Preparing for interviews

I am printing out materials for our assistant professor interviews at the Allied Social Science Association meetings in Denver.

I have a couple of observations:

1. There is no reason to write a six (!) page letter of recommendation, but several people did. Really, all letters should be one page or less. The key information is usually all in the last paragraph, where the person writing the letter indicates where they think the student should place and also describes any non-academic features or bugs, e.g. the student provides lots of public goods or is a jerk. Sometimes there is information in the faculty member's description of the paper, but other times it just repeats the abstract.

2. I am 0-3 on checking whether job candidates cite papers I think they should cite.

3. If you are thinking about circulating a 77 page job market paper ... think again.

Should be fun.