"To hell with the catalog course description! Fasten your seatbelts! It's Zizek all the way, you little shmendriks!"
Maybe it’s time to just fess up and admit that your last job search didn’t work out too good.
It has come to your attention that your recently hired tenure-track faculty member has been sitting in his office, door wide open, playing jacks for the past three hours.
Or, maybe he has just informed the chair that he doesn’t “do” Gateway courses. Or, perhaps a scene out of Nabokov’s Pnin has been reenacted; the new hire doesn’t actually speak the language he was hired to teach.
The committee may indeed have been “unified in its recommendation,” but from where you’re standing now it was also unified in error.
I have come to the conclusion that this is more or less the norm in academe. For every 10 hires, I would estimate, 2.2 are ultimately “keepers”; three are “indiscretions”; as regards the other 4.5, well, the less said the better. (As for the remaining three-tenths, they failed to apprise you of their actual visa status and never made it back to the States).
In my old age I have developed my own set of metrics for successful job searches. If the process doesn’t end in litigation—then the committee ought be commended for a job well done!
Failed searches are a toxic mixture of an uneven “talent” pool, bewildering academic mores, and our—I mean the professoriate’s—unique culture of dysfunction.
What follows are the major reasons why so many attempts to fill positions go frighteningly awry. Service-oriented solutions follow.
Because half the committee didn’t read the damn CV’s: I am as guilty of this sin as the next person. In my defense I did once sit on a committee that received 835 applications (might we have conceived of the position a bit too broadly?).
Even when one receives the standard 75 submissions it is hard to imagine how, busy as we are, faculty members could spend more than 10 minutes on each candidate. There are too many applicants, too many other committees.
Solution: Although it may end up looking like a scene out of The Office, try having a few “CV Parties” in which all committee members peruse the applications together over coffee and high-transfat crullers.
Deputize the newest, most junior, or least powerful member of the search committee to informally lead the discussion. This inversion of power dynamics is a necessary precaution. . . .
Because your department is completely dysfunctional: Here lies the root of many a catastrophe. The inter-personal relations that develop in academic units are: 1) worthy of fictional portrayal, and somehow at the same time, 2) not fictionally compelling.
Ever have a job search come apart at the seams because one faculty member is still seething over being assigned the “Methods” course in the Friday 3:45 pm slot? I have.
I have also seen senior faculty coerce junior faculty into settling on Melinda when it is clear that Lizette was the better option.(Lizette, by the way, gets the last laugh. She’s now an investment banker at Goldman Sachs.)
Solution: Effective deans notice things—like when the musicology department’s last six hires were scholars who approached their subject matter “primarily, but not exclusively, from a Deleuzian Maoist perspective”—and respond appropriately.
Anecdote: The single most talented scholar I ever hired originally graded out as ninth on my list of 25 candidates. It was only when two colleagues placed me in a headlock and rammed me into a filing cabinet that I was able to realize my error. That clarified things. Ability to admit error—the most important attribute of a highly effective committee member.
“Because only my graduate school produces doctorates who are worthy of working in our department“: Do I even need to elaborate?
Because someone on the committee once did summer stock theater (Guys and Dolls) with the eventual first choice: Previously existing, albeit unreported, relations with colleagues are a leading cause of searches gone hopelessly askew.
Years back, we were all sitting around celebrating a “home run” selection—as you may imagine our views on that changed in due course—when an ebullient colleague blurted out: “Thank God we got Corey. I could have never voted for Richard, he looked too much like my ex-husband.”
Solution: At the aforementioned CV party the chair should request conscientious full disclosure of all preexisting relations with applicants. The presence of university counsel and uniformed campus police at the party might be helpful.
Because you overlooked the adjunct in your (campus) gate: Every university has a bevy of part-timers on staff who have produced more quality research and taught more skillfully than assorted tenured colleagues.
Every full-timer has a friend like this (trust me though, they hate you). The ubiquity of these high-performing adjuncts belies the idea that American universities are meritocratic institutions.
