There are distinct differences in how the market for professors functions between Germany and the US.
I think even for many German academics the process is a bit opaque, so hopefully this post will be of general interest.
Like in the US, no (permanent) professorial position can be filled without first being advertised. Unlike in the US, however, positions are not advertised primarily through the various professional associations for each discipline. Rather, they tend to be primarily advertised through the Deutscher Hochschulverband (DHV) and posted to academics.de, which is run by Die Zeit. One has to pay EUR 80 per year to join the DHV, but academics.de is free. Both sites provide a service that sends regular emails with job postings in a specific field or fields.
At least in history and economics, the two fields we know best, in Germany letters of reference are not usually requested in an application, nor are offprints or preprints of publications. But one is usually requested to send photocopies of your high school, university, and graduate diplomas. Having sat on hiring committees in the US, I find that letters are extremely useful, and it is nice to have candidates send articles (even if they aren’t always closely read). Given the paucity of other information, in Germany the cover letter carries substantially more weight, of course. Electronic submission of applications is rare in Germany.
There is a bit of a distinction between the standard US curriculum vitae and a German Lebenslauf, too. My impression has always been that a CV should be relatively brief, devoid of (too much) puffery. The typical German Lebenslauf, however, will list everything that an academic has done during their career, more or less since high school. Brevity is not an asset. Indeed, I am convinced that substantially more weight is placed on the quantity of publications in Germany than in the US — in the US a few really top publications will have a substantial impact, whereas a Lebenslauf full of numerous 3rd tier publications will be considered ok. There is less recognition of the quality-quantity tradeoff in Germany, although one hopes that may be changing.
After one sends off an application (the standard is to gather everything into a plastic Mappe), nearly always an acknowledgement of receipt of the application follows in the mail. This is kind of nice, knowing that everything is all in order (and since there are no letters to arrive, you know the application is complete). In the US, one rarely receives an acknolwedgement.
Then the waiting begins. This is, I think the biggest difference between the US and the German markets. In Germany, there is no standard timetable (e.g. send out applications in October, interview at meetings in January, have flybacks in February, and get offers by February or March), because there are no conference interviews. So you can wait months to hear whether you’re going to get an interview. Usually, 4 or 5 candidates (at most) will be brought to campus for every position, and that’s it. No one else gets to interview. Given the relative lack of information (no letters), it is surprising that they don’t interview more people.
“Campus” interviews are also substantially different in Germany than in the US. In Germany, you might have an hour to make a presentation about your research and teaching. After that, there are usually group questions for an hour. And that can be it! One might have meetings with a few professors, or even possibly a meal, but that is relatively rare. It is a far cry from the daylong (or longer) meetings where one might give a seminar, but also meet with every member of the department, as well as someone from the administration (usually a dean), at a US university. Usually in the US one would have breakfast, lunch, and dinner with someone from the faculty during the course of the day.
Another difference is that in Germany interviews of different candidates can take place on the same day, given that the faculty spends so much less time with the candidate. So it would not be impossible to run into the competition during the course of the day. This is not unique to Germany (it’s worse in England, from what I’ve heard), but it’s hard to imagine it happening in the US.
After going to campus, one goes home and waits… and waits… I’ll cover what happens next in my next post.
–dj
