Question #10:
"Assume that you had the power to change the on-site interview and hiring process: what aspect(s) would you want to change and how? (Type your response below.)"

need more of an opportunity to be able to arrange interviews at the AEA while the meeting is in progress-i.e. last-minute interviews

I would like to be kept up to date as to the status of employers' search processes -- even when I am not the first choice.

More days - impossible to have 10+ interviews per day for either interviewer or interviewee

Move process along faster

more time to decide on offers. One week is not really long enough especially if you have non-academic prospects.

Use a matching algorithm like Medical students in the US have for residency programs

I think the process is very good. Still, I was not interested in academic jobs so I concentrated on private sector and public policy insitutes. I got my offer before the job market from an economic consulting firm in Los Angeles and I was almost sure I woild accept it for geographical reasons. I did not go 'full force' to the job market.

Ideally presenting the job talk in the morning is much better since, by later afternoon, you are usually exhausted. Also, getting a short break before dinner is nice. I really dislike that fact both of my offers expired in one week. I had to accept an offer before some of the other potential institutions made their decisions.

fewer individual meetings for interviews.

Nothing---I enjoyed the process

More coordination on period before offers need to be accepted--attempt to eliminate exploding offers

Teaching should be emphasized more than it is. I think the interviews that had me teach for even a half hour learned more about my abilities than those that did not.

Make better universities organize fly-outs first and give deadlines on offers

I had accepted a job offer prior to the meetings. Therefore, I am not sure how relevant my AEA experience is.

none

Force the departments to communicate their decisions in a timely fashion.

Make it more synchronous - this may be inevitable, but it often occurs that one must accpept or decline a particular offer with little indication of how many other opportunities are likely to be offered.

I would like to add some comments about your questionaire. I don't think is properly set up. First, it does not include the possibility that a university that interviewd a candidate at the ASSA meetings will make an offer wihout having the second (on-site) interview. Second, some schools invited a candidate over for a on-site visit without interviewing that candidate at the ASSA meetings. These possibilities are not taken into account in your questionaire. You will underestimate the number of offers made, and possibly the number of matches. To give you an example, I had several offers but I was forced to answer 0 to question 4. Also, I accepted one of these offers, but you won't know it from your questionaire. I hope you will find these comments usefull.

Nothing

You only ask about university job opportunities; most of my job opportunities and job offers have come from other institutions, such as government.

One hotel so less running. Longer interviews. Almost all of my offers/flyouts came out of 45 minute or longer interviews and not from 30 minute discussions. Note i received offers from Europe and non academic sector as well.

None

If the interviewers read or browse the papers, the process could be better. In general the interviewers are too tired of listening candidates and in 90% of the cases what really counts are the letters of recommendation and not the job market paper. I was VERY lucky that the only place I got a fly out (also the best place I interviewed with) had interviewers who read bits of my paper

None

Schools should give you a ranking ahead of time. I would rather not interview if I had no reasonable chance of receiving an offer.

I would shorten the duration. It is too long and drawn out.

Coordination problems especially with European Universities that go on the market later; better on-campus agenda of meetings with faculty and it would be interesting to talk with graduate students to get a feeling of the environment. In case of negative outcome, almost no university contacted me even if they told me in New Orleans that they would do so (this is disappointing!). Reimburse travel expenses faster because a graduate student usually has a very tight budget constraint! See other comments in my first questionnaire

Better coordination among schools on the job market. My impression (mostly from talks with my friends) is that some second best (but still very promising) candidates were completely shut out of the market at certain stage in favor of the first best candidates, even though some schools inviting the very best candidates did not have realistic chance that their offer will be accepted.

The resterant service was inefficient. On-site sandwitch vending would be appreciated.

I feel like geographic preferences of applicants don't work out well because there is no mechanism by which to make schools credibly aware of where you would like to live or teach

I would try to get/attract more private and governmental employers to the meetings

Have talks earlier in the day -- mine were mostly towards the late afternoon

The amount of time spent learning about the community apart from the University

I would create a computerized, centralized clearing house system where sellers could enter their ranked job preferences and buyers could enter their ranked candidate preferences and the system would make matches.

none

Less ridiculously intense scheduling. More honesty in the process, but this is probably asking for way too much. Essentially less noise and more humanity.