Solution: Realize that fresh faces aren’t always the answer. An individual who has contributed, let’s say, a decade of good service to a university at absurdly low wages might be considered more like a “front runner” than a recipient of a “courtesy interview.”
Because the letters of recommendation are not always elucidating: My favorite case being the scholar who pointed out that not only did his doctoral student write about Salman Rushdie, but was, word for word, a better writer than Salman Rushdie.
Aside from pointlessly effusive letters there is the dreaded “hidden message” scenario. Every committee has a self-appointed encryption specialist who insists the phrase “hard worker” or “determined thinker” unequivocally indicates that the person in question is some sort of moron.
Solution: Assign greater value to truly thoughtful letters of reference. Look for referees who seem to have spent time on their recommendations. If a writer identifies a lot of The Good, and some of The Bad then that letter needs to be held in higher esteem than the one whose author’s motto is “if she choose to study with me, she must be brilliant.”
Additional insight: All professors who let grad students write their own letters of rec. and then sign them should never be permitted to recommend another candidate ever again. Ever.
Because selecting junior faculty is a total crap shoot anyway: I ask you to consider the National Football League’s annual draft. It occurs every spring and requires that 32 professional football teams assess more than a thousand college athletes.
The process includes scouting departments whose sole purpose is to travel to gridirons in godforsaken parts of America.There, they interview harried college coaches, assistants and academic administrators. After that, they sit in damp basements viewing endless loops of tape for days on end.
The prospects are graded according to rigorous criteria and then reassessed, in person, at a Combine. At this event, even more people, including hundreds of sports journalists, join the scouts to assess talent.
Security and background checks are performed. Intelligence and even psychological evaluations are administered. The process spans roughly nine months and costs each team millions of dollars.
And even with all of that effort, football drafts produce “busts” regularly.
Let’s compare that with our process, shall we? Applicants, we established above, are initially assessed–with or without cruller accompaniment–for about 10 minutes. Within the span of a few hours of deliberation 98 percent of them are eliminated from contention.
The three left standing are invited to campus for an afternoon of interviews, a job talk, a meal, and maybe a visit to the Campus Compost Initiative. Total cost to your institution: about $5,000.
Solution: There is no real solution. Senior searches provide us, at least, with the ability to inspect scholarly track records stretching back a decade or more. Searches for young scholars are a stab in the dark.
Years back our very own Chronicle of Higher Education ran a “Where are they now?” piece. The young rising stars of a decade prior were revisited at the fabulous universities that hired them. Needless to say, few were still considered stars. Others were difficult to track down. As for the universities, they remain as fabulous as ever.
(Photo by Flickr user Jo Jakeman)
"To hell with the catalog course description! Fasten your seatbelts! It's Zizek all the way, you little shmendriks!"
35 Responses to Why Your Last Hire Was a Freakin’ Disaster
more_cowbell - January 12, 2011 at 10:34 am
Having been privy to some very questionable hiring decisions, I’ve determined that depts almost never hire professionals. By that I mean people who are the best suited for the real nature of faculty work. Instead, hiring committees tend to opt for “up and comers” who almost always are too young, too intellectually- and socially-underdeveloped, and too politically-oriented to adequately perform the duties of the position. They only offer research experience and publications, and nothing else. Very few know how to teach, let along administer anything or undertake even the most basic professional task.
Sadly, these people eventually sit on hiring comittees themselves thus the cycle repeats.
rosmerta - January 12, 2011 at 4:34 pm
You missed:
Because some candidates are expert interviewees, oozing goodwill and professionalism for that one day on campus, only to unmask themselves later as vicious whiners and layabouts.
ratthing - January 12, 2011 at 4:39 pm
This was a great article.
I think the primary reason most hires are “disasters” is due to the dysfunctional nature of most (if not all) academic departments. Academia is home to people suffering from most all of the major personality disorders, and nowadays it seems you need to manifest at least one personality disorder in order to get hired.
