Calendar Complications

Now that we are in the height of the search season, I am finding it nearly impossible to coordinate campus visits. Deans often feel like air-traffic controllers at major airports, with multiple searches stacked up in the air, each one trying to land on the same runway.

It’s hard enough to sync up administrative calendars with multiple searches, but add in spring break and spring conferences and the process is just brutal. The most frustrating part is when we call candidates with a narrow slate of dates and find that they already have other interviews, conferences, and dissertation defenses scheduled on the few dates that we have open to bring them in.

Do any of you have practical suggestions for how to avoid the chaos of finalizing interview dates?