Mizzou Econ PhD Job Market Guide

David M. Kaplan

Updated: Fall 2023

Overview

During Year 5 (or sometimes Year 4), you will be on the job market. Most of your time will be spent preparing and submitting applications, practicing for interviews, and doing interviews, besides related tasks like travel logistics. This means you will not have much time for research, besides maybe wrapping up your third chapter in March.

We (faculty/dept) want to help you succeed:

and for whatever else you need, we will do our best to help. (We are not mental health professionals, but Mizzou has some great resources; see the Mental Health section below.)

Note: statements below about the Director of Doctoral Studies (DDS) may change if I am no longer DDS.

Abbreviations

Job listings

Here are some websites where you can find jobs.

Schedule

The schedule is roughly as follows. Note: non-academic and/or non-econ jobs may have significantly earlier application deadlines, starting in early September.

Now: start thinking about different types of jobs and become familiar with all the grad student resources from the MU Career Center; watch an informational AEA job market webinar linked here.

September or earlier: you (the job market candidate, JMC) should have your best research paper complete and "polished" (no spelling or grammar errors, etc.); this is your "job market paper" (JMP).

August/September: you will make a personal website with basic info, research papers, and anything else you want potential employers to see. It should be "clean," edited (ask your advisor or DDS for edits), and easy to find all the information. I'd suggest a single-page website like this former JMC. You're welcome to use this JMC website template I created, just copy the HTML and host on GitHub for free (ask me if you need help with any of that).

September: your info will be posted on our website's JMC page; the DDS/staff will ask for your: field(s), references (recommendation letter writers), URL of your personal website, and a nice professional photo of you. For the photo, wear your job market outfit (probably a suit), note some tips from LinkedIn here (especially #6 and 9), and take advantage of offers for professional headshots from the Graduate School or use the Selfie Studio, who also link to some good tips for a professional appearance.

Mid-September: you can start a spreadsheet to keep track of relevant job openings; check the links in the "Job listings" section above, and ask your advisor for additional suggestions. (I know it's tempting, but try not to waste time looking at job listings every day; checking every 1-2 weeks is sufficient because nobody will post a new job with a deadline that same week.)

September: ask your committee members to write recommendation letters; they'll be expecting you to, but you still need to formally ask.

September/early October: you make a CV, research statement, teaching statement, and anything else requested by jobs you're applying to (see LaTeX templates/examples below); make an appointment with a Career Coach for them to review your materials and make suggestions.

October/November: job applications are due; you can create and practice your job talk (ask DDS about practice opportunities, or directly ask 9413 workshop coordinator or brown bag seminar coordinator). Note: sometimes deadlines are stated to be much later (January, March, ...) for logistical HR reasons even though applications are reviewed much earlier; to be safe, I'd suggest applying to all jobs by Thanksgiving, even if it says the deadline is later. (And if you actually update your application materials significantly after that, you can always submit updated materials.)

November/December: you can do practice interviews (can ask DDS to arrange). Then, besides more practice and learning about your potential new colleagues and employers, try to get some good sleep and hope for the best!

Mid-December: first-round interviews for the European job market (if you're interested).

Early January: first-round interviews at the AEA/ASSA conference, although some schools try to interview earlier to gain a strategic advantage.

Late January to mid-February (roughly): second-round "flyout" interviews. Schools/companies/banks/etc. pay for you to "fly out" to visit them in person (unless there's a global pandemic), and there's a full day of 1-on-1 interviews, group meals, and your "job talk" (75-90 minute seminar about your JMP/research, with lots of questions).

Interview Tips

1st-round

These are just my personal suggestions; ask your advisor and other committee members for theirs.

