Readers, please note: In the interest of providing information on this subject, we are posting the raw transcripts from the FCRC CRA-W workshop. This is an unedited transcript, but still should provide you with background information of use. The edited transcripts will be completed by spring 2000.

4/30 Jr. Grp. Panel : Getting a Job

FF = Faith Rich
TP = Toni *Pitassi*
JS: = Jennifer Schopf

FF: Hi. I'd like to welcome you to the "Getting a Job" workshop. I'm Faith Rich and this is Toni *Potasy* and Jenny Schopf. We'll just begin by telling you a little bit about ourselves. I got my PhD from Berkley in 1982. That was followed by a year of post-doc while my husband was finishing up his PhD in Astronomy. I then spent three years as an Assistant Professor at the University of Washington, Seattle, then I moved to the University of Toronto, where I am a full professor. This year I am on sabbatical in France, at the University of *Paris Soud*.

TP: Hi, I'm Toni *Pitassi* and I got my PhD from the University of Toronto - so I knew Faith from then - and I graduated in 92. I actually took a long route to decide to get my PhD. I had gotten my B.S. in Chemistry and then I stayed and did a one-year Masters in Computer Science. Then I went to Bell Labs, where I was in one of these research groups, but it was tied to industry. I really enjoyed myself there, but I got the "bug" for research. That's when I went back and got my PhD. Then I did a two-year post-doc in San Diego and spent a little bit of time at MIT. Then I went to the University of Pittsburgh for a faculty position. Now, I am at Arizona.

I have a significant *two-body* problem, which is why we've been going back and forth a lot. I'll talk more about that later.

JS: My name is Jenny Schopf. I finished my PhD at U.C. San Diego with Fran *Berman* this past December. I started a faculty position at Northwestern the first week of January. First thing that I'll say is to take time off in between if at all possible. I have very recently been on both sides of getting a job. I went of 15 job interviews last season. This season we interviewed 15 people at Northwestern, so I'm fresh out, which is why I'm here.

FF: There have been a number of other panel discussions and workshops on getting a job. There is a great transcript that is at this Web site. You can get it very easily from the CRA website. But we're going to try in this workshop to cover different material and I'll tell you what we're going to be doing.

?: We're going to have all of the slides on the Web as well. I'll tell you where at the end of the talk.

FF: While you're sitting there copying, I'll give you a brief outline. These are the five main areas we are going to talk about. Different alternative. We're only going to be concentrating on an academic position. We're going to be avoiding industrial positions and any discussion about that. We'll look at different alternatives for jobs in the academic environment. Look at the job application packet. Talk about some points that come up in interviewing. Making the actual decision and some issues about *two-body* problems.

The first part is picking the right job for you and I want to discuss the different ranges of academic positions one can get. I'm going to talk about the difference between post-doc and faculty positions.

I think that all of you are aware of what a faculty position is. You see lots of faculty. You sort of have an idea of what they do. Ideally, what you would like to have is a tenure-track position so that you'll eventually have a permanent job and that sounds great. Unfortunately, at certain times it is not always possible and it may not even be the right choice for you. So, there are some other alternatives you may want to consider.

There are limited-term-teaching positions. These are not tenure track and people often think of these as very undesirable. There are some reasons why you might want to actually consider these. One is that you get a lot of teaching experience. If you're really interested in teaching, this might give you good experience and get good letters of recommendation for going on to a more permanent job afterwards.

Another thing is that suppose you are mostly interested in research, but, for one reason or another - especially in a bad job market, which luckily it isn't so bad right now - but, when there is a bad job market, it may be very difficult to get a job.

You may have a choice of going to a small school, that is not research oriented, for a regular faculty position or going to a better school in a limited-term teaching position. In that case, you have a trade off. You may be able to be in a better research environment; although, you don't have the security of a tenure-track job. It may be something that you want to consider.

You also have a lot of flexibility. You aren't tied to a position. Or you haven't made a commitment so you are free to look around. It may be the right kind of thing while you are waiting for a *sopze* to finish up and it just gives you some flexibility.

