Mathjobs Application Tips Update

Previously I wrote about what I considered a “bug” in mathjobs: when letter writers submit their letter, the default time those letters are available is 18 months. But this leads to the following chain of events:

1. An applicant applies for a job. Perhaps because of the vagaries of the market (or because they only apply to a limited number of places) they do not get an offer.
2. The same applicant applies (perhaps more broadly) the next year.
3. Because the letters have 18 month expiry dates, the applications all list THE OLD LETTERS as well as the new letters.
4. Because letter writers are often busy and/or lazy, they typically do not update a letter very much from one year to the next. Hence the letter they submit is almost identical.

The result is that it becomes completely clear to the letter reader that the candidate is applying for the second straight year. This has the chance of conveying the message that not only did they fail to get a job last year, but they haven’t done very much in the subsequent year either since the letters are pretty much the same. This is why I encouraged reference letter writers to be particularly careful when either choosing the default expiry date or when writing for someone for a second consecutive year.

Two job seasons later, this still seems to happen pretty frequently (I noticed it quite a few times on the [11] applications that I looked at so far). I was thus motivated to write to the AMS about this issue. Their main response was to gently point out to me that mathjobs is not exclusively a system for applicants to apply to R1 research institutions and that the needs of applicants might vary “possibly more than you realize.” In particular, they pointed out the opposite problem of hearing from “frantic job applicants whose letters have expired at a time when they need/want them right away.” After a little more discussion, however, they did point out to me the useful tip that the applicants themselves have a way of avoiding this from happening:

You can exclude existing letters from being used in any applications by clicking on the green checkmarks after the letters on your coversheet form to turn them into red x’s.

I was assured that you could do this explicitly in the context in which there were multiple letters from the same person over two years. (That is, as an applicant, one can “red x” Professor X’s letter from 2018 and “green check” Professor X’s letter.) So my recommendation is to do this! Even better, if you are an applicant applying for a second year and you do this, please let me know in the comments (anonymous names are OK!) that it worked.