Yes, you can sign me “disgruntled adjunct who would like to get hired to a tenure-track job, and who is a really great teacher”.
tejackso - January 12, 2011 at 5:50 pm
“The inter-personal relations that develop in academic units are: 1) worthy of fictional portrayal, and somehow at the same time, 2) not fictionally compelling.”
IMHO: a too solid judgment of the way we are.
tony jackson
22108469 - January 12, 2011 at 5:50 pm
Oh, ratthing, why do you so want to spend the rest of your life with a small group of people who manifest all of the major personality disorders? The only reason should be that you love your academic discipline more than anything else in this world or any other.
jbfjbf - January 12, 2011 at 10:44 pm
Go back and read McClelland. “We are caught in a web of our own weaving.” The person you interviewed may have been great, but by the time he/she has spent one semester with a department full of people with every imaginable personality disorder, the new hire retreats into a shell, gets out of their as quickly as possible or becomes just like the peers.
wagamama - January 13, 2011 at 7:22 am
Spot on. I don’t approve in principle of the tactic of contacting people in a candidate’s department who weren’t given as references or didn’t write recommendations, but can see why it’ done.
During the past decade I chaired several searches in our department. I vividly remember one meeting where all the committee members were supposed to have gone through all candidate dossiers. Two of my colleagues were openly glancing through folders, obviously for the first time, while the winnowing-down discussion was going on. At my institution students are asked to join search committees; I wonder what the students on that committee must have been thinking.
crankycat - January 13, 2011 at 7:34 am
“Zizek all the way” … sounds like an off-off-Broadway production. Funny piece – or would be if I wasn’t about to sit down and start reviewing applications… At ten minutes per file (which I know costs each candidate hours to put together), it takes a full workday to read 50 files. If you only get 50 applications. And it’s not like faculty on hiring committees don’t still have their day jobs. This is sort of like the physicists’ view of bumblebee flight – the only reason it works is that no one can tell the bee it’s impossible.
danny11 - January 13, 2011 at 9:37 am
“For every 10 hires, I would estimate, 2.2 are ultimately “keepers”…”
This is a natural consequence of the simple fact that out of every 10 people with Ph.D.’s, 7.8 of them are generally too incompetent to do anything else with their lives but to learn an awful lot about some narrow topic that virtually no one else cares much about. Only 2.2 out of the 10 are either true intellectuals or have a reasonably well-rounded portfolio of competencies.
cleverclogs - January 13, 2011 at 9:41 am
I thought this article was hilarious – thanks for a good laugh! In all seriousness, though, I would add:
Because faculty have no HR background.
I know PhD’s like to think they’re pros at all things intellectual, and maybe there’s even a sense that HR is too “corporate” and departmental hiring is more “organic,” but there is actually a real skill to reading applicant material and behavior and to interviewing applicants.
I used to work in HR and as a grad student, I watched many, many job talks. It was perfectly obvious from the job talk alone who was going to work out and who was going to be a disaster. I’ve been right every time and simultaneously bewildered when I saw my department offer jobs to these obvious disasters. I keep wondering if we were all watching the same person.
Some HR training would help faculty assess those 75-835 applications much more quickly (so they might actually do it) and would help faculty see what is really happening in a job talk.
pokerphd - January 13, 2011 at 9:44 am
I thought by now that nearly every search had gone “off book” when it comes to reference checks. The final phase of my last three positions (faculty/dean/provost)–spread across 15 years–all came with a “we will be contacting individuals outside the list you provided us” proviso. Combine that with the ambitious “googling” which at least one committee member seems all too willing to undertake, and you might get your batting average up to .300.
P.S. We dodged a real bullet recently when a student committee member compiled a series of a social media screen screen shots and video clips that we would not otherwise have considered in our deliberations about a front runner.
quidditas - January 13, 2011 at 9:51 am
“I’ve been right every time and simultaneously bewildered when I saw my department offer jobs to these obvious disasters.”
