Less than a month from now, the 2009 AHA annual meeting will open in New York, and the City that Never Sleeps will be flooded with historians talking about their latest research, networking, catching up with old friends, and of course, looking for jobs.

The Job Center this annual meeting will be located in the Hilton New York. The free interview tables, where most institutions will be conducting interviews, will be located in the Hilton’s Rhinelander Gallery, and the official paid Job Center interview rooms will also be in the Hilton. The Job Center Information Booth will be just outside the Rhinelander Gallery, ready to assist candidates in finding where their interviews will take place. The C.V. Collection Booth, where candidates can submit their files to searches open at the meeting, will also be located nearby.

Many people are wondering what the Job Center will be like this year with the economic slowdown and what seems like a fewer number of jobs being advertised.  As of December 4, we’ve received word from 148 different searches conducting interviews at the annual meeting. Forty-one of these searches are open and 107 are conducting prearranged interviews only. The number of searches will rise as schools who have made their own arrangements for interviews gradually inform us of where they are stationed (search committees, if you’d made reservations outside of official Job Center space, and you have not already done so, please send us the Privately Arranged Suite Information document, found on the Job Center web page). As usual, the middle two days of the annual meeting (Saturday-Sunday this annual meeting, as opposed to the usual Friday-Saturday) will be the busiest days for the Job Center. We have sold out of the official Job Center interview rooms for Saturday, and are close to selling out on Sunday.  The quick sell out of the original suite inventory at the Doubletree suggests many non-Job Center interviews will be held there as well.

Best of luck to all job candidates.

David Darlington is co-manager of the Job Center.

This post first appeared on AHA Today.