Confessions of a Placement Officer

Extract

The insights and advice presented here are not offered dogmatically. Rather, they are the best I can muster from my ten years’ experience with the professional job market, first as an African history job-seeker and later as a graduate placement officer. Despite the doom and gloom about employment that pervades the professional schools churning out M.A.’s and Ph.D.’s in the social sciences and humanities, it has been my experience that many advanced degree holders can still obtain meaningful and rewarding teaching careers. I have found that successful job candidates are often the people who seek work with the same drive, determination, and thoroughness with which they did their research in Africa.