Questions about the survey
Besides keeping a clean record of the openings available and the candidates on the market, we set out to collect data on the profiles of the people who accept an Operations-related academic job. These are the questions that come up most.
Whoever recently went through the job market search for an Operations-related academic position at a university or business school, at any level — postdoc, assistant professor, associate professor and so on. The survey asks for the year you were on the market and the year you start work, so deferring an academic position for a postdoc or a corporate offer is covered.
Please fill it out. There is a question that asks exactly this, so say there that you are not joining a business school department.
Fill it out and say you accepted a postdoc or an industry position until your academic position begins. Get in touch if anything is unclear.
Concrete annual reports that describe our field and make the job market more transparent and efficient. Here is a preliminary report from the first year we ran the survey. We were inspired by a similar annual survey published every year in Marketing.
We are fully aware of this concern and take it seriously. Anonymity is protected in two ways. First, nothing that can be traced back to an individual is displayed: we never show a figure — an average included — that rests on fewer than three data points. Second, the raw data is not accessible to anyone but the researcher running the survey, who discloses it in no form other than the annual report.
For an example of how the data will (and will not) be shown, see this preliminary report and the tables on pp. 7–8 of the comparable annual report from Marketing.
First, our academic community is not as small as you may think. The survey is designed to be answerable by anyone affiliated with Operations, broadly defined, who has been through our job market — PhD candidates from Operations Research, Management Science, Industrial Engineering, Computer Science, Financial Engineering and Analytics, among others.
Second, we ask nothing that the Marketing community does not. Every year almost 95% of the people on the Marketing job market — around a hundred academics — fill in their equivalent survey. We do not ask your name (they do, for verification), nor where you took your PhD, nor where you ended up. We do ask how many papers you had on the market and at what stage, your teaching load, the tenure requirements, and the shape of your offer.
Third, “without action the world would still be an idea”, to rephrase Georges Doriot. Either you trust the researcher conducting the survey, by accepting the detailed informed consent statement, or you do not. Given the right data, we promise insight that will help future PhD students, schools, and every academic in the field — as the Marketing community's own executive summaries show (2012–2013 and 2013–2014).
Understanding what schools actually offer, and what the candidates actually look like, lets both sides adjust their offers and their expectations. Beyond that, our aim is to attract the best — and the right — researchers into the field in the first place, by applying to our PhD programmes. Reporting real data helps shape the definition and the boundaries of Operations academia.
Yes, provided you remember the details of your search — applications sent, offers received, and so on. The survey asks which year you were on the market.
Please send it to us through the feedback page — you can do so anonymously, and suggestions that others might weigh in on are raised in the survey’s own comments.
Still unsure about something? Ask us — and read the informed consent statement before you begin.