Bumblebea

It's actually a huge relief to know that other people have had similar experiences. Before working with Kelsky, I had been told that her manner could be "off putting" but that she otherwise did good work. Well, I have thick skin (you have to in order to survive in this job market!), so I felt I could probably handle whatever was coming my way. What I COULDN'T handle was the sloppy work on her end. That part I felt was borderline unethical, considering what she charges. Like, it's wrong to take that kind of money and then say "go read my blog" or "cut 20 words." And indeed, it's a shame that there is no one else with an alternative editing service to challenge the monopoly she has on this business. Because yes, I do think that there's a need for it: it's useful to have someone outside of this profession--a professional editor, for instance--look over your writing to really make sure the sentences are clicking and everything's moving from one point to the next. Even people with great advisors can stand to have someone else pick apart their writing. The other major caveat that I'd mention to the OP is that apparently SCs now recognize a "Kelsky letter" from a mile away. (I just read this somewhere, can't remember where.) Her template is so particular--and she insists that everyone follow it because in her world if you don't you'll get tossed from the pile--that SCs are now complaining that the stuff they're receiving is formulaic and cookie cutter. I mean, she has just the most ridiculous rules for what goes in each paragraph, what order to follow, and how many words should be in each paragraph. That stuff is nonsense. While it's smart to streamline your dissertation paragraph as much as you possibly can (more to make it exciting than to satisfying some arbitrary rule), you don't want to sacrifice some of your more important claims. And some of her rules about mentioning second book projects can be disregarded entirely if you're applying for a teaching-focused position. All I basically learned from Kelsky was that I am glad I was not a job seeker when she was doing the hiring at her university. Because apparently doing one wrong thing in front of her would seal your fate as not only a losing job candidate but also an inept human being. You wore a skirt to the interview and ate spaghetti when you were out to dinner with the committee--bad you. You mentioned that you "love teaching." Pack your bags now, because you are never getting an academic job. I understand that the university has become as neoliberal as any other aspect of society, but I also don't think it's as nasty and capricious as Karen makes it out to be, with people sneering at candidates because they wore the wrong shoes and brought an ugly briefcase to an MLA interview. For the OP: I would advise hiring Kelsky ONLY if you feel so poorly served by your committee and grad program that you're sure your materials aren't articulating your full potential. In that case, her advice might be worth it to some extent. I think that if you're writing a terrible cover letter and a bad teaching statement, she might be able to offer a few nuggets that pull you out of the fire. In the end, this is what I did that made my letter better: 1. I took a hard copy of it to my advisor and stood over him while he picked it apart. Previously, I'd done that sort of thing with him, but only over email. Getting him to look at it in person--in hard copy while I stood there--made a world of difference. 2. I ran the letter by my JPO, another committee member who is young and had been on the market 5 years ago, and a friend of mine who got a job. Their advice was not as sharp as my advisor's, but they provided good feedback. I also did a mock interview with people in my department, and they also gave me feedback. 3. I got the letter of a guy my department hired two cycles ago--a real rising super star whose cover letter was a thing of beauty. I studied his letter and tried to do what he did. 4. I studied all the letters my department had on file and "stole" the bits I thought worked well. 5. I wrote and rewrote my letter over the course of several months. The last thing was what really helped, I think. These letters are freaking hard to write and the only way to do them is to evolve them over several drafts and the course of a month or a year. Having said all that, a graceful cover letter is not going to land you a job. It might not even get you an interview. As Bronte85 pointed out upthread, your marketability comes down to your degree, your advisor, you publications, and other factors out of your control. A poorly written letter might get you removed from the pile, but a well-written letter will not work a miracle in this job market. Like, if your school is currently placing people at small branch campuses and teaching colleges, then an artful cover letter will not get you a job at U of Michigan. That's not to say that you shouldn't work to polish your letter as much as possible--you want to think of every letter as a persuasive essay about why you're the best person for this job--but it's not going to make or break your application, and Kelsky is wrong to assert that bad job materials are why people can't get jobs.

