The right match

THE American Economic Association's annual conference, held each January, is ostensibly a gigantic teach-in, with lots of seminars featuring famous economists. But the three-day event, held this year in San Francisco with 13,000 attending, is also a big jobs fair. More than 500 employers'both universities and companies'were tied up in hotel rooms holding marathon interview sessions with freshly minted PhDs. The ballroom of the Marriott was set aside for a hundred more.It is a gruelling three days for candidates: one exhausted PhD likened it to speed-dating. It is also arduous for recruiters. Towards the end of the first day Alan Green and Christopher de Bodisco of Stetson University, a small private college in Florida, review the candidates they have seen so far. They are looking for someone with an interest in health and development. They plan to grill a dozen candidates each day before inviting the most promising ones to visit its campus and meet the rest of the faculty.The grandest universities use suites for comfort but also as a display of prestige. Plausible candidates are given a code to exchange for the hotel-room number in order to deter gatecrashers. The leading institutions speak to the best candidates; the rest to anyone they think they can get. 'There's no point in talking to someone who's going to end up at Harvard,' says a...Continue reading
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