When I was a young faculty member in my first job, whenever our department would undertake a search, one of the priorities put forward by the more senior faculty members was to hire someone “who will stay.”
At the time, I found this idea intensely irritating. I thought that placing such weight on the potential for someone to stay in the job we were searching for was a recipe for mediocrity and emphasized qualities that did not contribute to building an excellent faculty.
I was reminded of these conversations the other day while reading the comments posted on my previous entry.
Physicsprof remarks, “I would rather prefer a strong but lukewarm colleague who will leave in a few years than a weaker enthusiastic one who will stay in one place for the entire career because no one wants him.” I was struck by this comment for a variety of reasons, not least of which is that I could—and would—have written it myself 10 or 15 years ago.
From my later experience, and from my switch to the so-called dark side, I now think that Physicsprof poses a false dichotomy. Of course, any reasonable institution would prefer an excellent hire to a mediocre one, even positing that the excellent hire will spend most or all of his or her time pursuing other opportunities. But in reality, what you really want is to hire people who are both excellent and who appear likely to stay and engage fully in the life of the institution.
That, actually, is at the heart of what I’ve been trying to get at in my last couple of entries about trying to find candidates who are truly interested in the position one is trying to fill. Because the market is grossly oversupplied with excellent candidates in almost every discipline, the trick becomes to find the excellent candidates who are truly interested in working at one’s particular kind of institution, rather than making the decision between apparent mediocrity and apparent lack of interest. The choice then often comes down to which of the several or many excellent candidates is likeliest to thrive in the circumstances of the specific institution.
Even so, it’s not clear how well one can predict that a candidate is going to have a long and strong career at any institution. Some apparently excellent candidates turn out, during their first few years on campus, not to be that good, and don’t get tenure. Others will, despite all contrary indicators, turn out to be relentless pursuers of other opportunities and may get one and leave. Some will, of course, turn out to be completely as advertised, and will become the next generation of outstanding teachers and colleagues.
Anyone who has spent much time with a seriously disgruntled colleague knows how destructive that disgruntlement can be to all sorts of aspects of one’s professional life. Faculty members who are genuinely not engaged with an institution, or who are actively hostile to it, damage much more than their own personal space. A small institution relies very heavily on the good will and communal spirit of its faculty members, and hiring without attention to those aspects of the job is a dereliction of responsibility to the university and, especially, its students.
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16 Responses to Hiring to Stay?
tuxthepenguin - March 23, 2010 at 11:19 am
I’m in complete agreement with this post. When we hire faculty, I try to identify the candidates who are enthusiastic and will be leaving in a few years because they get offers we can’t match.Faculty members who don’t want the job almost always find ways to be remarkably unproductive. Useless at service, useless in the classroom, and useless in research. Stars don’t get depressed because they dislike their placement. Stars are focused on doing their jobs because that’s what stars do.
cschroeder - March 23, 2010 at 4:25 pm
It is the institution’s responsibility to make the college/university environment warm enough, supportive enough, encouraging enough so that faculty do not want to leave. Even schools that are not “top tier” can retain outstanding faculty by showing the faculty how much they are valued. The problem often is not the candidate, but the institution. There is no way to read the candidate’s mind during a campus visit and determine if this person will stay. And even a candidate who takes the job with the intention to stay may change his or her mind if the insitution does not nurture its faculty and genuinely try to address faculty needs and concerns.Instead of worrying about who is a “keeper” candidate, we should be thinking of ways to be “keeper” institutions and departments.
