How to get a tenure-track academic job at a non-elite small liberal arts college.
I have occasionally run short workshops with grad students at traditional research-oriented universities, helping them think through the process of getting ready to apply for jobs at small colleges. I am always happy to talk with folks about that and answer their questions about a side of the academic job market that their regular academic advisors will have less experience with. In case you don’t want to talk with me, here are my notes, organized (in the fashion of any true IR seminar) theory first, followed by policy implications.
Theory
Ability to teach well is mission-critical; research or other skills cannot substitute for bad teaching. This is because enrollment makes or breaks the college, enrollment is elastic, and student retention is key. Bringing in enough grant money to offset poor retention is not realistic.
Departments are small, so you will be all by yourself a significant fraction of the faculty in your field. Programs will be risk-averse and seek to avoid hiring people who are cranks or have poor social or administrative skills.
Students in the major need to take a variety of courses and programs cannot repeat specialized courses too often. Departments want to hire people who can teach a variety of different topics.
In small programs with few faculty, faculty need to be ready to do multiple kinds of administrative jobs to keep the program running, even if those jobs are not in their formal job descriptions.
Programs will be terrified that their job search will not yield a candidate who will take the job, and that the line will get cut before they can find someone to take it, so they will prioritize interviewing and making offers to candidates who credibly signal that they will accept an offer. Recall that costly signals are the most credible.
Policy implications
Teach lots of courses as a grad student in which you are the primary instructor of record.
Have peers or mentors sit in on your courses and complete a formal-looking teaching evaluation of what they observe in your class.
Acquire formal teaching credentials from your university - your English department (if nothing else) will have seminars where they teach instructors how to teach e.g. undergraduate writing. (Note that these credentials can be costly signals of your type.)
Demonstrate that you are knowledgeable about other aspects of the field outside your narrow specialty by coauthoring papers with peers on topics that are obviously different from your central expertise.
Collaborate with peers to produce a portfolio of syllabi for courses you could, in principle, teach on a moment’s notice, on a variety of topics, including ones outside your area of expertise.
Acquire an internal credential at your home institution related to some sort of university administrative service (e.g. attend a workshop on how to run program assessment, design a curriculum, supervise interns, create websites, or the like).
Create some sort of web presence that includes you giving a talk that is accessible to a general audience and that shows that you are friendly and articulate (e.g. have a peer interview you about your research for a podcast).
When applying for a job, tailor your letter extremely specifically to the program to which you are applying, so that they know you have carefully read their website and catalog. Refer to courses in their catalog by name and number that you could teach, as well as ones not in their catalog that you could create. Refer, in your letter, to the things that the college or program to which you are applying thinks make them distinctive and wonderful.
If you have any unique non-obvious reason why you would accept an offer from the institution, include that clearly and explicitly, upfront, in your letter. It does not have to be something about the wonderfulness of the college specifically; family connection to the town or whatever is fine.
In your application letter, highlight teaching first, before research. Emphasize your ability to teach outside your main focus area.
Explain in your letter how your teaching has improved over time and why. Establish that you hold yourself to a standard of continuous improvement in teaching ability. Show some humility by describing times that you have improved your teaching in response to suggestions from peers.
Present yourself as someone who can connect with students who find adapting to college in some way difficult (for example, as a first-gen college student, immigrant or child of immigrants, minority, or outsider in some way). Connect this explicitly to how you can identify and reach out to students who are disengaged and at risk of dropping out.
Have your letter-writers know that you are applying to a teaching college and that their letters for those institutions should highlight your teaching first (as well as all the other points in my list that you feel you need to specifically address). Tell your letter-writers not to give their letter a filename (like “smith.teachingletter.docx”) that reveals that they have also written letters for you for research universities.
Find people who might know both you and people on the hiring committee and use them to convey information about you that might otherwise be difficult for your mentors to communicate credibly. For example, your personality (small colleges will be more highly-motivated than other institutions to avoid hiring jerks) and your willingness to accept an offer from them specifically (since they will be afraid of wasting time by making offers to candidates who then decline).
At the interview
Do not play hard to get. Unlike larger schools, at a SLAC having another option makes it less likely they will make you an offer. They will assume you will take the other one, and will not want to waste their time on you. If you have other options, do not discuss them.
Most people you will talk with at your interview will be smart people who know nothing about your (sub)field. Be prepared to give an explanation in lay terms for someone who does not know anything about your field’s theory or methods. Do not be disappointed if they do not ask you follow-up questions. They will simply assume that your research is fine and focus on your teaching (and the other points above).
Convey an entrepreneurial spirit. Demonstrate, through your questions, that you are curious about the student population and how they are recruited to the college and that you are the sort of person who could be helpful in that.
Suppose they make you an offer
You will probably be negotiating with an administrator, not with the faculty in the program. It is okay to talk with the faculty in the program, as your interests and theirs are aligned - that is, they will want you to take the job if and only if you’ll be happy there.
You are better off negotiating for a shorter pre-tenure probationary period. At most places, the only time you’ll get a raise is when you get promoted, so the sooner the better.
Ask very specific questions about the research requirements for promotion. Compared with research-oriented institutions, a SLAC is much more likely to have a clear rule for promotion (e.g. “3 articles in double-blind peer reviewed journals”).
Do not take it as a bad sign if they do not offer you a higher salary in the course of negotiations. Most places do not have a lot of flexibility. The best you can hope for is one or two course releases your first year as you get settled.
Do not go fishing for offers that you know you will not accept. These will not help you get jobs at other SLACs (and might even hurt), and are unlikely to impress a research-oriented institution.