Would not recommend. I worked with Kelsky, and I found the experience disappointing. A lot of people complain about her bedside manner (which is indeed atrocious), but that wasn't my main concern. Rather, I was dismayed by her poor work ethic. I could tell she wasn't actually reading my material closely, or she was passing it to different people through different rounds. Thus, I would get completely different advice from one draft to the next. Like, I would be told to mention X in a certain paragraph, so I would mention X and send it back. Then I would get feedback like, "WHY would you mention X in this paragraph? THIS DOESN'T GO HERE!" It's a bit like telling a dog to sit and then roll over and then screaming NO NO I SAID SIT when they start to roll over. (And I'm not joking about the all caps thing. That's how she writes a lot of her marginal feedback, no exaggeration.) The experience basically works like this. You contact her, and she'll put you on the calendar for about six or ten weeks later, depending on her schedule. She makes you pay far in advance for editing three documents, and it's usually around $400 to $500. She'll take you through four drafts of these documents but no more. She also won't answer any questions you have about her feedback. You send her the first draft of the first document, usually your cover letter. She gets back to you and tells you it's terrible. You're doing everything wrong--you're being a "liberal arts mush" or writing a "weepy teaching paragraph." Sound familiar? Yeah, because these are the points on her blog, and apparently they’re mistakes that everyone makes. Even if you’re absolutely sure you don’t make them, guess what, you do. She then tells you to go read her blog posts and rewrite your letter. You make some changes. For draft 2, she'll praise you for taking her suggestions. Then she'll make really vague and minor suggestions like "cut this," "para too long, cut 20 words," "don't put your contact info in your final paragraph." If she doesn't like things, she'll seriously write NO NO in the margins or STOP THAT. I thought that was sort of hilarious. Imagine giving that kind of feedback to a student! And my students don't pay me $500 to look at 8 pages of writing. About halfway through working with her, I got nervous with some of her suggestions, because they were so at odds with the advice I’d gotten from my department, so I ran some of them by my advisor. Advisor was like, "Who is giving you this terrible advice?" (And my advisor sits on job search committees every year. Is not exactly out of touch.) When I gave Kelsky my next draft, I made a marginal note in my letter that, after consulting my advisor, I decided not to follow some of the advice she was giving. Big mistake. When I got the next draft back, she basically unloaded with both barrels, saying that my letter was embarrassing and would insult the intelligence of any search committee I sent it to, and then she implied that my advisor was an idiot. (Those were the words she used: “embarrassing,” “an insult,” and “cliched.”) That was the end of our time together. Aside from her interpersonal communication skills (which suck), her inattention to detail was incredibly disappointing. In one draft, certain things would be fine. But then, in the next draft, there'd be all these ~problems. Like, for two rounds, all with certain paragraphs would be hunky dory; then, in the final round, every word of a particular paragraph would be WRONG or NO NO NO. She claims to be good for the humanities, but I don’t feel like she really knows what’s up in my discipline. She's an ex-anthropologist. She kept criticizing my dissertation paragraph and telling me that no one in my field would have any idea what I was talking about. She also said that my claims were too large and ridiculous. But I don’t know how she would know such a thing because she isn’t in my discipline—not even close. I wouldn’t presume to know the first thing about what makes an anthropology dissertation compelling. But Karen supposedly knows the humanities inside and out. She knows all fields. She knows more than your dissertation advisor about the current trends in your field—even though she left academia 6+ years ago. But like I said, it wasn't the personality issue that bothered me so much; it was that her advice was unpredictable, inconsistent, and way too generalized. She clearly was phoning it in, and I think that people deserve better for $500. For $500, I want my documents edited and worked over. I don't want to be told that "this is fine" in one draft and then "WTF is THIS?" in the next. I’m also pretty sure that she’s not actually doing most of the consulting. I mean—think about it. She told me she has “thousands” of clients. She also just published a book and writes a weekly column for the Chronicle Vitae. I don’t know anyone who consult with an enormous number of clients all while writing a book and cranking out weekly columns. Either someone else wrote the book or someone else is doing the consulting. Or she’s just doing the consulting really badly these days. In any case, I would not pay her for her services now, knowing what I know. Like the above poster, I’ve seen a lot of people from my program get jobs, and I have their letters. Their letters break all of Kelsky's sacrosanct rules. They have dissertation paragraphs that are too long; they combine their second project paragraph with their professionalization paragraph; they tailor in really bland ways. They even write letters that are more than 2 pages! And yet, they got good jobs. So I really have no idea. I don’t have any problem with the way Kelsky makes a living. Like, I read those threads on the CHE forums, and it seems like a lot of people accuse of her profiteering off a bad job market and preying on graduate students’ insecurities. I don’t care about that; in the free world I think she has a right to make a living any way she sees fit. I also don’t care that she’s bullying or insensitive. I mean, yeah, it's unprofessional and immature as hell (and "keeping it real" doesn't mean being a jerk), but if she's a bully who still provides a quality service that gets you shortlisted, then who cares. But she doesn’t provide a quality service. She doesn’t hold up her end of the bargain. And that’s what’s truly egregious about her whole operation, at least from my perspective. She took my money and gave me a crappy service in return. I’m $500 poorer with very little to show for it. Like the previous poster, my letter did get *better*—but it’s difficult to say if this is Kelsky’s doing or if this is because I ran it by a ton of people after Kelsky spooked me with her advice. If that’s the case, then she inadvertently made it better by forcing me to crosscheck her recommendations. Really, my own legwork made it better; Kelsky didn’t even do any line edits.