Sarah Kanning

Just read an article from the Chronicle of Higher Education which was about librarianship and jobs in libraries, but it contained this paragraph:

I know of one job seeker who has a Ph.D. in English, publications including a scholarly monograph, many years of college teaching experience, a recent MLIS, and substantial preprofessional library experience. She sent out nearly 200 applications over an 18-month period before being offered a professional job as a reference and instruction librarian. (my emphasis)

That’s an average of 3 applications a week for a year and a half, folks. Having gone through the process of applying for several jobs in academia, I can tell you that doing that many applications in that period of time actually decreases the likelihood that you will be called for an interview and get the job.

Why? Because to be successful, you need to tailor your materials to the job you are applying for. Each job will require a slightly different CV, and probably a fairly different cover letter, different teaching materials, etc. If you don’t do that preparatory work, you will not get the job; you will probably not even get an interview.

This is an interesting phenomenon with carryover to the writing submissions process. Submitting work is partly, but not only, a numbers game. Writers need to send out work, probably to many places, in order to find a home for it, but we also need to do our best to find the venues where that work fits. In other words, it’s also a matchmaking game – and it’s very difficult to be a matchmaker for your own work. (This is why literary agents exist; unfortunately, you have to do your own matchmaking to find an agent, and to get your work published in magazines and journals.

So who will be more successful:

• a writer who sends out 200 submissions to journals all over the country (some of which she may even have read),
• a writer who sends out 20 submissions to magazines that seem like they’d be a good match based on what’s on their web sites, or
• a writer who sends out six submissions to journals she has read (all the way through, multiple issues)?

I know where I’m betting my time and energy.