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I am writing this after not passing the written application screening for a TT application in Japan. I'm wondering whether my strategy was correct or I could have done something differently.

Apart from the usual documents (research, teaching, leadership statements), I was asked to fill a separate form comparing my publication metrics to 4 other researchers of similar career stage as me. I was also asked to self-evaluate whether I considered myself a top 10%, 30%, 50% or 70% researcher (this was a self-evaluation and hence naturally subjective). The University's priorities were stated as 1) number of publications in last 5 years, 2) number of top 10% cited publications in last 5 years. I had to compare my metrics to those of my peers at the same career stage. We had to obtain the data from Scopus.

I did well (top 95%) in 1) and about average (top 50%) for 2) comparing myself with the general pool of early-mid career-ish postdocs in my field (theoretical physics). In my application I chose 2 new assistant professors and 2 postdocs with same experience as me (~3 years post-PhD). I had published more than all of them, but was in the ~50th percentile on top-10% cited publications, in accordance with the general statistics above. I self-evaluated myself to be in the top-30% of researchers--we were just asked to state a number, without written justification.

I'm wondering if I took the right approach, or could have opted for a more optimal strategy in 1) choosing which researchers to compare myself to, and 2) whether I should have self-evaluated higher i.e. as a top-10%. For those with experience on hiring committees, if this form were part of your evaluation, what would you be looking for, given my accomplishments in 1) and 2)?

I acknowledge that failing to pass this screening may be independent of how I responded in the form, but I felt it was my strongest written application so far (and I did pass the written screening of my 3 prior Japanese faculty applications prior to this, submitted this year).

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    It is natural to try to figure out what may have gone wrong, but as you state in your final sentence, you don't know if this had any negative impact on your outcome. It may have even been the strongest part of your application! Can you request some advice from someone you trust in the Japanese system? Commented Oct 9 at 14:40
  • It's not clear to me whether you're sure your search outcome was 100% due to the "written application screening", or whether that's an assumption you're making. Unless specifically told otherwise, there's no reason to assume that the screening was your problem. Commented Oct 9 at 16:40
  • By screening, I mean that it was the first round of a multi-stage application process. I didn’t make it past this round. I’m wondering if other people have encountered this kind of self-evaluation before, and whether there is an optimal strategy for it. If mine was an optimal strategy, then I agree that it’s entirely possible that I didn’t make it past this round for other reasons e.g. there were other better candidates. Commented Oct 9 at 17:09
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    Is asking for this normal in your field (in Japan)? Or is having multi-stage applications? I don't think I've seen this for math. Commented Oct 12 at 16:41
  • This was an open call for all disciplines. This was the first and only time I've seen such a form required. Commented Oct 12 at 22:10

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