Or hire someone THEY knew was an obvious disaster, as teacher and a professional colleague, but they did it for political purposes?
kudera - January 13, 2011 at 10:01 am
Perhaps a bit exaggerated but fun article! I appreciate the generosity shown toward the in-house researchers and writers (aka lecturers and adjuncts) although I still think the best strategy for the peripheral set is to play the “fresh blood” part and move to Beijing or Dubai. Ford is also hiring according to the NYTimes, and the reduced $14 per hour under renegotiated union rules could still seem attractive to the most exasperated among us.
Fight for Your Long Day!
Alex Kudera
cleverclogs - January 13, 2011 at 10:21 am
“Or hire someone THEY knew was an obvious disaster, as teacher and a professional colleague, but they did it for political purposes?”
Really? But why? They’re going to be stuck with this person forever, or until the hire leaves. Given the number of people looking for work right now, why would a dept settle for the wrong person?
In some cases, I know the committee just misjudged – a few people have admitted it to me. And I said, “But didn’t you see when they…” did something egregious. And my fac have said, “Oh yeah, I noticed that, but I didn’t think it was a big deal.”
tgroleau - January 13, 2011 at 10:37 am
This article is only funny because so much of it is true.
My dissertation advisor made me write my own letter of recommendation. In his defense, he gave me a verbal outline of what it should include and sat down with me to go over my draft before it became “his” official letter. But I still wrote it. Each time I applied for a position, I’d print it out on department letterhead and bring it to him for a signature.
Other than names and addresses, I never changed the letter but I’m pretty sure he never read it when he signed it and I probably could have changed it to say almost anything.
He passed away not long after I finished my studies and over the years I lost all copies of the letter. I wish I still had it because I’d love to know now what I said about myself then.
walkerst - January 13, 2011 at 10:46 am
Well, cleverclogs, sometimes search committees are literally forced to hire a political appointee… It hasn’t happened to me personally, and I’ve done a lot of hiring, but friends and colleagues at other institutions have reported literally being pushed (by, variously, a mayor’s office, a board, or senior administration) to hire a person the search committee didn’t want, and often feeling they had no choice. Yes, they were generally disasters. I thank my lucky stars I’m at a place that runs it’s searches honestly and ethically. They don’t always work out, but at least it’s not a political matter from above.
nie_wieder - January 13, 2011 at 11:44 am
Another factor: departments and programs that do not find a suitable candidate often run the risk of losing the position in question; it is not always certain that a “failed search” can be rerun. In my experience, such hires have inevitably been harmful in the long run.
shushufindi - January 13, 2011 at 11:51 am
As a beginning assistant professor I was idealistic and believed hiring should be based on merit. I soon learned that faculty bring their own agendas and biases to any job search. I was dismayed when I saw some less-productive colleagues finding supposed “problems” in the application files of outstanding candidates. I suspected these candidates were being viewed as possible competitors for future merit raises in the department. I also saw some colleagues unashamedly promoting candidates who had been their friends in graduate school. Such personal biases muddled the hiring process and made it much more of a crap shoot than it should be.
missoularedhead - January 13, 2011 at 12:18 pm
I sat on a job search committee as a graduate student once. It was, shall we say, an enlightening experience. One candidate who looked terrific on paper was a complete nutjob in person, and we did end up with a great hire. Unfortunately, that person left to ‘go home’. So even when it does work out, it doesn’t.
ddwalker - January 13, 2011 at 12:58 pm
When I was a new PhD applying for jobs, I wondered, “Who on earth wants to read all this?” As a professional who has performed job searches I can answer that: “Not me!” Amazingly, having only a one-page cover letter and two-page resume to base decisions on, I do remarkably better than the opinons expressed here. It may go against the academic grain, but sometimes less information is more helpful. Advice: advertise only for the CV, winnow that down to your favorite dozen (or some manageable number), then request supplementary materials.
drkull - January 13, 2011 at 1:30 pm
PokerPhd said;
“P.S. We dodged a real bullet recently when a student committee member compiled a series of a social media screen screen shots and video clips that we would not otherwise have considered in our deliberations about a front runner.”
