http://chronicle.com/article/Some-Job-Candidates-Watch-a/137355/
February 18, 2013
By Sydni Dunn
Shortly before his phone rang, M. Joel Voss noticed a new visitor to the Web site he had put together for his academic-job search. The visit added to his curiosity; in the past two days, he had noticed that his site had received a half-dozen or so page views, all originating from the same geographic location.
"I was wondering why The Chronicle of Higher Education was looking at my site," Mr. Voss said, shortly into an interview. He detailed how his tracking on Google Analytics showed visitors from The Chronicle's Web server looking at his site the day before, earlier that day, and then right before he got the call. "I knew I didn't apply for a job there."
Mr. Voss, a doctoral candidate in foreign affairs at the University of Virginia, created the Web site in September as he prepared to apply for academic jobs. The site displays his curriculum vitae, lists links to his publications, and provides his contact information.
But the Web site has become a tool for Mr. Voss in other ways as well. He monitors the site's analytics to gauge the interest of the departments to which he has submitted applications. If it gets a lot of hits from one location, he concludes that a hiring committee could be seriously considering his application.
"I check it daily," he says, "sometimes twice a day."
Web analytics, devices that monitor traffic to specific Web sites and provide data about patterns of use, are being used for new purposes in the academic world.
Some prospective undergraduates are checking on the progress of their college applications. Chris Peterson, who directs digital strategy and communications for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's admissions office, wrote in a recent guest post on a Chronicle blog about an e-mail he had received from an applicant who reported feeling "helpless and depressed" after checking a Google Analytics account and finding no visits from Boston or Cambridge to a link included in the sender's application to the institute. "As admissions officers, we are accustomed to reading applications; now, applications are reading us," he wrote.
Matthew Milner, a faculty researcher in digital humanities at McGill University, uses analytics tools to evaluate his own scholarly reach and academic network.
Mr. Milner, who uses the tracking feature on his Academia.edu profile, monitors how many people view his page and where they are from. It's nice to know that someone is looking at his work, he says, "It gives you a little peace of mind."
The Analytics of Analytics
In the context of the academic job market, Mr. Voss, who expects to complete his Ph.D. in May, monitors several aspects of his Web site's traffic. He focuses on the location of each visitor, the length of time the person spends on each page, and how the person found his site—whether directly, through a Google search, or through a link ending with edu. If the person searched for his site, he examines the keywords they used in the inquiry.
"There have been instances where I've had 15 Web-site visits from one location, so that tells me I'm on a long or short list," he says. That might be a sign of an impending call or interview. "That, or they are making fun of my Web site."
Mr. Voss has not, however, secured interviews at any of the colleges where the most people seem to have viewed his site. Most of the interviews he has landed have been at institutions where people, from what he can tell, have not browsed his digital portfolio.
Job candidates' use of analytics can be seen as a role reversal in what is often a nerve-racking job market, says Stéfan Sinclair, an associate professor of digital humanities at McGill.
"I suspect it can feel very empowering for applicants," he says. "It gives them the sense of being able to observe at least one aspect of a process that otherwise is extremely opaque and where one feels helpless."
It can also give graduate students useful feedback about their online presence. "If you have a site but people only stay 30 seconds," the professor says, "it's probably because it's an accident—or your site needs improvement."
There are limits to what analytics can tell a job applicant. Despite the details the data can convey, they cannot identify whose eyes are scanning a Web site, or, of course, illuminate the motive for the visit, Mr. Sinclair says.
And in the context of a job hunt, analytics information is not confirmation of an employer's interest, says David D. Perlmutter, director of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Iowa. Mr. Perlmutter, who writes frequently for The Chronicle, says many applicants are required to provide supplementary online materials, particularly in digitally oriented fields like his. As a matter of course, the Iowa school's hiring committee examines the material submitted by every job candidate. Just because six new page views pop up as a data trend on an applicant's Web site, it doesn't mean the committee is going to hire that candidate, he says.
"It's just something to do when you're nervous," Mr. Perlmutter says. "You apply, then go through a period of information deficit. You're worried and anxious, and anything of a hint is seen as a positive."
The habit of monitoring analytics and parsing the data can add stress to an already stressful situation.
Mr. Voss, who has applied for dozens of jobs, says he has received hits from colleges but hasn't received a follow-up phone call. "To not get the call is disappointing," he says. "I've also had some experiences when some people didn't even look, which is also disappointing."
Monitoring analytics doesn't take much time, he says, and it's discreet; visitors cannot tell if analytics are enabled on the site.
Even so, in retrospect, Mr. Voss wonders if installing analytics on his Web site was a smart move.
"Sometimes it makes me more anxious," he says. "But it's an anxious time all around."
