Project Proposal: Academic Job Market and Application Tracker Website

1. Project designed by: Cengiz Gunay Client: Cengiz Gunay Audience: PhD candidates and postdoctoral fellows Project Proposal: Academic Job Market and Application Tracker Website

2. Project Summary • Applying for academic tenure-track positions • There is no place like Monster.com • Announcements all over the internet, in ad-hoc format • Low success rate: more applications • Need to research each position and customize application • Need tracking and reminders during long application process • Solution: community website with public & private sections • Can be a successful business if satisfy many academic disciplines

3. Problem: research burden • Need research and communication to customize application package: • Find needs of search committee • Find needs of department • Send emails to colleagues/acquaintances • If a good fit, then start applying for the job

4. Research burden: existing tools • Repetitive process with non-standard formats, but there is some help: • Job announcement websites have announcements and allow filtered searching and email alerts • General: Science Careers, Nature Jobs, HigherEdJobs • Domain specific: Computing Research Association’s Job Service, IEEE Job Site, ACM Career & Job Center, NeuroJobs • Specialized application websites (e.g., AcademicJobsOnline) – have few positions posted by few employers; • Online forums (e.g., Chronicle of Higher Education website forum), not connected to position postings • Wikis (e.g., Academic Jobs Wiki) – no automation, too much manual work

5. Research burden: shotcomings • None of the existing tools are standardized and can compare positions in one place • Many don't allow user comments • Wikis and forums are detached from job postings

6. Problem 2: tracking application • Application has multi-stages with deadlines • Submit materials • Ask referees to send recommendation letters • Track receipt of materials and letters • Schedule interview and visits • Track communications • Need to do this for each application • May need to apply to many! • Can use a special reminder system

7. Proposed solution: a community-driven website • Crowd sourcing for: • Creating new position entries in standard form • Link to school, university, department • Can comment on all of them • Other users can edit and improve • Tagging helps categorizing • Caution: must control crowd!

8. Solution: private user section • List of positions is public, but application process tracked privately • User selects and follows positions • Can add private notes • Can start applying and tracking deadlines • Reminder system would be useful • Personal tags can help customize application

9. Solution: but will it fly? • Provides functionality not provided elsewhere • But will the community adopt it? • Need to use feedback from client and focus group • Target audience from PhD candidates and postdocs • If successful, can make money from ads and sponsored accounts

10. Plan of action: • Can only complete proof-of-concept version in class • Target one or few academic subdisciplines • Use existing SQL database structure: positions, applications, communications • Still need: multiple user information, comments, department info

11. Components • A main website user interface that allows accessing the following components • A component to enter job position announcements and link them to academic units. • A component to search and browse existing positions recorded on the website. • Ability for other users to improve the details of the position and academic units, and to comment on them. • Select positions to be applied for in a user’s private section on the website. • A component to list saved positions by deadline, and set reminders. • Allow adding additional private comments and tags to these positions before starting an application (research phase). • Allow annotating private communications related to a position. • A component to enter application tracking information connected to a selected position. • A component to see status of applications, update them and get reminders about their status and related communications.

12. Platforms • Google App Engine: A very high level service that uses Python or Java. Pros: • It is easy and simple to program and deploy (see demo). • Python has a wide library and is known by most team members. • Hosting this project will be free because of its size. • There is an existing forum software, Fofou, that can be modified. It is based on the forum software FruitShow, which is written by the software engineering guru and our class reading author, Joel Spolsky. Cons: • By default it does not use SQL. • Apache-MySQL-PHP (AMP): Free, open source industry standard for developing web applications. • Pros: • Lots of existing AMP code for web apps. • Lots of existing online tutorials, examples and information. • Can use existing partial MySQL database schema developed for this purpose. • Cons: • Hard to install and maintain runtime environment. • Hard to learn, develop and modify existing code. • None of the team members have experience in components of AMP, and especially the programming language, PHP.

13. Project team roles • Software architect: To define how multiple components of the software interact and how the control flows between them. • Data modeler: For display and internal storage, by taking advantage of existing database structures. • User interface designer: Easy finding of existing information, and allow flexible editing and user comments, similar to that of social media sites. • Software developer: To devise algorithms and integrate other components together. • Testing lead: To design and apply a testing strategy • Documentation lead: To make sure the project and the code is properly annotated sufficiently to be transferred to another software team at the end of the semester.