The other thing is that it may be less desirable, but it sometimes can lead to tenure-track jobs. If you're really liked in the department where you are at, then maybe they'll try and find a permanent position for you.

Another thing is the limited-term teaching position can give you an opportunity to go somewhere else. Perhaps live in a foreign country or go to a different part of the country. Do something different with your life for a short period of time.

Okay, post-docs are another thing that we don't normally consider or haven't considered as much in computer sciences as we do in other fields.

There are a lot of benefits to post-docs that we may not automatically think of. One is that it is really a time to continue the fun part of your life as a graduate student, but you have already proved yourself. You have lots of time for research and you don't have a lot of responsibilities. You can really improve your publication list. You have a great opportunity to establish your research direction or perhaps change your research direction somewhat. Perhaps you have done a very theoretical thesis and you would like the opportunity to do something more hands on or more systems oriented. A post-doc gives you that kind of opportunity.

You also get opportunities for, perhaps, learning how to write grants or advising students. You may be able to supervise a younger student, at that time. You may also get the opportunity to teach one course, so that you are not thrown into a full-time teaching career with three or four courses to teach in one year. You'd have one course and you can prepare that and then when you finally get a full-time faculty position, you have one course that is already prepared.

It also means that when you are applying for a full-time faculty position, you have people who can comment on your teaching ability, if you've done a really good job on that. Especially at a teaching-oriented school, they like to have evidence that you are a good teacher. Even though you might say, "Yes, I really love teaching." but it is often the case that they want some experience about that.

You build your reputation with lots of publications. You also get to know a lot more people and make a lot of contacts. You may go to a foreign university, you may go to just a large, well-known university somewhere in Canada or the United States. You have a lot more in the way of contacts. Research contacts, people could write letters for you. People whom you will continue to work with throughout the rest of your career and that's a really good thing. The wider range of people you know and that you can possibly work with, the better.

There are a couple of things that you should know about post-docs. Some post-docs are type-specific projects and there are specific things you have to do. Others are open and you are freer to do what you'd like.

You should really understand what kind of post-doc you are applying for when you have that.

How do you go about applying for a post-doc? There has been a lot of information about how to go about applying for faculty jobs, but post-docs are a little bit different. Yes, there are standard places to look. This may depend on the country you're in or the country you want to work on. *NCIRC* and *NSF* have post-doctorate fellowship program and you should look on the appropriate Web sites.

There are also various online databases that list post-doctorate fellowships. This is just an example of something I found on the Web. Something called "Community of Science", which lists a variety of post-doctoral and other research opportunities.

A place that you might want to consider is your student services and your university. They sometimes have listings of those sorts of things and can give you information about it.

If you're interested in a post-doc in a foreign country, then check with the embassy of that country. There may be special programs for, let's say, Americans wanting to visit France for a post-doc or visa versa. Have a look and see what might interest you.

Post-docs also are available at various research institutions. Places like *DyMax* or *ExSee* or the *Field's Institute* in Toronto or national labs like NASA. They are available at companies like IBM, AT&T, Xerox, Microsoft, that are large and have big research groups.

There are also individual researchers or research groups that have money for post-docs. Those are other places that you might want to consider.

So, how do you go about doing it? Well, for some of those sorts of things, you can apply to the companies or to the places that you know have post-doctoral positions - that have had them for a number of years.

The other thing to do is to ask people. Ask someone senior in your area. Ask your advisor and the members of your committee. Ask anybody you know. That word-of-mouth can be very helpful in finding out and actually getting post-docs.

JS: So we're going to bounce around here - who's doing what. Because I had to make this decision recently, I wanted to say something about choosing a career at a non-research institute and how you make that decision.

When I was looking for jobs, I wasn't making an industry/academic decision. I had already decided that I really wanted to work with student; although, making the industry/academic decision is something else. If you want to talk to me offline, I am more than happy to do that.

