Moving us one step closer to a centralized interview process (a good thing as I have argued), the Duke department of economics is posting video clips of job talks given by their new PhD candidates. Here is the Duke Economics YouTube Channel, and here is the talk of Eliot Annenberg (former NU undergrad and student of mine btw.) I expect more and more departments to be doing this in the future. (Bearskin bend: Econjeff)
While we are on the subject here is a recent paper that studies the Economics academic labor market (beyond the rookie market.) The abstract:
In this paper we study empirically the labor market of economists. We look at the mobility and promotion patterns of a sample of 1,000 top economists over thirty years and link it to their productivity and other personal characteristics. We find that the probability of promotion and of upward mobility is positively related to past production. However, the sensitivity of promotion and mobility to production diminishes with experience, indicating the presence of a learning process. We also find evidence that economists respond to incentives. They tend to exert more effort at the beginning of their career when dynamic incentives are important. This finding is robust to the introduction of tenure, which has an additional negative ex post impact on production. Our results indicate therefore that both promotions and tenure have an effect on the provision of incentives. Finally, we detect evidence of a sorting process, as the more productive individuals are allocated to the best ranked universities. We provide a very simple theoretical explanation of these results based on Holmström (1982) with heterogeneous firms.
via eric barker.
Cheap Talk 
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December 21, 2010 at 4:21 pm
twicker
Interesting about the video … not quite sure how I feel about it.
On the one hand, we do get to see Dr. Annenberg in action, so that’s good, and it can build confidence for hiring universities about whether they’re seeing a one-shot good presentation or something that will suggest that he’ll have a record of achievement; on the other hand, if one manages to improve from presentation to presentation (e.g., Dr. Annenberg may decide to change some things after he reviews this video), having a poor interview immortalized may do more damage (esp. since, right now, it’s not the norm so potential other good interviews will not be seen).
Maybe a candidate should be able to record a few, then provide a “representative body” of talks, where they get to pick their best few and then the evaluators can discount the unrepresentativeness of these few (putting everyone in roughly the same boat)? That would also get rid of some of the concerns of having the one central interview being potentially sub-par, since the candidate is selecting her or his best work.
I’m also wondering if the video component shouldn’t be more like this: YouTube/RSA Animate – Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us Note that, in this video, while you get to hear the ideas being discussed and see representations of those ideas, you aren’t distracted by split screens or odd camera angles (as in the Duke video above), and you aren’t distracted by the presenter’s potential nervousness or possible issues with physical/kinesthetic delivery style (very, very few people are perfect public speakers; I’m certainly not).
A produced video as a supplement to an in-person meeting would seem, IMHO, to be a good middle position to give everyone the information they most need to make the best decisions.
December 21, 2010 at 9:31 pm
k
that’s a good idea, although something like the RSA animate thing will be difficult to do.
However, you could easily record over a presentation, I think. This might be an easy way to get the point across of your paper, with less need to wear stuffy suits and shower and all that.