One of our new hires e-mailed me the other day to ask if we could issue her university laptop a little early, since her own computer is moribund and as a graduate student she’d prefer not to go (further) into debt to buy a new one when her faculty computer is already on the way.

I was happy to work with her and our IT staff to get her a new laptop before she arrives on the campus. With that gesture, I figured, everyone wins: Our new faculty member can finish her dissertation on a computer that actually works, and the university makes a new colleague welcome at virtually no extra cost (aside from postage) and very little risk.

I am interested in knowing what other administrators have done to help new faculty members feel welcome. Alternately, what did your institution do when you were hired that made you feel good about your future there? Life is pretty rough in academe at the moment...

One of the things that stood out in our faculty searches this year is that the candidates who were most attractive to us were the ones who demonstrated some degree of versatility.

My institution is small, with about 80 faculty members and around 1,000 students. We are most definitely a teaching institution, though we have many fine scholars and researchers. But with such a small faculty, virtually everyone has significant roles beyond the most obvious ones of teaching and research in their fields. To thrive as an institution, we need people who can engage creatively with our local community and schools, guide student research projects and presentations, and serve on university committees, among many other contributions.

Without exception, the candidates who have risen to the top in our searches have given some indication that they will bring talents and interests beyond their...

An old friend recently shared with me the lamentable proceedings of the tenure committee at his institution. He noted that the No. 1 issue, in most cases, was collegiality, even though the tenure process only lists teaching, service, and research as criteria for consideration.

“I’m starting to wonder,” he said, “if we should start integrating our faculty application process with eHarmony, so that we can just use personality profiles when tenure and promotion roll around.”

Should collegiality be the fourth criterion in our personnel decisions?

“Dean Sue” received an application for a last-minute faculty position in a difficult-to-fill professional field. In the cover letter, the applicant spoke of his experiences at his Ivy League alma mater and how he would build on them. His record looked strong, but as Dean Sue reviewed the application, she realized that he had not finished his degree at Ivy League U. Instead, he had completed it at a diploma mill with a similar name. He had taken courses at the Ivy League university but, for whatever reason, had opted to buy his degree from a “lick-‘em-and-stick-‘em” mail-slot institution.

Is that kind of experience more common in professional fields in academe than in the arts and sciences? And how frequently have you run into such deception in your hiring?

During a job interview, the way administrators respond to questions about university finances reveals a lot about how they, and the institution, operate in times of stress.

In my last post, I listed possible questions candidates might ask a dean or a vice president during a campus interview. So how should administrators respond? Clearly, being secretive, defensive, belligerent, or ignorant is not the way to go.

Depending on institutional structure, some deans may not actually be in the loop on budgetary matters. But vice presidents should know what’s going on at their institutions, even if the overall budget is not a specific part of their portfolio (as it’s generally not in academic affairs). A vice president for academic affairs who doesn’t know about the budget is either dangerously ignorant or is being left out of the loop in a way that implies that the university’s management...

I once asked a friend how his job search was going.

“Slow,” he said, before grinning, “but my garage has never been cleaner.”

What he meant was that he had taken advantage of the downtime to pursue what might be called an “honorable distraction” — an activity that, under normal circumstances, would be a great use of time but is not really a priority. Academics excel at finding such activities during the dissertation process, the job search, or the initial stages of scholarship.

What are your favorite honorable distractions? How do you get back on task?

In my last post, I talked about the long discussions I’ve been having with job candidates about my institution’s finances. As I considered the issue further, it occurred to me that candidates might find it useful to have a list of specific questions they could ask about a particular college or university’s financial position in the current crisis.

A disclaimer: Some administrators will be annoyed, threatened, or even angered by such questions, because money is a sore spot almost everywhere in higher education right now.

But as a candidate, you are entrusting your future to an institution. You should know on some basic level how well situated that institution is to support you and your work for the next several years. So ask questions but proceed with great care. Besides getting some much-needed information, you can gauge a lot about an institution’s culture by the way a dean or...

I ran across this little gem the other day: a list of 10 questions job candidates should never ask in a corporate interview. It made me think of a few of the more painful questions I’ve heard over the years.

From a new Ph.D. with no teaching experience: “Why can’t I start at associate professor rank? That would pay more money.”

From an incredibly energetic young candidate: “How long do we have to wait before I can be promoted to department chair? I want to be a president before I’m 40.”

So, what would you include in higher ed’s version of top questions applicants should never ask in a job interview?

One element of my interactions with job candidates this year is almost entirely new: I find myself in long discussions with them of my university’s financial position, including issues of enrollment, endowment earnings, and other matters that should concern anyone job hunting in academe these days.

I try to provide them with a clear picture of the situation for the next few years, and to locate our circumstances in the larger picture of higher-education finances. This new practice seems fair to me, and although some candidates are savvy and/or brave enough to bring up the subject themselves, not all of them are, and I believe that kind of information should be part of their decision-making process.

I have two questions for interviewers: Have you informed candidates about your institution’s finances? And have you had any odd or difficult issues arise during those conversations?

I arrived at the annual conference of the Association of American Colleges and Universities this week and the first session I attended was a workshop on “Changing Faculty Workload Without Additional Resources.” I had immediately registered for the workshop when the preliminary program arrived, as workload has been a great concern of mine throughout my career as a professor and as an administrator.

The most interesting and encouraging part of the session was that it was predicated on the idea that it is essential to recognize the full scope of faculty work, and account for that work in a comprehensive and fair fashion. The outcome that all the presenters were seeking was to enable their colleagues to provide students with a more engaging educational experience in, but especially beyond, the classroom.

This session is relevant to academic hiring because it suggests that, at least at...