Career Update

So 4 candidates were interviewed for 3 positions here in what I called my "dream job". And 3 offers have gone out but not to me! But I am still the reserve candidate if one of them turns it down. There is some possibility that two of the candidates could get other offers that they would prefer. I heard this from the "chairman" today. I know who all the candidates are and all their info and have some info on where else they interviewed. The "director" wants to meet me at 4pm tomorrow. I suppose he'll tell me this and then discuss again the possibility of some other job for me here again.

Tuesday, I had an interview in a more northerly city. Really don't know how I did and more people will be interviewed next week. There, more normally, there are 4 candidates for one position. I'm not keen on a move to northerly city to say the least. But if nothing worked out here it would be better than nothing. I'd need to get used to hot humid weather (north here of course is closer to the equator). The job also sounded very hard as they want high performance in so many areas. Top universities focus on research and low ranked universities on teaching. Each wants to see some activity in other areas but you can focus more. In mid-level universities they want excellence in everything yet your infrastructure on the research side is weaker than in the elite universities. I think it would be hard to attract good quality grad students to my area at that mid-level university, when there are only 2 people in my discipline in the huge department. Yeah, there's a business school also at the university but they don't have a grad program in econ either. At the interview I said I would look to collaborate with 2 other unis in the city on a grad program possibly and benchmark practice elsewhere. I don't think they liked that. But in the fields of the people on the committee their department might be pretty good and practices might be different than in my field. Interdisciplinary communication is always hard...

Another Interview...

I have an interview Tuesday in a northern state (there is only one northern state of course :)). They're putting me on a flight leaving here at 6:30am and arriving there at 8:05am. I am meant to give a presentation at 9:15am and be interviewed at 10:30am. Flight out is at 2:15pm. That's about the most rushed academic interview I will have been too. At the best of times I'm not much of a morning person. After getting up at 4:30am and flying across the country I'll probably be extra grumpy. I'm not very enthusiastic about moving to this location or this job anyway. I don't like hot and humid weather. Not if I have to get stuff done anyway. But as yet I don't have another offer and if one does materialize and this place makes me an offer it could be a bargaining chip.

Job Search Update

The chairman just wanted to update me on the state of the job search. It'll be another two weeks till they can make a decision... I did get a bit more insight into what's happening at least and what the thinking is. There's a good chance I get a job but not yet a certainty.

P.S.

Just as I finished this blogpost I got a call from another university in Australia who want to interview me on 14th April...

One Project Close to Closure the Other in Limbo

I submitted the final report for the project I did over the past year today, though I'll need to edit down the paper a lot to submit it to an academic journal for formal publication. I'll wait a while and do other stuff (plenty of it) before coming back to it with a fresh eye. We have already submitted two other papers from the project, which are now at various stages in the review process. Some more people at the government ministry want to meet with me to discuss the results, so that's good.

As I noted in the comments, the chairman wants to meet with me next week subject unspecified. Presumably about the job. I found out that another candidate hasn't heard anything yet so based on the theory that you don't reject interviewed candidates before negotiating with your preferred candidates, I don't think he wants to tell me in person he is rejecting me. Either he wants to make me an offer (but then why not just phone me) or he wants to ask me more questions that he didn't have a chance to at the interview or he wants to negotiate with me about what rank I'd accept in order to know how many people he can hire on his budget. That's all my ideas so far. So who knows. Maybe he wants to talk to me about something else. For example, a course they need teaching I was already asked about. I wish he'd specify the reason. But trying to act cool I just booked a time with his secretary and didn't ask him what it was about.

Interview

The interview went OK. One of the committee told me I did well on the formal panel interview section. I didn't crash and burn or anything bad in the presentation. I got lots of questions which were to the point or good and some people seemed interested. Another candidate still needs to be interviewed but the selection committee chair said they hope to make a decision within a couple of days. I've been having a hard time sleeping coming up to the interview. I slept each night but not so many hours. And tonight it seems even worse, though there is nothing I can do now so logically I should relax.

Flood :)

I was commenting last time that when it rains it pours. Yeah, well the people who asked me to submit my details in order to maybe spend 40 hours reviewing a report want me to do it. Deadline 19th April. Snork Maiden says maybe she can help.

I'm pretty much saying no to the offer to teach a class in the second half of the year because we want to travel to Europe then. I thought of teaching the second half of it but the other guy - the course originator is the only person who could teach the first half and he wants to avoid teaching anything this year and it doesn't look like collaborating in this way would work because of the integrated structure of the course would mean I have to teach exactly according to his material. The alternative is to run it like an intensive MBA style course in the second half of the semester. But I don't think that would be good for the students who are mostly doing this part-time or for someone teaching it for the first time.

I got some more info on my interview on Monday which if correct means this is pretty much mine to lose rather than win if you know what I mean. So I really need to focus on preparing over this weekend.

When it Rains it Pours

It looks like this will happen following a meeting and e-mails today. It's nominally about AUD 20k in funding. As I'm fending off offers to teach a course later this year...