Wow – what a violation. Could you please reveal your name and institution so that those of us who believe people should have a personal life may avoid working with you? Thanks.
drkull - January 13, 2011 at 3:33 pm
ddwalker said:
“Amazingly, having only a one-page cover letter and two-page resume to base decisions on, I do remarkably better than the opinons expressed here.” Having been on both sides in both worlds, I concur. Why do we still use CVs in academe? “Because we always have” is not a thoughtful answer. The web and social media has exacerbated the fear of departing from the norm and yet provide media to communicate more effectively through trusted networks. I read a sense that such an approach isn’t “fair.” Yet is it fair to give the person who put enough effort to hit “send” the same consideration as the person who is out there practicing what they preach; is this someone actively creating change in the world or simply marking boxes? Ask yourself if you want someone who fits the mold (sic) or an innovator who could make a difference. If they failed at their last institution, what were their lessons learned? Much better to work with people who have tried and failed than those who never go off-script. IMHO, an uninterrupted string of successes is suspect. If they haven’t failed recently they’re either disingenuous or not trying hard enough.
Finally, in the management literature it’s fairly established that individual behavior has much more to do with system and context than some hamartic flaw. And where lies the flaw? Reminds me of the joke about the woman who has been married six times… “Was there anything your failed marriages had in common?” asks her therapist. She: “You mean, besides me?”
22113683 - January 13, 2011 at 5:52 pm
lWonderful essay! It would be terribly funny if weren’t all true. I’ve been in this game for 40 years, and I believe I’ve seen it all. In my department, we’ve hired two mental cases amd an egomaniac who would do only the things that would build his career; they have left chaos in their wake. We were never pressured to hire someone (though I _was_ pressured not to hire one candidate), but we were definitely pressured to recommend one of the disasters for tenure. (She was given tenure over our objection; promptly took a position elsewhere; and was booted out in her second year there.)
drkrull: 1) A violation?? You’d rather wait until they’re on your faculty and then have the news media or the FBI find the seamy past? Checking the social media is pretty common in business these days, and it needs to become common in academia. If a person bares their soul (or their body) on the Web, they have made that a legitimate part of their public record.
2) drkrull is right about applicants who show only an unbroken string of successes. Some years ago my institution had a search for a new Provost, and the committee was chaired by an economist. This chair insisted that the committee rule out any candidate about whom a reference said something negative; ONLY a completely positive past was even conceivable. Well, they got one, and we found out soon enough the negatives—controlling, manipulative, micro-managing, arrogant, humorless; need I say more? Moral: when a department or school is trying to get rid of somebody, say only good things about him/her so some other school will appoint them.
quidditas - January 13, 2011 at 7:56 pm
“Really? But why? They’re going to be stuck with this person forever, or until the hire leaves. Given the number of people looking for work right now, why would a dept settle for the wrong person?”
Why? Because they liked (at the time, and maybe still do) the message this person was pushing on the public, and wanted to assist them with having a plafrom from which to do it.
quidditas - January 13, 2011 at 8:04 pm
Sorry: “a better PLATFORM from which to do it.”
mrmars - January 14, 2011 at 12:33 am
My top three reasons for searches being as problematic as they are: 1) our inability to craft reasonable job descriptions that (in retrospect) don’t look like they were pasted together lists of disparate skills and expertise combinations worthy of the keystone cops; 2) search committee members who seem to have been selected primarily for their inability to evaluate ( pick any combination) resumes, teaching demonstrations and/or research seminars and come away with the same impression as each other; AND 3) the never-admitted yet ever-present subconscious bias against ranking any candidate highly that, if hired, might make the aura of the current faculty pale in comparison (meritocracy indeed).