I was deciding between post-docs, small teaching schools, and research institutes. Early on I realized, "Oh, hey, it's a really good job market. I don't have to post-doc right now. I can go straight into an academic position. This is a good year." I decided to do that. But you have to decide between a teaching school, which is generally a smaller school where you'll be working mostly with undergrads, sometimes master students in doing research, versus a research institute - which is where I wound up - where you have master students and PhD students. You'll have a lighter teaching load, but research is really emphasized, not teaching.

It's a hard decision. You should think about where your strengths lie and what kind of goals you have for what you want to do. Once you make that decision, you have to decide on a large school versus a small school. If you decide on a research school or a teaching school.

For example, Northwestern is a very small department. There is, depending on how you count, between eight and ten faculty members in my department. We've got about 200 undergrads and about 45 grad students right now, although we're growing. I like that environment much better than much larger environment, but there are pros and cons. Do you want to go into an established research group? Do you want to be the only person in your area at a school? What kind of resources are available to you? I could go to a small department and still get the resources I needed because *Argon* is 45 minutes away and I try to spend an afternoon a week out there.

You also need to think about State versus private. For example, admissions at Northwestern and admissions at UCSD were different. Northwestern is private and all students cost the same. At UCSD, we had to play this game of, "Okay, in-state residents count this much, out-of-state people count this much, and foreign students - well, they're really expensive." So, they were very limited in how many we could accept.

These are all things you should consider when you're applying. If you're not sure which way you want to go, apply to all of them. I went on a number of interviews and I split between big schools, small schools, research, and teaching. This is one of the only chances you'll get to do this, so if you have any doubt, try it out. Talk to people. Talk to people at those sites. Meet them at conferences like this and say, "You know, you're at a small teaching school. What's it like? Are you happy with the choice that you made?" Don't be afraid to get more information that way.

FF: One of the questions we typically get asked is, "What are the timelines for applying for jobs?" I am just really briefly going to go over this.

Right now, you should get to know the people in your field and make contacts. Typically, in the fall, you send out applications for post-docs. For post-docs, it is really important to find out what the deadlines are. For example, *NCIRC* post-docs happen to be middle of November. Other ones have very firm deadlines, especially if they are with government agencies, so it is important to find out about them.

For faculty positions, typically most applications are sent out in December or January, but it is also important to realize that other jobs will become available later on in the year. There may be money that was just made available for a new position that they were hoping to get and they couldn't advertise until it was approved. So, keep on looking.

Also, if there is a position that is advertised in September and your application packet is ready, you might as well send it out. Sometimes a job application that arrives early may get a little more attention than if it arrives with 300 others.

Interviews are typically in February through April. March through June is where offers are. This is typically in Canada and the U.S. Other countries may have very different deadlines. I know that in France it is just completely different and this doesn't make any sense. So, if you are thinking about getting experience, going to another country - even for a temporary position - find out carefully. Maybe look a year in advance or talk to someone to find out what those deadlines are.

TP: I'm going to talk about the application packet. The typical application packet has these things in it: your cover letter, your *CV*. Most schools typically now ask for two types of statements, a research statement and a teaching statement. You often want to send one or two of your favorite publication. They don't have to be papers that have already appeared in a journal or a conference.

One of the most important things is your letter *writers*. As part of your *CV*, usually on the last page, you'll have your letters of reference. I'll talk more about each of these.

You don't have to copy this down; but again, I just want to remind you that you can learn more about getting a job - you can get the same Web site that Faith mentioned - and Jenny was nice enough to put her job packet online. Actually, this is something that is smart to do. She just told us over breakfast that she got an interview from a particular school that found her application online and contacted her as a result of it. Mine's not online, but it is a good idea and while you are doing it, you might as well put it on your Web site.

I have mine on slides too. So if you want to see some example packets, we can show them to you. You done with that? One second.

So, I am going to give you some personal tips on your application. So send it on time. Make sure you don't send it late. There are schools that won't look at your application if you send it late. It just doesn't help you to do anything wrong.

