To Whom It May Concern:

I’m great. Give me a job now.

KTHXBYE,

Mike

As some of you may already be aware, I’m currently in the process of a job search. The “why” of the situation is quite simple: I’m finishing up my third year as a Resident Director, and I feel I’ve gained all I can out of the position, professionally. Also, believe it or not, living on a college campus when you’re 28 years old can get really old. The “how” of the job search is the part about all of this that’s a bit more complicated.

Some of you may remember when I was in this process three years ago, as I was finishing my degree at UConn. The basics of the process are the same. I’ll be participating in the placement at a national convention this year. What’s different this year, though, is that both of the major organizations in my field are having a joint meeting.. which means rather than a 3000-4000 person conference, this is going to be something in the neighborhood of a 10,000 person conference. If a giant asteroid were to impact in Orlando between March 31 and April 5 this year, there’d be a whole lot fewer college administrators around to be disliked.

I’m searching for positions that would be career-advancing for me in one way or another.  This means I’m applying for mid-level Residence Life or Judicial Affairs positions, or more entry-ish positions in Student Activities to broaden my experience base.  With very few exceptions, these are live-off positions.  Those that provide housing are more live-on rather than live-in, which means housing separate from the student population, but still on campus for quick response to crisis situations.

I won’t really be posting the specifics of my search here.  This is public, and I think it would be a little unprofessional to list off the schools with which I’m interviewing at this point.  While Googling my name doesn’t lead to a patch to reach this site until a very indirect root that pops up on the 5th page of results, this is a small field, and you really just never know what information about you could be shared with someone.

I will say that the search started out a little frustrating, but really started to get better this past Friday. I now have 4 confirmed interviews for the conference, and hope to get at least 6-8 more.  After conference interviews, I’ll find out how many (or if I have any) campus interview invitations.  I think that 3-4 campus visits is the most I can manage, though I have saved up a lot of vacation time, knowing that I’d need it for this process.

As far as the “where”, I can say that I’ve pretty much opened the search up on a national level.  I’m focusing more on urban areas, still, though I am considering some places that are more rural when I feel an institutions could be very good fit for me.  There aren’t any job possibilities open for me at Pitt, however I will say that I have some options as far as applying for schools within Pittsburgh.

If the job search doesn’t work out for me, I still have my current job.  However, I really feel like it’s the appropriate time for me to try to move up.   I’ve been very up front with my supervisor during this process, and she knows that I’m searching.  I’m trying to be as fair as I can to the department, too, as if I do leave, they’ll need to hire a replacement for me.  If they do have to replace me, they don’t want to loose out on the best candidates by waiting too long.   The whole thing is a rather delicately balanced situation.

At any rate, I’ll do my best to share my thoughts on the job search as it moves along, as well as make periodic updates about where I am with it.

Less than two weeks until conference time.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 18th, 2007 at 18:28 and is filed under work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.