Interview

Another interview coming up on Monday. I just heard this evening. This one is pretty much my dream job. Hopefully, I don't screw it up like the last one.

Nominated

The Australian government is nominating me as a candidate for participation in an international research organization in my field. Of course, all the other UN countries get to make nominations too. And they didn't pick me out of the blue. I submitted my name to the government department here. Of course I was in the right network to hear about the opportunity in the first place. It's not a paid position (your expenses are covered) but it can't hurt my CV (I think) and maybe could have an influence on policy. So that's good. It's much easier to get involved in these opportunities here than it was in the US. I did have some interactions there with the policy sphere but not as frequent. Partly it is because this is a smaller country, population wise and I am nearer the centre - geographically and institutionally. It's much easier to get a position in a top institution here than it is in the US. There is trade off - being second tier in a top country or first tier in a second tier country...

Secondment?

I gave a presentation at a government department today, which they seemed to like and then the possibility of me being "seconded" to that department was raised. I don't have a first job, but there is a budget we have that hasn't been spent for secondment...

Follow on funding here now looks a lot less likely due to a change of priorities, but my colleague wants to try to give that a shot too (a proposal needs to be submitted, but first we'll ask if it has any chance).

Career Update

My current contract ends today more or less, paywise. I still haven't actually completed what I agreed to do, but it will be done in the next week or two. There is some vague possibility of getting some follow up funding some time or other. In the meantime I get to keep my office, library access etc. for another six months. The university is prepared to make that investment in me at least, knowing I'm likely to produce stuff they can claim as output. It takes a while to publish things academically. So I published nothing last year. I have one paper now accepted for this year and more will follow. In the meantime my track record helps with their ranking etc. There's going to be no progress on the job I applied for in this department for another couple of weeks, at which point it will be 2 months after the submission deadline. They're not in a hurry it seems. I submitted an application today for a job in NZ, which I'm underqualified for I think and 2 positions in Australia earlier this week. In the end I couldn't submit the grant proposal, much as expected.

In the meantime, some consulting stuff is starting to trickle in. I reviewed a research proposal for a small fee, and just got asked if I'm interested in reviewing a report for a fee of USD 2800. They reckon it's about 40 hours work. They might not pick me, they wanted me to submit all my details to decide. I rejected reviewing a proposal from another country that wasn't in my area of expertise really and had no fee attached. Usually, academics review papers for journals for free. The basis for this is that if you submit a paper you also will get reviewed for free yourself (though a few journals charge submission fees), and as a way of helping shape research in your field by recommending the rejection of bad research and helping improving the better papers. But I have no incentive to review a research proposal from a country's funding agency where I am not eligible to submit a proposal. They need to pay.

Today was the grant application deadline. Realistically, I knew I wasn't going to be able to come up with the matching funding I needed in the end to apply for a grant. So I couldn't submit an application in an attempt to create my own job. I'll have to be less of a non-conformist and get a regular academic job - I'm making several more applications this week. If I was younger or followed a more straightforward career path I might have been able to apply for the 100% funding level for a fellowship. There was some vaguely positive news today about follow-on funding for my current project - we might be able to ask for more money.

Tenure

You've probably heard about Amy Bishop who shot three faculty members at the University of Albama in Huntsville after she was denied tenure. Turns out she shot her brother in 1986 in an incident that seems like was covered up as an accident but according to police who remember the event said was intentional - you don't shoot someone three times by accident with a non-automatic weapon. I maybe can see why she was denied tenure. She only published 6 papers in OK-ish journals since taking her current job. That's not much in biology. And her teaching evaluations are mostly not that good. Of course, there may be political reasons too. I've seen people with good teaching and research track records denied tenure because they didn't get on with the chairman of the department basically.

Anyway, it's amazing that someone would end up shooting people over this. I had tenure at a US university and gave it up and came back here to Australia. It was never something though that I wanted to get, though. The way the system worked I had to get it.

Epic Grant Fail

After I put a lot of work into developing a grant application to try to create a position for myself (as well as applying for regular jobs) it turns out that I need someone at a university to guarantee a 50% contribution to the salary. If I got a job with them and got the grant then they might receive a 50% subsidy from the funding agency but if I don't get a job but get the grant they'd have to pay out. The expected value of this seems to be close to zero and given that I might get a job elsewhere instead (and take the application with me) the probabilities of either receiving a payout or having to make an equal contribution are quite low. But noone wants to risk it and I can understand them. The amount of money they might have to pay out is significant. It seems that the university as a whole would want to do this - maybe get an extra position half funded by a funding agency. As people leave all the time it's not neccessarily an increase in their outlays. But there is a tragedy of the commons problem here to some degree where each individual department would like to see it happen but doesn't want to put their own money up. I haven't completely given up and just sent out two "last ditch" e-mails.

