The information-as-efficacy fallacy

The information-as-efficacy fallacy

Wondering (guest) 11 Oct 2015 22:07

I've seen a lot of posts asking for information about whether a certain ad is for an internal hire or about the timing of ads and stuff. I don't get it.
If anyone actually knew the answers to these things I'm sure they would not want to or would not be allowed to divulge it. And there is no guarantee that any answer that is provided is accurate.
So are people just spinning their wheels because asking and receiving any response makes them feel like they have a little bit more control over this process? Does an answer one way or another change the way you will act? Because both of those things are illogical.
The only thing that makes sense is to submit the best application you can to every job you would actually take and then forget about it until you hear something back. Better yet… Turn your attention to your work and stop wasting your time freaking out about something you HAVE NO CONTROL OVER.
It's frustrating that to find out real information someone coming to the wiki needs to wade through all these useless posts…

Anon (guest) 11 Oct 2015 23:32

The process likely seems mysterious and illogical, so trying to glean some insight into the process seems natural. Talking with others about the process may help kill time between submission and contacts. Some I did ideals may have difficulty setting something this big aside and random chats help pass the time.

It's easy enough to skip over threads asking about this kind of information. If you skim old threads you'll see that this is not a new phenomenon.

Anon (guest) 11 Oct 2015 23:33

Sorry…should read as "some individuals may have difficulty." Damn autocorrect!

Anon (guest) 11 Oct 2015 23:46

https://chroniclevitae.com/news/227-market-crash-course-wallowing-in-a-wiki-wonderland?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

AltTitle (guest) 12 Oct 2015 00:41

STOP FREAKING OUT SO I CAN LOOK AT WHAT I WANT TO WITHOUT FREAKING OUT

Anon (guest) 12 Oct 2015 01:53

I wish there was a like button for AltTitle's post!

Happy in the UK (guest) 12 Oct 2015 07:35

While it's true that it's hard to trust some of the information on the wiki, I think that over time you do get an idea because some of the questions repeat themselves. For example, it wasn't obvious to me the open searches are indeed also directed at assistant profs job the majority of the time. I assume, like others, that it is directed at a more senior hire. Once I realized that there is no rules I started applying for them as well.

On the other hand, on my first year I applied for top R1 jobs. Later, when I heard the no. and quality of applications these ads attract, I stopped applying for most of them (unless I had a specific quality mentioned in the ad).

So yes, these repeated thread can be tedious at times and people do use them to vent, but I do think that if you spend enough time here you get the big picture by these posts.