Preparing for the Fall 2025 Faculty Job Market and Beyond

Are you planning to apply for assistant professor positions in the Fall of 2025, 2026, or further out? What metrics are associated with applicants who successfully landed a faculty position over the past few years? What can you be doing now as a postdoc to maximize your competitiveness for an academic faculty position?

Virginia Tech Postdoctoral Affairs Program Administrator Chris Smith, will share data from a set of faculty job market applicant surveys from 2018 to the present as well as an overview of the Academic Career Readiness Assessment developed at University of California, San Francisco.

Attendees will leave with insights on some of the critical factors and metrics associated with landing a faculty position as well as an appreciation of the different qualifications needed to be competitive at different types of institutions. While the presented data are mostly from STEM and the biological sciences fields, general advice on applying for faculty positions will be shared.

Learn more about this work by visiting the Faculty Job Market Collaboration website.

The following publications may also be of interest to those going on the faculty job market in Fall 2025:

• A survey-based analysis of the academic job market
• Myths and facts about getting an academic faculty position in neuroscience
• An updated and expanded characterization of the biological sciences academic job market