Job Market reflection

2025-09-02

This is just a self-reflection of the job market process for tenure-track statistics/biostatistics professorship in North America of the academic year 2024–2025. I am adding more details as I go through the process. I hope this can help other job seekers in the future, especially for the ones coming from Canada and do not have any connections or experiences in the US.

Profile

Identity

I am a Taiwanese-Canadian, and do not have the US passport. I came to Canada during the middle school, and stayed there for around 20 years. I did all my educations in Canada, including middle school, high-school, Bachelor, Masters and PhD. I do not have any US connections, nor any US experiences (e.g., internship, postdoc etc.).

Publication

At the time, I have 4 published papers, 1 paper in revision, 2 papers submitted, and quite a few papers in preparation (with draft available). I do not have any TOP papers (e.g., JASA, JRSS-B, AoS etc.), nor any machine learning proceedings.

Teaching Experience

I think teaching experience is very important in North America. I have a long history of being a TA and grader, which is like 12+ years. I taught one full course before (a 3-credit undergraduate course on Probability), a guest lecture, and co-developed one course (Introduction to Data Science).

Mentoring Experience

I think it is somewhat important but it is not necessary. I have mentored two PhD students, and other undergraduate students (but I did not write the undergraduates on my CV).

Research Directions

My publications span across a few areas, including functional data analysis, Optimal design of experiment, statistical machine learning and high-dimensional statistics, with applications span on neuroscience, drug development and toxicology. Those areas are not really coherent, and have an unified theme, so it may be difficult to convince the search committee that I have a clear research direction.

My Thinking Process

I did all my educations in Canada, including middle school, high-school, Bachelor, Masters and PhD. Hence I do not have much of connections in the US. On the other hand, I have strong connections in Canada, and being a Canadian is a hugh plus. Unfortunately, this year, Canadian universities are not hiring much, only roughly around 10 schools have openings.

I know I am not a top candidate. Hence I have to apply as many positions as possible, to just have a slim chance. I applied to 80+ positions, including both Canada and the US. I applied to all the positions that I am qualified for, though I know that I do not have much of chance in Biostatistics and Top schools (e.g., Princeton, Harvard, Stanford, Columbia etc.). I can apply more, but the job market was not so good due to various reasons including the budget cuts and hiring freeze.

The research statement was a big headache for me, as I alluded before, my research directions are not very coherent. I tried to make it as coherent as possible, but I know it is not perfect. I also tried to make it as accessible as possible, so that non-statisticians can understand it. I also tried to make it as exciting as possible, by highlighting the impact of my research. I also tried to make it as future-oriented as possible, by highlighting the potential future directions of my research. Some of the researches/papers were not highlighted or introduced as they did not really fit into the theme of my research statement, for instance, the optimal design of experiment, the area I had the most publications on.

Some suggestions

  1. Prepare as early as possible

  2. Always have your CV up-to-date

  3. Think about the long term plan

  4. Get teaching experience as early as possible

  5. Get mentoring experience as early as possible

  6. Build connections

  7. Think about your reference letters, and the teaching reference

TBA

More details will be added