Worth applying for academic jobs in States or not?

[bathsh3ba]

I'm due to submit my PhD imminently and have been applying to some jobs in the UK, most won't consider me till I have the PhD in hand but I do have one interview next week for a teaching fellow job. (I can teach on a casual contract at my current university for the next academic year so it's not desperate times yet.)

However I've seen a job going at a university in my favourite American city ever and I'm mulling over if I should apply. It seems a very different system and I'd need a research statement and teaching statement and student evaluations and all sorts of things I haven't needed applying over here.

Does anyone have any experience of applying for a first academic job in the States when based in the UK?

Thanks

Is it a postdoc? I did one in the US. They sorted out my visa and it was all quite straightforward. I don’t know about teaching jobs but nothing to lose by applying. Good luck!

No, it's an 'Assistant Professor' which I think is 'Lecturer' over here but it just asks that you have your PhD by Aug 2022, so I assume it's open to early career researchers.

I think your question is unanswerable without knowing the research field and the tier of the US university. In my field you don't get assistant professor or lecturer positions at research intensive universities without a number of years of postdoctoral experience, so no point applying straight out of PhD. It may be possible to get an assistant professor position at a less research intensive US university with less research experience, although this would still be unusual.

You wouldn’t have been able to get an assistant professor post without 1-3 postdoc positions in my field. It sounds unusual but go for it!

Social sciences and it's ranked in top 20 colleges but not Ivy League. It doesn't specify years of experience, just says PhD by Aug 2022 and experience of teaching. But maybe it's an unspoken rule. I guess the application experience might be worthwhile if nothing else.

Adverts for tenture track/'permanent' positions don't specify a number of years of post-phd experience, because there isn't a specific requirement. But nonetheless post-phd experience is usually required to be a competitive candidate for these positions, and the typical duration is field and type of institution dependent. So you need to find out what the norms for your field are (by asking more senior people and/or looking at the career trajectories of people who've got similar positions recently).