The campus interview plays a crucial role in the hiring process for both candidates and committees, but it also marks the point where flaws in the conception and conduct of a search are most likely to surface.
Two examples, drawn from my own experience as a job candidate in the past few years, illustrate the ways in which fundamental problems with a search can reveal themselves in the campus interview.
"Gorgonzola College" published a position announcement that described the qualifications and responsibilities of a traditional vice president for academic affairs. So when I was invited to interview, I prepared for questions on such issues as academic freedom, budget allocation, staffing, balancing access versus quality, and so on. I assumed the membership of the search committee would be typical for a position like this -- mostly faculty members and academic-support staffers, perhaps with a dean included to represent administrative concerns.
I was wrong. Apart from the president, a nonacademic administrator, and one faculty member, the search committee was composed of people drawn largely from the local business and economic-development network. The composition of the committee turned out to be a portent of things to come.
After a brief welcome, the chairman informed me that I was about to be asked a dozen questions. He warned me to be mindful of the length of my answers so the committee members would be able to get through all of their questions in the allotted time.
They needn't have worried. Around the room in clockwise fashion, each member of the panel asked me his or her assigned question. The first questioner asked me about my experience in economic development. As I thought about my response, I wondered fleetingly if I had walked into the wrong interview.
By the third question -- also about economic development -- I began experiencing flashbacks to the nightmares I had had preceding my Ph.D. orals, in which I couldn't answer a single question. By the last few questions, I was reduced to the offer-killing response, "I don't know." Finally, and pathetically, I blurted out, "I'm an academic."
At least I passed the brevity test. The committee members exhausted all of their questions -- and their interest in my candidacy -- before 40 minutes had elapsed. I think they were as puzzled by me as I was by them, but we could all agree on one thing: I wasn't the right person for this job, whatever it was.
I have since learned that the administration and faculty were in conflict about the appointment. The administration wanted someone who would be involved in local economic development off the campus. The faculty wanted an academic leader who would ensure that its needs and priorities were represented vigorously to the president. I had been caught in the crossfire.
Rather than resolving the conflict before moving forward, the college simply embedded it in the search. The faculty's preference was reflected in the vacancy announcement, while the administration's was built into the composition of the search committee and the questions posed in the interview. Given the nature of the conflict, I wasn't surprised to learn that the person whom Gorgonzola College eventually hired lasted just 18 months.
I encountered a different sort of problem when I interviewed at "Access College," again for an academic vice presidency. The search committee had decided to use teleconferencing for the interviews. Candidates who lived outside the area were instructed to use the teleconferencing facilities at their local Kinko's. Although I live only a few minutes from Access College's campus, I, too, was asked to submit to an interview via teleconference -- using facilities on the campus. I was uneasy about the format of the interview, but it wasn't negotiable. So at the appointed hour, I presented myself at the college's teleconferencing facility.
A technician showed me to a small room with a television and camera at one end and a desk, chair, and microphone at the other. A few moments later, a murky image appeared on the screen. I could just make out the faces of the two people who were seated closest to the camera. Poor lighting reduced the images of the other members arrayed around the room to obscure shapes. Altogether, I counted either eight or nine interviewers. (I couldn't be sure whether one was a very quiet observer or someone's briefcase.)
Perhaps fearing that the technology would fail, the committee dispensed with the usual preliminaries and cut to the chase: "Tell us how you would go about raising our enrollment by 10 per cent next year." Or something like that. Frankly, I don't remember much about the interview. I was absorbed by the way the camera at the committee's end followed the sound of someone's voice -- always, of course, a few seconds after he or she had begun asking a question.
When the interview ended, I walked out into the hall, relieved that my ordeal was over. My relief was premature. Emerging from a room at the other end of the hall -- and heading my way -- were the members of the search committee, oblivious to my presence and talking loudly about where they were going for lunch. To avoid compromising the purity of their search -- and, frankly, to avoid any further embarrassment for myself -- I turned on my heel and raced for the nearest exit.
I sympathize with the search-committee members at Access College. They must have had a very limited budget. I can also appreciate their desire to maintain a level playing field for all candidates. But the field they chose for the interview all but eliminated its value.
The point of a campus interview is to get to know candidates as people as well as clusters of qualifications, to assess their affect as well as their effectiveness. Even had the technology been first-rate, an electronic simulacrum is no substitute for meeting candidates in the flesh. In such a setting, getting to know someone as a human being is all but impossible.
From the candidate's perspective, an electronic interview may be even less satisfactory. I was comparatively lucky, I suppose, because I at least had the opportunity to wander the campus and gain some sense of the facilities and atmosphere of the college. Still, I had no better sense of my potential colleagues than were I sequestered in a Kinko's a thousand miles away.
That's not to say that I didn't form an impression of Access College, however. I doubted I would want to work at a college that either lacked the resources to conduct a proper search for such a key position or valued the position too little to care.
Those interviews differ in their particulars, but their problems arose from the same source. Both searches were structured to meet the needs of the institution but failed to meet their responsibility to the candidates.
Searches should yield in-depth knowledge of each candidate's qualifications, personality, and character, of course. At the same time -- and equally important for a successful outcome -- searches should provide candidates with meaningful opportunities to assess their own level of interest in the position. Just as candidates strive to present themselves in their best light, so should search committees.
In short, searches are a two-way street. Every decision made in the search process, from the definition of the position to the manner in which the interview is conducted, affects the ability of both the institution and the candidate to accurately assess the potential for a successful relationship. Institutions that neglect the legitimate needs of candidates will frequently find themselves traveling down a one-way road to a failed search -- or even worse, to an appointment that proves disastrous for both candidate and campus.