  1. For a couple days before interviews, get enough sleep, exercise, and/or whatever else you need to be feeling good physically and mentally.
  2. Prepare questions to ask your interviewers; at the end, they often ask if you have any questions. This is your opportunity to send a positive signal that you are interested in them and have spent time learning about them. Look around their department/company/etc. website, as well as the personal website of your interviewers (if you know them ahead of time, and they have a website, or else Google Scholar page or CV or something). Your question should show that you already know something about them, besides wanting to learn more (ideally something you are actually curious about). For example, "I was on your department's research web page and noticed some publications co-authored by multiple faculty in the department; do faculty also collaborate less formally, like through lunch talks or just talking over lunch/coffee?" Or, "I saw you have a couple very good publications with graduate students; how much is the typical grad student in your department able to contribute to research of that high level?"
  3. Prepare multiple versions of your JMP summary, like 3-minute, 6-minute, 10-minute (or something), because you don't know when interviewers will first interrupt you and start asking questions. Some interviewers may simply listen until you seem done and stop talking; others may interrupt you very early. Because of this, you generally want to describe (briefly) your most important contributions first, then add secondary details if nobody has stopped you yet, then add tertiary details.
  4. Interviewers are typically seeing around 30 JMCs in 2-3 days, so they typically have not all read your JMP carefully. Quite possibly some have not read your JMP at all, though usually at least one has looked at it; so you may need a very basic explanation to help some interviewers while going into more detail with others. And even if somebody has looked at your JMP, it is unlikely that they know your particular topic and the related literature very well, whereas you have been studying it for 2-3 years now. They may be smart enough to understand your main contribution if you explain it slowly and clearly enough, but not if you use lots of unexplained field-specific vocabulary/acronyms or talk quickly through parts that you (but not they) now find "obvious," etc.
  5. (Similarly, consider other parts of my writing advice in Section 1.2 of my ECON 9476 material.)
  6. If you have another paper (besides your JMP) worth talking about, definitely prepare at least a few minutes to describe its main contributions.
  7. Prepare something to say about your research "pipeline"/agenda going into the future five years.
  8. Read this list of other potential questions, including questions about teaching and fit.

2nd-round (flyout)

  1. All the 1st-round suggestions apply here, too. You may even get a one-on-one interviewer that asks, "So tell me about your JMP."
  2. Try to figure out what each one-on-one interviewer most wants to talk about. A lot of the individual interviewers are not in your field and don't really care about your research, but they are happy to talk about the city (things to do, where to live, etc.), or boring department details (like "...so you can apply through the college-level system, with the October deadline, but there's also a university-wide application due in November, and it generally gets fewer applications per available dollar because..."), etc. Or, they may be in another field but actually do want to learn about your research. So you just need to try to listen and "read" their body language to see what topic seems best. Related: generally people like talking about themselves, so if you have questions like "I saw on your website that...," they may be happy to talk about their (grant, research, student, R package, ...) for a while.
  3. Your interviewers are trying to learn whether they would appreciate having you as a colleague. This is particularly helpful to remember when you are asked questions during your job talk. For many questions, they don't particularly care about whether you have "the answer." They mostly want to see how you react and if you can have a productive discussion together.
  4. Related: the most important first response to a question is to ensure that you understand the question, through "reflective listening": try to repeat the question but in your own words. This shows the other person that you understand the question (or if you don't, then it offers them an opportunity to clarify, instead of forcing them to listen to an irrelevant answer), and that you care about understanding their question. It's also good to have a pen and paper, so you can write down notes to show them that you care about and want to remember what they said. You are welcome to speculate; often they want to hear your "educated guess" (as long as you are appropriately humble about it just being a guess). (And of course if the question is something like, "Isn't your RD identification invalid because people can re-take the test?" then you need a better reply than simply rephrasing their concern and writing it in your notes.)
  5. Don't get drunk but it's fine to accept one beer/wine/drink if you are offered; it's also fine to politely decline.

Mental Health

The job market is an emotional and stressful (and long) process. The Mizzou Care Team can help you get the most from the many free campus resources to deal with the mental health effects of the job market, and you are also welcome to talk with the DDS for other ideas. Also, remember that even for successful candidates, most applications do not become interviews, and most first-round interviews do not become flyouts; you just need one job offer to have great success!

Resources

Non-academic Jobs

For many non-academic jobs, everything above is the same as for academic jobs: job openings on JOE/EJM, 1st-round interviews at AEA/ASSA, flyouts. For example, most economic consulting jobs, federal reserve banks (I think), some non-profits, etc. That said, there is a very wide variety of "non-academic" jobs, so there's a wide variety of application/interview processes. Some start with a phone interview, maybe in October or February instead of January, maybe there is no "job talk," maybe they ask about coding or logic puzzles or econometrics, etc. Personal connections may also help; we have Mizzou alumni in a variety of jobs, and some alumni have helped current students get interviews you can ask the DDS for contacts, or search for Mizzou alumni on LinkedIn.

Here is an article about PhD economists in tech industry jobs.