Sequential offer process: I was on the 'short list' at 5 universities but my deadline that could not be extended, came up before the market was clearing itself. Some of these places may have dominated where I got and accepted an offer. In sum, I feel that the timing of offers should occur within a narrower time frame (though I appreciate the strategic incentives for this not to be an equilibrium), and that the market clear itself more quickly

Scheduling all the on-site visits is difficult, especially when schools let you know at different times, so I had to cross the country several times, which was gruelling. It would be good to have all schools make interview requests on the same day, and then one could organize one's schedule with the whole information set.

Perhaps spread the interview over two days - cramming 15 interviews plus a job market talk all in one day is ridiculous

IMPROVE THE ON-SITE JOB INFORMATION AND ACCESS TO COMPUTERS

Make sure that all interviews will be held in the same hotel such that candidates will not have to run from one hotel to the other.

I would attempt to publish suite/room numbers of interviewers sooner than < 24 hours before interview time. I do realize there are logistical issues regarding hotel room assignments, though.

Probably had an offer coming from Illinois State, but told them I'd already accepted at Texas A&M. Also had offers from CBO and FTC in Washington. Probably had one coming from Treasury's Office of Tax Analysis as well. Texas A&M dominated all of them for me.

none

Further standardize the process of communicating with interviewers. There was some confusion regarding access numbers, billboards, directories, etc.

More transparency in school's search process procedures. Provision of additional information to applicants and in a more timely manner.

Illinois matching process for on-site matching was practically useless. There should be a much better setup than just responding to things on a physical bulletin board outside the interview room. Given modern technology, there could be a website with indexed listings from entities looking for interviews. I had a very narrow focus for my job, so I had spare time and could have done more interviews if the opportunity was right.

Nothing. It serves its purpose

none

Meet with fewer faculty. Add a tour of the campus.

Morning seminars istead of afternoon, I'm dead after talking to people from 8am to 3:30.

Don't know

More time would be nice. As it is, schools often rush the candidate from person to person in 15 or 30 minute intervals, which often isn't really enough time to engage a potential colleague in a substantive way. In many cases, it would also have been nice to have more time to explore the local area. After all, this is a place one might spend many years, so it is critical to have as much information as possible to help evaluate the relative attractiveness of different offers.

arrange the job talk sometime in the morning before talking to people in the department.

I'd have given myself some more academic interviews!

Allow the talk to be scheduled earlier in the day

Nothing, it worked great for me.

Your questions do not allow for the fact that sometimes people interview separately from the meetings. This is particularly true for those of us on foreign markets. For example, I flew to a university that ultimately made me an offer. We did not meet at the meetings, but conducted the flyout in November. A second division of the same university ultimately made me a second offer. This division met me at the meetings but did not conduct flyouts. Furthermore, your questions do not allow for the fact that some positions disappear - i.e. no offers are made for reasons that have nothing to do with the candidates, but with energy prices in Cal or whatever.

The process represents a poor risk-sharing arrangement between job market candidates and institutions. The outcome for candidates is highly random and is not necessarily related to their research prospects. With large information asymmetries between job market candidates and institutions, and limited time for faculty to evaluate a large number of candidates, it is hard to think of an easy solution to the problem. There is also a problem of information flow during the decision making process. Candidates are typically not told when an institution has lost interest in their application. This makes it very hard for a candidate to respond in time.

It's difficult to come up with a nice idea to improve it.

We need an alternative matching system, perhaps the one is specific to academic jobs.

I would make it a requirement to meet students from the department.

Improve JEL classifications to include experimental economics, and put the employer and employee booklets online, maybe with password protection.

have the interviews in hotels that are close by

none

It would be useful to achieve a better coordination for interviews located in the same geographical aerea, but I do not know how

My schedule always said that I had half an hour to get my speech together, but that time always got squeezed out so that I only had five minutes.