A Summary of the COVID-19 Job Search Effects Survey

The AAS Employment Committee sent out a very short survey in May 2020 to the email addresses associated with job postings from the AAS Job Register from June 2019 through March 2020. The survey asked for an email reply to one multiple choice question:

Please REPLY BACK to this message, selecting one (or more) of the following status options for the job posting:
(A) No impact from COVID-19 (didn't change the outcome of hiring process).
(B) Completing or expect to complete the hiring process, but the timeline for the job is altered.
(C) Completing or expect to complete the hiring process, but our candidate pool was significantly affected.
(D) Offered the job to candidates but could not complete the hire because of restrictions due to COVID-19 effects.
(E) Cancelled the search before completion due to factors related to COVID-19.

We received 220 replies out of 708 requests. Additionally, about a quarter of respondents included some commentary to describe what happened (or was still happening) in their hiring process.

Overall, most jobs (60%) posted in this time interval were not affected by COVID-19, but approximately 11% of jobs were not able to hire because of COVID-19.

Timing

Breaking the job postings into three temporal categories of summer (June-August), fall (September-December) and winter (January-March) shows that, as expected, more recently posted jobs were more frequently affected. Because of small numbers in responses (C), (D), and (E), we have categorized response (A) as “No effect,” responses (B) and (C) as “Minor effect,” and responses (D) and (E) as “Major effect.”

The “no effect” response monotonically decreases with time. The decrease in the “major effect” category from fall to winter might be associated with faculty searches being most frequently canceled (see below) and that most faculty jobs were posted in fall and not winter.

Job Category

We also divided the job register into four job categories: faculty (including both tenure-track and visiting), postdocs (and fellowships), predocs (and graduate programs), and scientific staff (which combines science engineering, science management, and scientific/technical staff).

Faculty searches were most frequently canceled, with many respondents citing hiring freezes put into place by their institutions. Particularly for postdoc positions, written responses included much uncertainty (even for those who chose “no effect”) about whether the postdoc would be able to start on the agreed-upon date due to uncertain travel and/or visa restrictions.

The AAS Employment Committee is gathering additional data over a longer time period and will share those results with the community in the near future.