We were supposed to make our own curriculum vitaes and the statements of teaching philsophy by the meeting day. Some of us had worked on them but some had difficulities to make CVs or the teaching statements. At this meeting, we shared some experiences from our department faculties. In addition to this, we discussed a couple of issues about writing a teaching statement and a cover letter. The discussion helped us understand a hiring process and benefited better preparation for an acadamic job.

Dr. Mike Brilleslyper who is the first year Mathematics coordinator at ASU, Dr. Steve Kaliszewski and Dr. Andrew Bremner, Professors at ASU paticipated in the meeting. We discussed their own expericences not only as an applicant for a postdoc position or an assistant professor but also as a committee member of hiring a new professor.

Dr. Mike Brilleslyper got recently hired at a school in Colorado. His new experiences - how he had written his teaching statement and CV and how interviews had gone - gave us a lot of ideas to prepare a job. One important thing was that we might need different CVs and teaching statements for various jobs since we might need to emphasize on different things for each job.

Dr. Steve Kaliszewski graduated from a small school and works at a big school right now. We discussed good things and bad things that happened and might happen at a small school or a big school. Regarding his experience, knowing people in his research area was important when he was hired. Attending a conference and giving a talk at the conference could be a good chance to meet people in a research area.

Dr. Andrew Bremner brought us a different point of view as a hiring committee member a year ago. He did a simple calculation with the number of applicants to show how short it took to read each application form. We could see the importance of a cover letter and letters from references to get an attention at the beginning of a hiring process.

In this meeting we got feeling about what would be good or bad on a CV, a teaching statement, a cover letter, and so on. We got some ideas what we should do for getting a job. The most important thing was, I thought, whether one would love to work on the job which one would like to apply for.