Send your application not just to places that have advertised, but also think about places where you'd love to be your dream job. You have nothing but postage to lose by sending your application anywhere. So, I would advise you to look at the job market, look at the ads, but also look at places where you'd like to be or where you have colleagues and send your application there as well.

When you are preparing things, be very careful. I am not a very careful person; and if you're like me, this is a hard thing to do. But really spend the time to make sure that you don't irritate anybody. You don't want the date of your publications to be wrong. You don't want your name or somebody else's name to be misspelled. It is actually important. This is the only thing that they will se about you. Schools are getting 300 applications, so you don't want to do anything that is going to irritate somebody.

When you're preparing your *CV*, try to make sure that it is visually appealing; that not too much stuff or not too little stuff is on a page. There are different styles on how you want to actually present your publications. I would advise you not to replicate things. The way I have it in my *CV* is: journal, publications, and conference publications. It's split up into different groups and, if there is the same publication that appeared in more than one form, I just put it once. If you don't have that many publications, you could just list them all under "publications."

The cover letter should highlight things that won't appear elsewhere in your application package. So, you might want to highlight your research area or peripheral research areas that you've done work in or that you're interested in. Particular strengths that you have as opposed to other people. And maybe *gather* some personal things, like why you particularly want to be in that area or why you particularly want to be at that institution.

Different people have different approaches. If you personalize your cover letter, it, obviously, can't hurt you; but you can't really do this if you're applying to 50 places. So, you have to strike some balance. What I did, when I first applied, the places where I was really interested in, I did come up with personal letters for those. There was maybe eight or nine of those. Then, all the other ones, I just sent the standard letter.

In the teaching statement, the teaching statement should be one page. In that statement, you should discuss your experience, what kind of courses you can teach and have taught, innovative ideas that you've had that you've used in the courses that you've taught. If you haven't taught and you've only TA'd, you can still talk about your experience TA-ing. You can talk about ideas that you'd want to institute when you do start teaching more. You might want to mention any particular philosophies that you have on teaching.

Again, I can show you mine, if you want, when we get to the question and answer session.

Probably the most important and difficult part of your application is figuring out whom to ask to write your letters for you. Now that I'm on the other side, it is really one of the most important things. When you see these 300 applications, the ones that are in your area you can sort of look at and figure out, but most of them won't be in your area.

This as the person looking at the application. So, you're looking for some known quantities. Did they get a well-known scholarship line a NSF scholarship? Did they publish in prestigious conferences and journals? Are their letter writers high-quality people whose opinions you trust who are also saying high-quality things about you?

So you have to really put some effort into this. You want to probably ask your writers, letter writers, in advance if they can write you a strong letter. Or at least ask if they could write you a letter. Of course, the best thing is to get famous people to write these letters for you and famous people who know your research well and think highly of you.

If you can get a combination of people who are famous and people who know your work well. That is what most people do. You want a couple of solid people who you know will write you very strong letters even if they're not well known. It is also nice if you can have a few people who are quite well know, who will say good things about you, if not say that you're the greatest thing.

When you ask these letter writers to write you letters, once they agree to do it, you should send them supplementary material to help them out. Because even if they know your work well, I am sure they don't know everything about you, every publication that you've ever had. So you want to send them your *CV* or anything you think will help them to write your letter for you. You might want to send them an e-mail with some bulleted items that they might not know about. That you got some scholarship, that you won some best paper award.

Now, let's assume that you've gotten the interview. I'm going to put up here a slide. This is an actual interview schedule that Jenny went on this year. Last year, '98. So a typical interview would be two days long but sometimes it's just one day or a day and one-half. If it is a day or a day and one-half, what they do is condense all this stuff into one day or a day and one-half. So, it's not that you're doing less.

I find it to be a tiring, but exhilarating, experience at the same time. I've started at eight, almost always.

JS: Yeah, no one in my department actually gets up by eight, so this started actually, *Chris Reisbeck* was acting chair when I interviewed, *Brian Dennis* was the next youngest faculty. Something to note about this also is, you see how things are crossed out? And actually in the second day, things are also crossed out? You're schedule is going to change. These things are never set in stone. Go with it. I mean, you're going to get bumped around from place to place. If something gets canceled, just say, "Okay. You know, I can do this."

