For many of you working on a graduate degree, you can turn that into a lucrative career by teaching. There are some things to keep in mind if you are going after an academic job.
Depending on whether you are going for something full-time or part-time, there are many opportunities to teach at college and university. Lately, to get your foot in the door of a college, having a PhD does help, although people with master’s degrees do receive jobs. It truly depends on the program your coordinator is thinking of hiring you for.
Some people make the mistake of approaching the chair of a department to inquire about teaching. The chair many times is not responsible for hiring decisions – if they are, keep in mind their job is has a heavy load and if they take some time to get back to you, this is the normal process of how slow the academic job search can be.
The main person to deal with is the coordinator of the program. They are usually highly approachable and good at returning phone calls and e-mails – this is part of their work. In larger programs, it is the coordinator who is responsible for hiring and making a connection with this person can be your way of getting into academic teaching, either at the university or college level.
If you have prior teaching experience this really helps. Having patience helps a lot too because of the nature of the academic year; it may take quite a bit of time before everything works out in such a way before you are hired. Obtaining part-time work can be rather easy – it is getting the full-time work that is much harder. First securing part-time work can lead to full-time work down the road – this can definitely happen.
Good luck with your academic job search.
