Surviving (and Thriving on) the Academic Job Market

🌟 Overall Advice and Habits

Here are my top actionable tips—the things that made the biggest difference for me.

→ Have routines! Try to develop routines such that you just hit play and go. Remove friction and decision fatigue to make your life easier. Have a flight routine, a "when you get there" routine, a morning-before routine, and a night-after routine so you don't have to constantly think about what's next. Here are some things I did:

📚 Part 1: Academic Advice

Prep Timeline

My earliest deadline was September 16th, so I had all my statements ready by then. My first job talk was the first week of December, so I had a version of that ready too. I didn't change my statements much after the September version—maybe tweaked the research statement a bit by November 1st when we had some papers accepted, and did some restructuring for future work.

The job talk, though? That one I changed A TON. I basically made it from scratch for my next job talk in the first week of February. Don't be afraid to do things from scratch if something doesn't work.

School-Specific Preparation Pipeline

Before each interview, I went through a systematic prep process:

Zoom Interviews

99% of the time, they'll ask for an elevator pitch—usually 5, 7, or 10 minutes. Some ask for slides, some you can just talk through. It varies. I had three versions based on length and what the committee was looking for. Some schools want one project explained in depth, some want a summary, some care more about future work.

Elevator Pitch Structure:

1. Open with a couple of overview sentences—your high-level research vision
2. Three bullet points/projects that reflect the three directions of your research statement
3. Explain each direction depending on time
4. End with future work—this is crucial! Showing you have vision matters a lot. A lot of your intellectual maturity is reflected here, so don't half-ass it.

After the elevator pitch, they may ask about your research and projects. Then they usually move to more standard questions about teaching, mentoring, and collaboration.

On-Site Interviews

Here's something important: what gets you an in-person interview is disjoint from what gets you a job. I had Zoom interviews at places where I didn't get called for an on-site, and I know people who got on-sites at top schools but didn't get offers. Meanwhile, I got offers from almost everywhere I interviewed on-site. I really believe it's because I OVER-prepared—not just for the academic content, but mentally and physically.

Preparing means working on your slides, narrative, questions you care about, and your demeanor. I don't mean over-preparing by prepping separately for all your 1:1s—that would be impossible when you have like 10 each day! But there are ways to efficiently prepare for those.

Student Meetings (What to Sus Out)

Student meetings are gold mines of information. Students are often more candid than faculty about what life is really like. Here's what to pay attention to:

Good questions to ask students:

• "What would you change about your PhD experience here?"
• "What do you like best about this university?"
• "How do you and your advisor work together?"
• "What's the collaboration culture like between labs?"

Questions to Ask Them

They will ask if you have questions for them. Here's my comprehensive list organized by category:

💬 Part 2: Communication & The Human Element

Body Language

I highly recommend watching this video: "Body Language Expert: Stop Using This, It's Making People Dislike You, So Are These Subtle Mistakes!"

Body language matters so much more than we realize, especially in high-stakes situations where people are forming impressions of you quickly. The video covers common mistakes and how to come across as confident and likeable.

Being Genuine

Don't force connections or questions. Be genuine. Be yourself. Don't go out of your way to change who you are to impress people.

Here's a candid thing: I have piercings and tattoos. Before going on the market, people told me to try to be conservative. I took off some of my facial piercings but kept the eyebrow one. For clothes, people usually wear the quintessential blazer and pant suits. I wore ski pants and a base layer, all black, and I think it was fine! Sure, some people confused me with students or undergrads, and one grad student asked me why I wasn't wearing "the blazer"—but honestly, people are nicer than you think. Just be true to yourself!

1:1 Meetings

This is where watching talks instead of just reading papers really pays off. You'll have so many 1:1s—sometimes 10+ in a day—and you can't deeply prep for each one. But if you've watched someone's talk, you already have a sense of what they care about, their communication style, and potential overlap with your work.