Also notice that my day was supposed to end at 2:30. I happen to remember that I was in the department until we went to dinner at 7:00 because there are other people to talk to. I actually came back a third morning and talked to people in another department because I was still in town and I found out there were people in my area in another department that I wanted to talk with.

TP: So this is the first day. I'll put up the second day. If you don't get a chance to, you should ask to talk to the graduate students. It's one of the most enlightening things that you could do when you go for an interview.

Typically, you're given very little free time - maybe a half an hour before your talk and a half an hour some where else in the middle of the day. So, try to be well rested before you start.

Also, at Northwestern, we don't have breakfast with people, but I've been places where they'll pick you up at 7:30, you'll have breakfast with faculty, you'll have meetings every half hour, you'll have lunch with faculty, you'll have meetings every half hour, then you'll have dinner. So basically, you're "on" from 7:30 in the morning until 10:00 at night.

JS: This is what I experienced. You start at 8:00 with a meeting with the chair. Your day is over at about 9:00 at night. You feel like you've had maybe 20 minutes and at that time you usually were in the bathroom.

TP: Also something to note. The dinners you have with the faculty guys? They're not social. I mean they are social - and we'll talk about some illegal questions and stuff at the very end of this - but be on your best behavior. For example, I didn't drink the whole time I was interviewing. I love to have a glass of wine with dinner, but I didn't have anything to drink because I knew I was already tired. You can let your hair down around some people, but it's just something to keep in mind.

FR: It's hard to learn to give a talk with a microphone in your hand when you're used to having two free hands.

The talk that you give at an interview is often thought of as the most important part of an interview. It used by the faculty members to judge not only the quality of your research, but your ability as a teacher.

There are a number of components, besides just presenting what you've done, that are very important parts of an interview talk. If fact, this should take up a vast proportion of the talk. It's really important to discuss the motivation. Why are the problems that you are studying interesting and important? Give appropriate background for your talk. How does your work fit into the field? You obviously have to discuss your contributions. You should make sure that you include a clear statement of what you've done, explain why it is important, and also explain why it's not trivial.

I've sat through job talks many times and saying, "This looks like my undergraduate students could do this. Why are they talking about that?" I'm sure there was more to it, but that didn't get across.

It is also important to discuss future directions. The faculty wants to know that you can come into the department, be able to supervise other students and, also, that you're going to be able to continue to do good research once you leave the protection of your advisor. So you have some good ideas of what you're going to do. Future directions should be in the form of: short-term, medium-term, and long-term research goals.

Also have a strong summary review of what you've done on one slide so that people who leave the talk can come away with a good idea of what they were supposed to get from that talk.

It's also really important to adjust your talk for different audiences. If you're going to give an interview at a research-oriented school, like MIT, or teaching-oriented school, for example, Mills College, you want to give a very very different kind of talk because they are going to be very different audiences.

JS: I actually had two talks. I had a talk that was specifically about my research for research schools and then I had a talk that was about my general area for teaching schools that had about two slides on my research.

TP: I agree. That's a really excellent idea. Actually, at some research-oriented schools, I actually had two talks, as well. I gave two talks at that particular school. I gave a general, sort of colloquium-style talk for the whole department and then I gave a hard-core theory seminar for the people who were really interested. Now that only makes sense at a school where there is a lot of people in your research area who really want to know the details of the *lower bounds* that I happened to have proved. It made sense at MIT and Toronto and places like that. It's not appropriate for many places, but if you are applying to that caliber of school, you may want to consider it.

If you were going to a school where there is only one specialist in your area, it would be a bad mistake to spend a lot of time discussing the details of your proof in the talk. What you can do is arrange beforehand and say, "I'm not going to go through the details in this talk because I don't think it's a good idea, but I'd really like to share them with you later on. I hope we have a big slot together so we can really discuss it."

