It's commonly assumed in humanities disciplines that if you don't get a tenure-track job within a few years of graduation, you probably never will. It's also co

It's commonly assumed in humanities disciplines that if you don't get a tenure-track job within a few years of graduation, you probably never will. It's also common for advisers to tell their students not to adjunct under any circumstances, because it makes you "damaged goods" on the job market. A lot of professors advise their students to take non-academic jobs and keep applying to tenure-track positions, rather than take adjunct jobs. Many older professors who have tenure, and who have great influence in their departments, entered academia when it was the case that "there are always jobs for good people." That's their worldview, and it's just not true anymore. But because they think that way, when they see a candidate who has been looking for a job for several years, they assume that candidate is not one of the good ones. It seems to me that the sciences are different, because postdoc positions seem to be a normal part of one's career progression after a PhD. But in the humanities, that's not the case.