david_r_evans - March 23, 2010 at 5:14 pm
#2, I mostly agree with you. A college or university that wants to be a “keeper” institution needs to do a number of things to arrive at that status:1. Work very hard to avoid gross salary inequities, compression and (especially) inverstion.2. Create and maintain a positive collegial atmosphere (this is one of the reasons you DO need to worry about “keeper” candidates).3. Recognize and reward accomplishments that fall within the very broadest array of institutional priorities (in other words, if the overall work of the institution is getting done effectively, let each individual contribute according to his or her best skills and interests, rather than forcing every faculty member into a single model of “success”).4. Generally treat people right.5. Insure as much equity as is humanly possible.6. Develop workplace operations that are transparent and rational. Don’t insist on “rules” just because they are “rules.”There are surely a few others.Nevertheless, you’re NEVER or virtually never going to: 1. move an institution from, say, Storm Lake, Iowa, to Portland;2. change the fundamental mission of the institution very quickly (say, from teaching-oriented to full-scale research);3. change, rapidly, the nature of the students and the overall mix of programs you offer;4. vastly improve the institution’s overall financial situation;5. thoroughly change many of the other “givens” of an insitution’s fundamental nature and function.So, while yes, each institution should try to be the best possible institution it can be relative to its mission and resources, sometimes those simply don’t match up with particular candidates. In that instance, you still want to hire the “keeper.”
coffee_plz - March 24, 2010 at 6:32 am
Thanks to the author for writing this and to the others for the comments. It’s nice to know how people actually feel about this issue.I find myself in the position of having landed a great job in a tough year. My colleagues and department are everything I could have asked for, but the area of the country and the financial situation of the institution are not. As I consider things like my aging parents, my own preferences for region, etc, I don’t see myself staying put for the rest of my career. Considering how much I love my job itself and my colleagues, I feel more than a little guilty knowing that I won’t be around forever.However, in line with David Evans’s last comment, the good qualities about my position make it so easy to become invested in the department, the institution, and the students. If those positive points weren’t there, I’d have started looking before I even unpacked my books, but I find that it’s not hard to imagine spending the next decade or so doing what I can to help my colleagues, students, and institution.
cirencester - March 24, 2010 at 8:17 am
Which Portland?
david_r_evans - March 24, 2010 at 11:39 am
Arkansas, of course.
wilkenslibrary - March 24, 2010 at 11:51 am
The easiest way to solve this problem is to hire from among your contingent faculty. You have had a chance to figure out who are the best teachers, who is the best fit for your department, and, the longer they have been working there, the better the chances that they are rooted in the community and will stay.
david_r_evans - March 24, 2010 at 12:38 pm
#7, the problem is (and I expect this is true of many small, rural, isolated institutions) that 1, we don’t use too many contingent faculty; and 2, that those we do use are generally not fully qualified for tenure-track positions (don’t hold doctorates or other terminal degrees).In a larger place, your point is very good.
physicsprof - March 25, 2010 at 1:09 pm
ABSCOR
physicsprof - March 25, 2010 at 1:11 pm
“But in reality, what you really want is to hire people who are both excellent and who appear likely to stay and engage fully in the life of the institution.”With due respect, but “what you really want” is rarely a reality. At best it is one’s perception of reality, but that is it. Excellence and engagement are two different qualities that do not always correlate. In majority of cases one has to compromise to a degree. All I am saying is that I would rather compromise engagement. In my institution there is no shortage of people who are well engaged into its life. Many more than those who excel in research and teaching. Being a good teacher is taxing and hard. Doing great research is even harder. Engaging in good citizenry is much easier. That is where so many burnouts and people who were never truly interested in their profession turn to to keep visibility of activity.I stay away from them. I like to be surrounded by people who are smarter than I am. It motivates me better and enriches my intellectual life more. We have hard time keeping stars (especially research ones), but I prefer to be surrounded by them anyway (albeit by a constellation of a constantly changing composition). Disclaimer: it does not come cheap. That is why administrators prefer “to hire someone “who will stay.”
physicsprof - March 25, 2010 at 1:26 pm
“I was struck by this comment for a variety of reasons, not least of which is that I could-and would-have written it myself 10 or 15 years ago”.What you should not overlook though, is that in 10-15 years people might become wiser, indeed. Or, they might simply start to crave stability. This is known in psychology. Unless one makes a very constant and conscious effortto resist it it one is likely to yield to the temptation.
