Third, professional organizations should issue guidelines for the consideration of re-entering job applicants and begin to collect data on the phenomenon. The MLA's Final Report on Professional Employment begins to address some of the possibilities for changing the academic climate toward re-entering job candidates. But the report's endorsement of nonacademic careers for Ph.D.'s does not specifically address the situation of those who still hope to return to academic jobs. For them, career centers must also keep recommendation letters on file over the years that they are otherwise employed. Likewise, departments must help their graduate students and new Ph.D.'s learn from the experiences of other academics who have successfully managed the transition back into the academy.
Letters of reference are always an obstacle for re-entering candidates.
Search committees prefer current letters and often won't even consider letters from nonacademic employers. Professional organizations should step in and advise search committees that this discriminates against re-entering candidates. While it is perfectly appropriate for a committee to decide that one letter is more persuasive than another for some legitimate reason, such logic shouldn't prevent nonacademic letters from being considered at all. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the academy must accord greater respect toward paid and nonacademic work of all kinds. The majority of academics currently employed in the humanities have probably never held any job outside of a college or university.