The real problem here is that the grant application deadline is soon, before the jobs I am applying for will be decided

There is another fellowship I can apply for but I need to submit an "eligibility request" as a priori I'm not eligible. Apparently they make few or no exceptions. So I don't expect that will work either but we'll try.

The effort is not entirely wasted. It has helped me clarify my ideas, learn about this funding agency, and if I get a job I can make an application next year recycling the proposal I wrote this year.

Moominmama Performance January 2010

Moominmama suffered a loss of 0.96% in January following a similar loss in December. This month, though, the MSCI All Country Gross World Index fell 4.3% for the month in USD terms so that's not relatively so bad. Brazilian stocks (other equity) did particularly badly followed by European and US equities. Hedge funds, bonds, and stuff denominated in the local currency made positive contributions. Man-AHL continued to perform poorly contributing to the negative return in commodities.

I don't have much idea of the performance in Moomin Valley this month as yet. Don't expect a detailed report any time soon, as things are crazily busy here. I have an important career discussion/negotiation coming up this afternoon. Maybe when I know the outcome of that (it's not a job as yet) I'll post on where things are now standing career-wise. Also, because of comment spamming I'm turning on comment moderation on older posts.

Blog/Career Update

Long time readers will notice that I'm posting much less on this blog than in the past. That's because I am focusing on my academic economics career and my professional blog as I forecast. And I'm doing very little on the investment front. I notice I haven't even done any career updates since September. Things have gone a bit better on the career front recently with a couple of requests by journals to revise and resubmit papers (rather than outright rejects). But my most recent response from a journal was again a reject. Otherwise, I've been working on my funded research project, doing some presentations and developing my grant applications. On one application I now have a team of three people including me applying. There is a job available in my department with a January deadline. I've received encouragement to apply for it and so will do. I've also been asked to apply for a job at a Sydney university, though it's not the chairman asking so I may have one supporter but that might not be enough. We don't really want to move to Sydney but can't hurt to apply and see how it goes.

In other news, we've been on a couple of trips - to Darwin/Kakadu and just last week to the NSW South Coast. Both were good and we spotted a bunch of wildlife etc. Maybe Snork Maiden will do some blogposts on this some time? On both trips we stayed in self-catering style cabins which were very nice. One was much more high end than the other but both were good experiences.

I hope to keep this blog running with at least monthly net worth/spending reports, info on hedge funds, and some other occasional posts.

Another Job Opportunity?

My chairman told me today that they'll finally be able to readvertize soon a position that might be relevant to me. The position has been frozen for about a year while a "reorganization" has been proceeding. Any potential opportunities are welcome news. Especially as both Snork Maiden and I would like to stay here in Canberra if possible.

Other news: We're planning a trip to the Northern Territory for a conference and some travel to national parks. We haven't decided whether to head to Kakadu, which is a world heritage area or whether to head south from Darwin to Litchfield and Katherine Gorge National Parks. Any recommendations?

In the annoying but weird department our car was crashed into in a shopping mall car park last week while we were shopping. The damage does not appear to be too bad - the window still goes up and down OK in the door which was damaged. It turns out that the person who ran into us was the wife of the Iranian ambassador.

Snork Maiden's Team Gets Another Year of Funding

Good news - the research team that Snork Maiden is part of got some more funding but less than they asked for, so either:

1. They need to find more money from other sources.

2. They have to cut out part of the team.

3. They can use the funding for one year instead of two.

But at least that is a very good start. At the moment I'm thinking it is unlikely that I am going to get a job for the first half of 2010 unless I go outside academia but that will reduce my momentum in getting research done and reduce my chance of getting an academic position. The grants I'm planning on applying for won't provide funding until the beginning of 2011 if I get them. No-one knows whether our current project will get any continuation funding. The whole research centre was funded for 3 years upfront. It looks like I can get expenses to work in Sweden for a month in early 2010 but not clear if I can get any salary. I still have a chance to get an academic position starting in the second half of 2010 which would work out well.

Research Discussions

I had the meetings with the potential collaborators and they went well though there are no definitive outcomes yet. The first meeting I found that though we are both interested in similar questions our approaches to how to address them seem a long way apart. We'll continue to discuss things but not sure if much practical will come out of it in the long term. The second meeting with the more senior (in position) person I think went well. Most of the time it seemed like he was telling me about his research. He's happy for me to use his model and for a student in his unit to work with me on it potentially. Looks like I can get involved with his research network and maybe down the road submit a proposal (to the government research agency) to be located in his unit which is where really the only program in my area in the country really is located. This seems to make sense, but I'm not sure about the politics of the whole thing. I'll have to continue to take it step by step. In the next couple of days I want to improve my proposal further and then I really need to get back to work on the project I'm supposedly being paid to do. I'm going to have to do that as full time as possible from now on.

Meetings Lined Up

I have meetings lined up now to discuss my research and potential for collaboration on grants with a couple of people next week. One of them is one of the top economists in Australia by any measure. Hopefully, something productive will come of it.