The reason that's important is because that person is going to be commenting on your quality as a researcher and you want to impress that person that the stuff you've done is neat, you have a lot of neat idea, that you're a really solid researcher. You have to convince that person. You have to convince the rest of the department that you're a good teacher and that what you're doing is important and interesting. So it's different kinds of things that you're trying to get across.

If you're going to an undergraduate school or a school where undergraduate teaching is of primary importance, or you're applying for an instructorship position, you may not be asked to give a research-oriented interview talk at all. You may be asked to prepare an undergraduate lecture because what they're really interested in is teaching and how well you'll perform as an undergraduate lecturer.

If you have any doubts about what your talk should be like, ask. Ask the person who's inviting you. Ask your advisor. Ask other graduate students who have visited there or ask people that you may know who know about that school. Look on the Web. Find out about the school so that you can tune your talk to the audience.

Important things about talks. Practice. Give a practice talk. Give a couple of practice talks if you can. Graduate students, have your advisors, have faculty members from other areas at your practice talk - people who can give you feedback from a lot of different perspectives.

Attend a lot of interview talks. You're at a school that, presumably, is hiring - because most schools are hiring now - so go and look at those interview talks and thing about, "Was that a good talk or not?" Talk to your advisor and other graduate students. "I thought this was a lousy talk because ...." "I really liked what this person did here." And that will give you a lot more experience when you come to prepare your own.

In many cases, when you graduate you have one research result that you're going to present in your talk. But, in may be the case that you're applying for a faculty job after having a post-doc or you may have just been incredibly productive as a graduate student; then you're left with the quandary of, "Oh, which talk should I present for my interview?" This is actually one the questions we did get asked prior to the conference. So, there are a number of different possible answers to this. I'll describe them and tell you what I believe.

One possibility is to present all of your results. Now, my view is that this would typically result in a talk that is very shallow and, perhaps, very disjointed. I would not advise that.

Another thing is that you could find one result and just present it in depth. It may be that if you have the most important result in theory this year, that maybe what you want to do, especially if it's a very technical talk and it's a very technical audience and they're judging you for a very important research position at MIT. That may be the kind of thing you want to do. But typically, I would say that if you have a lot of different results, just focusing on one is probably not a good idea. You miss an opportunity to share the range of your interests with the entire faculty.

My approach would be - and what I have advised post-docs from the University of Toronto who have come to me with this question - is to give a short over review of your research program. Then say that you'd be happy to talk personally with any people who are interested in topics you're not going to cover. Then focus in on one of the areas in your research program. Ideally, what you want to do is pick a group of related results. Perhaps a survey of a small area, emphasizing your contributions to that area.

Now, there may be a bunch of choices even amongst that and what you want to do is sort of go back here and say, "Which one is going to be easiest to present in terms of these things? Which one can I show the importance and motivate best? Which one is going to make me look best?" You have interplay of those kinds of things.

The other thing is to ask for advice. Talk to your advisor, talk to other people who know your research well and see what they think. If you get the same answer from everybody, you probably know what you're going to do. If not, it probably doesn't matter too much.

TP: I am going to assume now that you have an offer and you will get offers. If you are like me, you'll think that you won't get offers and you certainly won't be interested in focusing on what you're going to do if you get one, in terms of negotiating. I felt like, you know, if I could just have a job where I didn't have to pay them that that was good enough.

When I got my first tenure-track job, it didn't even occur to me to negotiate. I basically took what they gave me and I was very happy. Since then I've realized that this is not a smart thing to do. Now you're probably not thinking of this; but when you do get your offers, you should really, at that time, put a lot of effort into deciding what you want. Have some idea of what kinds of things you can ask for and that you will get. So this is a list of things that are typically negotiated in an offer.

??: This is also available on the *transcripts online*. They have a whole list of things and ranges and such. Sorry.

TP: This is a personal list. Salary, obviously, is at the top here. You should be familiar with what the average salary is in the year that you apply. I'll show you the *Talbee* survey from last year to tell you what the current range is. Make sure you are up-to-date. The one I am going to show you is already out-of-date.

