For non American graduates or those too poor to subscribe to the American Philosophical Association, the publication Jobs for Philosophers has been hard to access. David Chalmers and David Bourget established a free alternative, PhilJobs. Now the two are to merge, giving one authoritative and comprehensive location for philosophy jobs. I received this in my mailbox today:
The PhilPapers Foundation and the American Philosophical Association are pleased to announce a new partnership that will enhance the Foundation’s ability to support the development of PhilPapers and related services.
Beginning this August, the APA’s Jobs for Philosophers will merge with PhilJobs to become PhilJobs: Jobs for Philosophers (PhilJobs: JFP). By bringing together the PhilJobs software platform with JFP’s established presence, this partnership will create an online source for jobs in philosophy that is both comprehensive and user-friendly and gives job seekers confidence in fairness and equity in the hiring process. The new combined service will be tailored to both US and international job listings, making it the go-to site for those seeking professional employment in philosophy as well as for hiring institutions.
PhilJobs: JFP will be free of charge for all job seekers. Job advertisements will be available at competitive rates on a sliding fee scale to appeal to all types of institutions and hiring searches. Further, PhilJobs: JFP aims to expand to provide additional services for both job seekers and hiring departments in future years. Jobs for Philosophers will be freely accessible to job seekers starting July 1, 2013 in anticipation of the transition to PhilJobs: JFP.
The partnership between the PhilPapers Foundation and the APA will also extend to other initiatives. The APA will provide some financial support for PhilPapers as well as PhilPeople, an interactive, crowd-sourced, open directory of all philosophers in the English-speaking world under development by the Foundation. The APA’s contribution will enable the PhilPapers Foundation to continue to maintain and expand its services for the community while evolving toward a sustainable funding model for the future.
David Bourget
David ChalmersCo-Directors, PhilPapers
Very interesting. I’ll actually be looking and applying this year. And I heard it here first.
By bringing together the excellent PhilJobs software platform with JFP’s established presence and the APA’s protections for job candidates such as its nondiscrimination policy, the partnership will create an online source for jobs in philosophy that is both comprehensive and user-friendly and gives job seekers confidence in fairness and equity in the hiring process.
I worry that, since PhilJobs is already pretty much perfect, the joint venture can only make it worse. First, since they’re going to charge for ads, some jobs that would otherwise be posted to PhilJobs will probably not be. Second, one of the worst things about JFP is that job ads vanish after 30 days if departments don’t shell out extra. Sometimes they vanish even before the deadline, which creates obvious problems. But sometimes it’s helpful to be able to look up job ads months after the application if, say, one unexpectedly gets an interview.