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Post by UNC Chapel Hill on Dec 21, 2008 15:57:15 GMT -5
Did everyone get a personal email about the long short-list for the ethics position at UNC-Chapel Hill?
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Post by Fuzzbuster on Dec 21, 2008 16:51:37 GMT -5
I would be very surprised if that message was sent to everyone. First of all, it was addressed to specific individuals (Dear X, where X = first name) and, I think, probably sent one e-mail at a time. Second, there's no way a routine e-mail would say what it said since it would, in that case, obviously be bullsh*t. Finally, although it is ambiguous between saying that they are currently working toward a long-short list or, having worked toward it, they have now arrived at it, I think it's the latter, the suggestion being that if you got the e-mail, then you're on the long short list. (There is a third possibility: it was send to only some people, but more than will be on the long short list. But this strikes me as unlikely). Or is that just wishful thinking? Well, it has given us something to chew over for the next little while.
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Post by Bob on Dec 21, 2008 17:03:52 GMT -5
Actually, it was not truly personalized - just a program to stick names into the e-mail. I applied to two positions at UNC and a week ago or so received a PFO that was just as personalized, so yea, the Ethics e-mail went out to everyone. And there's no way in hell I would have made their long list in Ethics, so it had to go out to everyone.
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Post by Fuzzbuster on Dec 21, 2008 17:12:18 GMT -5
Interesting. I suppose I appreciate the attempt to be nice, but sending out an e-mail like that to everyone is silly. It completely undermines the sentiments expressed in the e-mail: "The quality of your work, and the over all strength of your dossier, make it clear that you have a great deal to offer the Department." That's a ridiculous thing to put in a form e-mail (sent to 300+ people I suppose)! I suppose its success hangs on it being unclear that it's a form e-mail?
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Post by Dazed and confused on Dec 21, 2008 17:26:48 GMT -5
As much as I would like to think that I am qualified to take a position at Chapel Hill, I was very much surprised to be among the contenders for an open rank search at UNC, especially since so many other less-prestigious schools chose not to interview me. So although fuzzbuster’s observations seem very reasonable to me, I must conclude that bob is right—it must have been a form letter sent out to a super-duper long “short-list.” If this is all correct, I am not sure whether I think that this is an “attempt to be nice” that we should appreciate, or whether it an instance of poor professional etiquette…
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Post by apdent on Dec 21, 2008 18:55:18 GMT -5
My original interpretation was in line with Fuzzbuster's, but having read your posts I have no choice but to grudgingly agree with Bob. Wishful thinking had lead to me to think that maybe I was, indeed, qualified for an Ethics position at Chapel Hill. But if this was "an attempt to be nice", I agree with Dazed that it is, in fact, misleading, dishonest, and unprofessional.
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Post by missamerica on Dec 21, 2008 22:58:00 GMT -5
At 5:12pm, Fuzzbuster quotes from...
the e-mail: "The quality of your work, and the over all strength of your dossier, make it clear that you have a great deal to offer the Department."
For what it's worth, that's much more specific than the rejection email I received for the open position on 12/10 from Sayre-McCord (which, incidentally, struck me as an appropriately, if not considerately, worded PFO).
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ProfessionalSkeptic
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Post by ProfessionalSkeptic on Dec 22, 2008 12:27:11 GMT -5
I'm confident that the personalization of these emails was, as someone on the wiki put it, "faux personalization." Props to Geoff Sayre-McCord for knowing how to automatically generate emails from a list of names.
But here's an interesting twist. The email that I received about the ethics position does not say that I have much to offer the department. Here's the full text of the email that I received about the ethics position:
Dear [ProfessionalSkeptic] (if I may),
Thank you for your interest in the Ethics/PPE position we advertised in the October Jobs for Philosophers (JFP 126). As you know from the posting, our ability to hire for this position is subject to the availability of funding. We don’t know yet whether that funding will be available, although the current state of the economy unfortunately gives us reason not to be hopeful.
We have been reading dossiers with the aim of getting a long short-list. However, we are not planning to interview for this position at the Eastern APA in Philadelphia. Instead, we will be continuing our review of the dossiers, working to identify a few candidates to bring to campus if funding proves to be available. In the meantime, I thought you would appreciate knowing where things stand.
With sincere appreciation for you taking the time to apply for our position, I am
Cordially yours,
Geoff
So, despite my moniker, I'm pretty sure I'm not on a long-short list. (Of course, I was pretty sure I wouldn't be on that list even before I submitted my application.)
How many versions of this email are there? Fuzzbuster, did you receive a different email?
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Post by apdent on Dec 22, 2008 12:52:44 GMT -5
Mine contained the sentence quoted by Fuzzbuster.
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Post by Fuzzbuster on Dec 22, 2008 13:15:02 GMT -5
Yes, mine has the additional sentence I quoted above. This whole thing is making me laugh.
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Post by superawesome on Dec 22, 2008 13:42:56 GMT -5
So here is a reasonable explanation that should make everyone happy.
I know for certain (at least for the open job) that UNC narrowed the applicant pool to around 50 or so, and that those 50 or so dossiers received close and careful attention. So perhaps the email went out only to those who made the initial cut. I would imagine that out of the 300 or so applicants, only 50 or fewer could reasonably expect UNC to pay attention to them. The email wasn't unprofessional, it was a nice gesture that basically said, "Hey, you are good enough to warrant careful attention, but either not what we need right now or not good enough to trump not being what we need right now."
Nothing said so far suggests anything otherwise. So unless someone who received the email wants to admit that they are a talentless dipsh*t with a dossier that glaringly reflects that, I say you all pat yourselves on the back and leave it alone.
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Post by apdent on Dec 22, 2008 14:41:19 GMT -5
I agree (mostly). But, for the record, I only said it was unprofessional IF the same letter I received went out to all original applicants, which is clearly NOT the case - it's kind of like one of those vacuously true conditional thingies that philosophers sometimes go on and on about...
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Post by uncphilosophy on Dec 23, 2008 1:57:26 GMT -5
For what it is worth, not everyone who applied for the ethics position received the same email. Far from it. But in sending out the different emails, I did in many cases rely on more or less the same text. My aim was to tell people what we were doing – that we were reviewing the dossiers, but not interviewing for this position at the APA, even as we were working to narrow the list to a few in (the unfortunately not very likely) case the possible funding becomes actual. Even when I was writing to those I know personally, I often didn’t spend time coming up with different words to convey the same message. Although it was quite a while ago, I remember vividly how stressful it was to be on the market, and how frustrating it was not to know where things stood. I apologize if my emails just made things worse. That wasn’t my intention. -- Geoff
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ProfessionalSkeptic
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Post by ProfessionalSkeptic on Dec 23, 2008 10:38:37 GMT -5
Geoff,
I doubt that anybody here meant to disparage your emails, or to suggest that you should have written all new copy for each version. I thought it was very nice of you to send out these updates, even to those of us who are nowhere near the long-list, and figuring out a way to use our names was a nice touch in an otherwise anonymous process. I appreciated it.
Chalk the discussion up to powerless jobseekers trying to squeeze every last drop of information from every morsel we receive.
Thanks for posting.
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Post by apdent on Dec 23, 2008 20:20:33 GMT -5
Ditto, Geoff. Only desperation in the face of a ridiculously difficult market, and the slow pace at which information is becoming available this year, are behind this discussion. Every piece of news, no matter how minor, is ... well, something.
Thank you very much for taking the time to respond and clarify.
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