewing that employer just as much as they are interviewing you,” she said. Asking forward-thinking questions in an interview is key.
During her post-doctoral years at Cornell University, Kamp Dush received crucial advice from a colleague on doing homework before the interview.
He told her that when she meets with a faculty member on-campus during a job search, you must study their work and research, describe how it interacts with your work, and show interest in this potential collaboration.
It’s a formula she’s found so successful that Kamp Dush subsequently secured a job offer for every role when she made it to an on-campus interview.
When she had tenure and was considering a move, she began asking: What am I going to complain about at happy hour?
Kamp Dush said she wanted to make sure — with a potential move or relocating — that what people were complaining about at happy hour would not be a big deal in the big scheme of things.
“I’ll just remind everybody that there’s no perfect job,” she said.
Hibel added that there’s also no perfect candidate.
“There’s not a person out there who interviews for every job, who’s the best candidate for every job they interview for, and who everybody wants to hire,” he said. “There are candidates who have different strengths and different ways of being evaluated. And, depending on the priorities of the department or organization, it’s how you fit within that.”
Employers hope that the candidate who gets the position has values that align. When that happens, it can lead to immense success.
Hibel is a co-founder of HigherEdJobs and serves as its chief operating officer. Cherwin is the director of editorial strategy at HigherEdJobs.
