Frequently Asked Questions

Most FAQs generally tend to be RAQs (Rarely Asked Questions). Nonetheless, here are a few questions that we'll attempt to pre-empt by asking and answering them.

• What's the purpose of this?

To formalize the informal rumor mill through which most job market and postdoc applicants find out whether they've been accepted or rejected. This has been implemented in Astrophysics, Theoretical Particle Physics, Experimental CM/AMO Physics, and Theoretical Nuclear Physics. These have been written up in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

• What will you be posting?

Initially, job and postdoc listings that specify international relations as one of the target fields will be posted here. Currently we have a IR Fellowship List Fall 2005 post and a Fall 2006 post as well as an IR Job List Fall 2006 post. Please note that this is not a clearinghouse; jobs are primarily from the APSA ejobs list. If you have a job listing that we don't have that is NOT on APSA ejobs, please email us or leave a comment on that post. You can subscribe to the IR Rumor Mill Atom/RSS feed and thereby find out about IR jobs and postdocs throughout the year. Once shortlists are generated (and we are informed about them), those will also be posted as individual entries and linked from an IR Job Rumors Fall 2006 post (not created yet). You can see the how the process works in the IR Fellowship Rumors Fall 2005 post, which we are currently updating as rumors come in. Please contribute!

• How can I contribute?

If you have a rumor regarding job or fellowship offers that have been made already, post a comment to the appropriate Rumor entry, e.g. the IR Fellowship Rumors Fall 2005 post. If you have information about a fellowship or job that we don't have on a list, post it to the the appropriate List entry, e.g. the IR Job List Fall 2006 entry. If you have more specific information on a job or fellowship already posted (what a particular department is looking for, the makeup of the search committee, etc.), e.g. you know something about the Adelphi University job, post it to that specific entry. You can also send email straight to IRRumorMill AT gmail DOT com.

• What are the comment posting rules? How can I be anonymous?

Please keep your comments short and informative. The idea is to post information, not opinions. Got a strong opinion? Great! Start your own blog and link to the entry if you like. No profanity, please. We'd like to keep the comments open to all, but if the comments are abused, we'll have to limit them. Anonymous comments are the default! However, some participants have chosen to use persistent pseudonyms instead of submitting anonymous comments so that the community can get a better sense of the veracity of the rumors. Just select "Other" when you leave your comment and type in your pseudonym. Even better, create an account on blogger.com (owned by Google, so you may want to grab the namespace in any case!) and your pseudonym will be password-protected.

• Who are you guys, anyway?

Members of the discipline who have decided that the existing job market does an extremely poor job of letting candidates know where they are in the process.

• Can I join you?

The best way to contribute by sharing whatever information you have with us through comments or emails. The actual site upkeep is really boring.