Question: Why are academic hiring committees filled with liars, connivers, sadists, betrayers, scoundrels, harassers, buffoons, and their ilk?
Answer: Feeling a little put out, are we?
Ms. Mentor admits to combining half a dozen rants, whines, and howls of hatred into the above question. Yet all are sung to the same tune. They made you love them (sort of) -- and then they done you wrong.
Getting a job is not unlike seeking a mate. You make a persuasive overture, converse brilliantly, watch your spelling and hygiene, offer at hints of hidden delights to come ... and then wait by the phone or computer for words of welcome that may never come your way.
But in the job hunt, you're also jostled by a hundred or more other swains and swainettes who must be vanquished ere you can carry off the prize. And why is the winner sometimes, well, less than winning? Ms. Mentor, in her perfect wisdom, will now confirm some of your worst suspicions.
Imagine, for instance, a hiring meeting at Wherever U: How many tenure-track assistant professors would the department like to hire, and in which fields? Unless department members are unusually harmonious or unimaginative, they'll wrangle about "field coverage" and about which profs to replace, from those who've died, retired, or otherwise disappeared. What are students demanding? Are there dead subfields that no longer have to be included in the curriculum?
And, finally, what do the powerful, entrenched professors in the department want?
Once upon a time, for instance, young turks in a well-known English department thought they could hire a specialist in postcolonial literature -- until they got wind of the man Ms. Mentor will call "Professor Big Cheese." Although he'd retired some five years earlier, Prof. Cheese still wielded a huge stick, because most of the older professors owed their tenure to his machinations while he was department chairman. Professor Cheese also cowed everyone with vituperative phone calls and convoluted, vicious memos if his wishes for "my department" (as he still called it) were ignored.
Academicians, Ms. Mentor notes, are not always the most courageous fighters for principle. And so, instead of the bright young postcolonialist who'd been brought to campus and royally feted, the department hired a rather foggy personage whose expertise was Old English philology. And since hardly any students would willingly sign up for that, the department quickly made Old English philology a requirement for all majors. Students fled, and the ranks of general studies and communications majors swelled to bursting. But Professor Cheese was appeased and pleased.
Are other hiring searches really rigged? Ms. Mentor's correspondents often ask.
Sometimes they are, although human resources (personnel) offices are supposed to ferret out the most obvious ads aimed at hiring particular people -- such as "Seeking professor of chemistry, with speaking knowledge of Farsi, ability to play upright string bass, and facility in Cajun cooking." But no one can stop a department hell-bent on hiring the bane of all honest applicants: the dreaded "internal candidate."
At Medium Hot U., for instance, "Ravenel" had been hired as a one-year replacement for Professor Miggle, who was terminally ill but no one wanted to say so. Ravenel cooked lasagna for the entire faculty, set up poetry readings for students, charmed every woman on campus, played tennis with all the men, and served eagerly on countless boring committees. Everyone adored him and wanted to hang onto him forever, but he hadn't published a word. When the tenure-track job ad went out, it did specify "doctorate in hand, teaching experience and publications." All over the country, new Ph.D.'s trustingly applied, with dossiers and references and writing samples. "Honora" was one of the first to notice Medium Hot's strange hiring procedures. The search committee chair e-mailed her to set up a phone interview, but didn't call until several days later, flustered and apologetic ("something came up"). An interview at the national meeting seemed perfunctory ("What did you say your dissertation was about?"). And an on-campus interview was even more revealing ("C'mon, Ravenel," Honora's host called down the hall. "Get a look at the lady who's after your job.")
When she heard that Ravenel's name was going to be listed as co-author on someone else's book review, Honora knew the search was wired. Still, she gave a superb presentation. Several faculty members told her so, and one kind soul e-mailed praise to his friends at other colleges where Honora had applied. But at Medium Hot, Ravenel got the tenure-track job.
Ms. Mentor's mailbag is filled with other tales of injustice, rudeness, or bad filing. Too often, artists' expensive portfolios are lost, and applications aren't acknowledged. One baffled young man was praised profusely for a conference paper he knew nothing about. ("Thank you so much," he said to one and all. "I did my best.")
Some departments never even notify unsuccessful candidates who've been brought to campus and wined and dined. Some let the news go out on the grapevine. Others, if money has been yanked and the position canceled, retreat into a silent funk, which makes candidates wonder if they smelled bad. And yet some candidates do have unreasonable expectations. "Ben" expected to get a paper (not an e-mail) rejection after a campus interview. (What difference would it make? Ms. Mentor asks.) "Marietta" wanted "the courtesy of a phone call" from a department she fell in love with. (But do you want an interviewer to hear you cry?) "Fred" wanted a department "to tell me what I did wrong, so I won't do it again." (Why would you want to be told that you're not as smart or charming as the winning applicant?)
But why are they so mean, Ms. Mentor? Most likely it's not malice: they're overworked and overwhelmed. They may have bad manners, but they rarely hate you. And the only behavior you can control is your own. You can fume, but you can't make them hire you -- any more than a rejected suitor can force a reluctant bride.
You may have to smile though your heart is breaking. Lick your wounds, move on, and when you're on the hiring side, don't be a conniver, liar, or buffoon. As you and Ms. Mentor well know, there are too many of those already.
Question: As a very nervous public speaker about to give job-interview presentations, I've been advised to imagine my audience in their underwear. Should I?
Answer: Yes.
SAGE READERS: "They're not treated as students, but as consumers, or maybe inmates," say Ms. Mentor's correspondents, frothing about the overreliance on student evaluations to cow the faculty. At Mighty Strange U, for instance, students fill out evaluations just three weeks into each course. The forms are then filed away until the end of the semester, when -- presto! -- they're sprung upon the instructor, who's had no chance to see or learn from them.
This strikes Ms. Mentor as bizarre, and she encourages victims of that ploy to print out this column and leave it where it might help the most.
Ms. Mentor also invites correspondence on all trenchant, cogent, and viable subjects -- including why such empty words as trenchant, cogent, and viable are treated as if they mean something. Anonymity is guaranteed, and fulminations are always welcome. She reminds readers that she rarely answers mail personally, and that her past columns and her tome (below) include sage answers to many a pertinent query.
To spring into spring, she recommends pedicures for all.
