How Did You Get That Great Faculty Position -- from The New York Times to The Economist and The Chronicle of Higher Ed

We are now in the midst of faculty recruiting season and are having the special experience of interviewing candidates on campus and today our beautiful area of Amherst is covered in several inches of pristine white snow (the first significant snowfall of 2012)!

My department alone at the Isenberg School of Management is looking to fill 4 faculty positions (1 in Operations Management, 1 in Information Systems, and 2 in Finance), so it is a very exciting time. It is also a very busy couple of weeks with additional "job" talks to listen to, more elegant meals than usual to attend, and interview sessions with the candidates.

I am delighted by the excellent caliber of (soon-to-be) PhDs that are being "produced" nationally.

It is always interesting to hear/learn how someone found out about a particular university faculty opening.

I am an avid New York Times reader and actually found the job ad for my first tenure track appointment at UMass Amherst in a Sunday edition of the Times. The New York Times used to run all sorts of job ads in the Week in Review section (which recently was replaced by Opinion and Review articles).

Many of my doctoral students now respond to openings announced on the INFORMS job postings, POMS, and DSI ones, and also carefully study the job listings in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Sometimes, I will also hear of faculty openings through my personal networks and I have been recruited by various universities in this manner (and gotten offers) and have heard of openings for my students in this form, as well.

I have been a subscriber to The Economist for many years and it continues to be one of my favorite magazines.

I also very much enjoy perusing the job ads in The Economist where all sorts of exciting opportunities beckon (at Unicef, the International Monetary Fund, various United Nations relief agencies, just to name a few). The Economist, at times, also has postings for faculty openings and I appreciate universities that advertise in The Economist (some business schools regularly do, for example).

Last spring, my husband brought to my attention an ad in The Economist (he had gotten to our copy first) that he thought would be of interest to me since I was working on planning my sabbatical for 2012-2013.

The ad was for the Visiting Professorship Programme (the British spelling adds a level of sophistication) at the School of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. Since I have long had a love affair with Sweden, its people, and culture (I think part of it must be due to my genes since I am of northern European heritage and my first language is Ukrainian so, perhaps, I have some Viking blood in me).

I was very intrigued by the job ad since,although my family and I had lived in Stockholm, and I had spent weeks in Umea and Linkoping in Sweden, I had never been to Gothenburg.

It's now official: I have been appointed a Visiting Professor at Gothenburg University (GU).

I will be spending part of my sabbatical there and will have my first visit there in March. I will be interacting with the Logistics and Transport group, the Environmental Economics group, and the Centre (note this spelling, too) for Finance. I will also be participating in the networks Northern Lead and the Strategic Transport Initiative. I could not be more thrilled about this terrific opportunity.

GU has wonderful industrial connections (I do admit, one of our cars has always been a Volvo) so I am also very much looking forward to working with top Swedish companies.

In the meantime, Hej då, which means "good-bye" in Swedish.