Break auto-pilot! Ask better questions than "how are you?" Try:

• "Did you do anything exciting this weekend?"
• "Have anything exciting coming up? What excites you?"
• "Tell me more!" (and actually listen—find commonalities, focus on shared interests)

Questions for Building Connection

These work for 1:1s, dinners, and anywhere you want to get past small talk:

🥗 Part 3: Health—Food, Exercise, and Sleep

Here's something no one says—in fact, people say the opposite. They tell you: "It's okay if you don't work out or have to have crappy airport fast food or protein bars, it's just a few months." And honestly, if that works for you, it really is fine. But given some of my health concerns mentioned at the opening, I felt like this could really damage my performance on the market.

For me, the only thing that kept me sane was working out, and if I didn't have a good diet, I would have definitely gotten sick and weak. My brain would have been fried with all the travel. Maintaining good exercise and food routines isn't about being hard on yourself—it's about taking care of the instrument that's doing all the work.

Food & Blood Sugar

Blood sugar management changed everything for me. Here are my main strategies:

1. Savory breakfast over sugary breakfast. Especially on interview days. You do NOT want to crash during your job talk. Watch the Glucose Goddess: The 10 Glucose Hacks video for the science behind this.
2. Fiber first. If you eat fiber before carbs, it blunts the glucose spike. I always carried a baggie of raw carrots and broccoli.
3. Protein snacks. 0% Chobani packs were my go-to. So much better than protein bars, which often have a lot of sugar.
4. Walk after meals. Even 10–15 minutes helps your muscles absorb glucose.
5. Calf raises when you can't walk. Stuck in a room? Bounce on your toes. Your calves are huge muscles that help regulate blood sugar.
6. 16 oz water before meals and in the morning.

Good protein sources: Eggs, tofu and tempeh, lentils and chickpeas, cottage cheese, Greek yogurt. My go-tos were Chobani and hard-boiled eggs. I always had hard-boiled eggs with me, haha.

Exercise

Get your steps in! I made my interviewers walk me everywhere. This had multiple benefits: steps, fresh air, seeing the campus, and casual conversation. I aimed for 10k steps daily by combining:

• Getting walked between meetings
• Treadmill walks the night before while watching talks
• Morning walks if time permitted
• I used the Down Dog app, which is also very affordable for academics, and would do yoga, HIIT, and mat Pilates with it. Most hotels have gyms with yoga mats, so you can keep it up on the go based on your mood.

A Note on Intermittent Fasting (Especially for Women)

I did intermittent fasting, and it really helped me stay sharp and avoid the mental fog that comes with constant eating and digestion. However, I need to be honest about something: for women, intermittent fasting increases cortisol, and if it's near your cycle, it can seriously mess with your hormones.

In all honesty, I lost my period for 12 full months—from my first job talk until recently. The combination of stress, travel, fasting, and general intensity took a toll. Your mileage may vary, but please be aware of this if you're a woman considering fasting during a high-stress period. Listen to your body.

Unwinding Between Interviews

Between job talks, I honestly just wanted to be in a sensory deprivation chamber. Here's what actually helped:

1. Nature. Get outside, even briefly. It resets your nervous system.
2. Minimize travel fatigue. I temporarily moved to DC because most of my job talks were on the East Coast. It was the best decision. Highly recommend relocating temporarily if it makes sense for your schedule.
3. Connect with friends—especially non-academic, non-AI friends if you can. Disconnecting from the constant shop-talk can be incredibly restorative.
4. Watch comfort shows. No shame. Sometimes you just need The Office or whatever your equivalent is.
5. Physical activity. Even when exhausted, moving helps complete the stress cycle.
6. Creative expression. Whatever form that takes for you—painting, drawing, dancing, reading, or writing.
7. Meditation. Headspace really helped me. And here's my favorite album that I would listen to on flights back. Now my brain is conditioned to chill when I hear it!

📎 External Resources

There are also shared drives with materials from folks from other years floating around—if you're on the market, try to find these through your network. It's good to look at other people's materials, but don't read too many or you'll get too conditioned on a certain style. Find your own voice!