There is also a new thing that people are doing now, which is called a "signing bonus." This is a way of increasing your salary without really increasing your salary. It's like a lump sum of money that you can get right in the beginning.

Summer support. In the beginning, before you are picked up by your own grant, typically you can get that for two summers. This is maybe a "wish list." This is the sort of things - I don't know if you should expect them - but maybe you should ask for them.

I should also say that they are independent of one another. Some things are very hard to get; others are very easy. You shouldn't take the approach that if you get one then you won't get the other because it really doesn't work that way. Increasing your salary is something that is very difficult thing to do because it is a long-term commitment on the part of the university. Whereas, any short-term amount monies, any startup or two-year or "signing bonus" type of thing is in a whole different category. So don't think because you got a really good startup that it has anything to do with negotiating for your salary.

You can usually get some support for graduate students in the beginning. Again, this is before you get your own grant. This is really a great thing, reduced teaching load and committee load in the beginning. This is something that you can usually get and it's really important. I would urge you to try to get this.

Sometimes you can get a house-hunting trip paid for. Moving expenses are usually paid for. Equipment - this is typically your startup. This is all the equipment and peripheral things that you need in order to be able to run your lab or carry out your research. This is going to vary a lot, depending on your area. Sometimes it's real small. Like in theory, it tends to not be so large. Other times, it's huge. So you have to sit down and figure out exactly what things you need. Figure out what they cost and exactly what it is that you want. I think that works better than saying, "I need X amount of dollar." It works better to actually decide what you really need. Then, usually, it is easier to get.

??: Also of note in the equipment area. Come up with a list of what you need and come up with a "wish list", but come up with what you actually need. If you ask for stuff that you don't need, you can get screwed over by the department. They'll look at it and say, "Well, you know, there's no way you need a $50,000 machine. Come on, give me a break." If you actually do and you can justify it, chances are you'll get that money.

Ask someone from the department for guidelines on this. What a department can offer varies a lot between departments. I actually *speced* out $100,000 package, a $50,000 package, and a $35,000 package for teaching schools. You might also consider doing that.

If you have it available already, they are really happy. When they say, "We'd like to make you an offer, what kind of equipment are you looking for?", if you can give them something immediately, that makes their life a lot better.

TP: Few other things. If you need a lab, make sure you get lab space and then lab support, computer support, and secretarial support. Again, money initially to pay for things like travel, conferences, books.

Then there are two other things - probably the only things on this list that aren't money related. One is your tenure *clock* and the other one is your sabbatical year. These are probably only relevant if this isn't your first job. But maybe if you've done a post-doc, they are also relevant. There is usually a maximum time for tenure, but if you've done a post-doc first, you have the option of shortening your tenure clock.

People are usually advised to make the tenure clock as long as possible. The argument being that you can always shorten it. I think this is debatable, but you want to think about it and decide for yourself what is the best tenure clock for you. Also, sometimes they'll stop the tenure clock if you have a baby or you have other personal reasons. So you might want to ask about that.

Again, if you're coming from another place or you've done extensive post-docing, you might be able to get your sabbatical year before the typical seven years.

Start date is not on here, but that is another thing. Usually you start, obviously, at the beginning of the academic year, but it is usually negotiable. Somebody asked at the last panel, somebody said they were working for a government organization for two years. What I did when I got my first job, was I applied for post-docs, the NSF post-doc, and I also applied for faculty positions at the same time. I accepted both a post-doc and a faculty position. I started the faculty position a year later; so they let me take the first year. It was a great situation because I really was able to enjoy my post-doc then because I didn't have to think about getting a job afterwards. You might want to think about postponing your start date by one-half year or a year to give you a chance to just do research or go to Europe, depending on what you want to do.

One other little thing. So this was the *Talbee* survey salaries for `97/`98. This is already out of date. I know what we're offering at the University of Arizona and I know the averages are several thousand higher than this now. Make sure you know what the current average is for the particular type of job you're looking for. Right now it is a very competitive market so you can usually do better than the average.