david_r_evans - March 25, 2010 at 10:14 pm
Physics, with regard to comment #11, I’ve had four jobs in 20 years–the first was for 10 years, the second for five, the third for three, and now, I’m near the end of my second year at my fourth. This pattern doesn’t suggest a craving for stability–quite the opposite, in fact.Also, there’s a great difference between what one sees as a faculty member and what one sees as someone who is charged with the whole institutional picture. I’m not suggesting that faculty members are not capable of seeing the big institutional situation, but for the most part, why should they bother? If they have decent students, are paid adequately and on time, supported in their research and professional development, and have decent benefits, who cares about what’s happening across campus in the English department? Also, and also with respect (because I think this is a very worthwhile and important conversation), the dichotomy between “excellence” and “engagement” is very different at different types of schools. At a small, teaching-oriented institution, excellence most definitely entails engagement, which it may well not at the big R1 across the state. Conversely, honestly, an individual’s research productivity doesn’t make a great deal of difference, though on balance it’s better to have someone who’s continuously engaged with the profession than someone who’s not. Again, this is definitely not the same scenario at the local R1.And there are a lot of ways to be smart besides research productivity.
pamelatodoroff - March 26, 2010 at 5:54 pm
So much of this reflects the situation from the perspective of the department. What about giving some tips to those of us looking to prove that we have what it takes AND we want to “stay”?
ucprof - March 30, 2010 at 6:41 am
There is another factor important to retaining colleagues in addition to their interest in the job and their research performance – that of the employment possibilities of their spouse/partner. Increasingly I am seeing postdocs in my group compromise on tenure track jobs because they have a partner in tow who also has a professional career. I see this with both men and women postdocs – largely the ones who are US born rather than foreign born. Personally, I left a tenured job at an R1 after some years in part because my partner did not have a job in the area and was not looking for an academic position so there was little my university could do to help. If one ignores that part of my life one could still look at my situation as having “traded up” to a higher ranked department, however the fact remains that spousal employment was an additional and important factor.
trekkingteach - April 5, 2010 at 2:09 pm
I have been in teaching and in management in private and public institutions for 10 years. I have always given 200% and put in as many hours overtime as necessary to get the job done at a high quality level. I was a stayer. Unfortunately, I have found again and again that although I am highly praised, I am seldom rewarded – low salaries less than a trash collector or secretary who have no degree, poor resources, lack of understanding of teachers work and schedules, a lack of respect and care, expecting teachers (not asking) to spend weekends, holidays and evenings working for no pay. I’m tired of giving everything I’ve got and getting nothing in return. It is amazing how many dept. administrators are unprofessional in their own work and insensitive in their behavior towards teachers. I came to teaching from the corporate world and the difference is astounding. While education administrators expect the world, they do not hold themselves to the same standards. They expect good salaries and a good salary, benefits, and a reasonable workweek. They are paid for planning. Yet, I find they are ill prepared when teachers arrive on the job, demanding a lot, but having nothing prepared for the teachers and expect the teachers to jump through hoops on their own in every aspect to get materials, find buildings, find lodging, if from somewhere else, and they give little or no time to go over it. One reason teachers move to a new institution or location is looking for a nice place to work. I find in general many administrators are disrespectful and unhelpful (to put it simply – draconian in their management style) . Do you think it’s great having to start a new class often? No, it’s great when you can invest in a program and make it better year after year. When you are treated with respect and rewarded for your good work. What other jobs do you have to do prep for work projects and meetings after hours without pay? In the evenings and on holidays? And not pay you benefits? And online and adjunct jobs – $150–$300 a week. Is this a joke? Is this why I have over $40k in college loans? Is it really worth it to have mediocre people who create a mediocre environment rather than a stimulating environment? Administrators, it really is up to you.
trekkingteach - April 5, 2010 at 2:30 pm
Oh, and yes, we do notice your office door when it’s closed every Friday, most days M-F by 3:30 or 4:00, and the day [or 2] before every holiday vacation. Yes, you may work Saturdays occasionally…I’ll pass on your offer to come in on Saturdays to work if I want, but thanks anyway. I’ll probably be working my usual Sunday.