A final point to consider: most of us were hired via the same sort of process :-)
11291652 - January 14, 2011 at 11:45 am
Poor choices for faculty may not be the worst problem . . . the real disasters are hires in the administrative ranks where really bad hires can cut a wide swath of destruction involving the professional lives of dozens or hundreds of people. Upper administration often closes ranks and people are rarely fired for anything short of criminality.
jamesebryan - January 14, 2011 at 12:02 pm
While I concur with much put forth so far, here’s a challenge that I don’t think has been mentioned yet: even in the current economy not every search is flooded with applicants, and when the committee HAS to find SOMEONE because the work of that position MUST be done they find themselves nominating the person who might be described as the least disappointing of all those available. Not every school is located in a vibrant, stimulating, or scenic locale where lots of brilliant people would want to live, and not every discipline is one in which the best living brilliant people could hope to make is in academe instead of the private sector. Small rural institutions off the beaten path with programs in which professionals command high salaries in industry can have a very hard time finding the right applicants.
raymond_j_ritchie - January 15, 2011 at 9:05 pm
This article should be required reading for all graduate students, particularly those in the sciences because they have a professional habit of laterally applying rational reasoning to matters where it is not appropriate. They foolishly think that academia is a meritocracy in which hard work and ability will be naturally rewarded. That is only partially true, it also has elements of a weighted lottery, some with more tickets than others. Good people fall through the cracks.
As for appointments committees: remember the definition of a committee as a creature with six or more pairs of legs and no brain. The commonsense of committee members often cancel out such that a committee will make a decision that none of them would do individually.
oldcommprof - January 16, 2011 at 4:22 pm
drkrull: Stupid behavior that we uncover on-line is a big red flag telling us that the applicant is too stupid to keep their personal life private.
henr1055 - January 17, 2011 at 6:08 pm
This is how it should work. Select 3 candidates and either rank them or do not rank them and give them to the dean who will be their supervisor. The dean and the Provost can decide.
First year review – bad actors can be let go for any reason
Third year review – bad actors get a terminal contract meaning we tolerate them for 4 years. This is long enough for people to be remotivated for another search.
Tenure process – bad actors (if they slipped through the 3rd year review) get a luke warm or negative letter from the dean that should have been backed up by poor evaluations for the last 5 years. R and T committee looks at student and peer evaluations, Scholarship and service to the university and professional community. They also look at fit by evaluating solicited and unsolicited letters. But it should never go this far with a bad actor. They should get terminated after the first year or at best a terminal contract after the third year.
rgren - January 18, 2011 at 2:19 pm
The best dean that I ever worked for had two questions for search committees and department chairs. For all hires, he’s asked,”Does this person average up the quality of the department?” For the highly specialized person that arose from the process, “Do you really want to waste a whole position on that?”
Quality of new hires rose remarkably under his leadership.
bioclocks - January 18, 2011 at 3:51 pm
I thought I was the only one who had to write my own letter of recommendation. I actually viewed it as a test, and I was restrained in what I said. I am sure my advisor read it before he signed.
donstefano - January 24, 2011 at 6:00 am
Where do things go wrong?
1/ a hiring committee that doesn’t know how the market works. Include someone who has been on the market recently to help you draft the marketing plan for the job advert. Do not rely on HR, because they know the academia-wide channels, not the discipine specific ones
2/ departments that don’t dare to take risks. Every now and then you should dare to hire someone with a less than brilliant CV because of the potential. SOme people with great CVs turn out to become bad colleagues. Daring also means: acting fast. Once you’ve interviewed everyone, you really don’t need more than a couple of hours to decide. Also, get rid of the long application packages and 2 day campus visits. With a CV, two references by telephone, a short presentation, and a 1h interview, you have enough information to decide. The rest of the 2 day campus visit is just a waste of time
3/ you should always hire well-rounded individuals: a superstar in reasearch or teaching or admin is OK, but only when the person performs adequately on all 3.
oldassocprof - January 27, 2011 at 6:03 pm
This blogger is an idiot. We have about a 900 batting average. I do agree that it’s better to hire mid-career asst profs (if there is such a thing,) largely because the younger you are, the stupider you are. Look for good teaching evals, and good publications. Actually look at them. Make the candidate teach a class. Letters of recommendation are largely meaningless.