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In Favor of Candor

November 23, 2011, 11:29 am

By Gene C. Fant Jr.

The Chronicle’s recent story on the University of Texas System planning to shutter a number of programs should remind us afresh about just how much turmoil is swirling in academe. Institutions are cutting back on positions and faculty support, systems are eliminating programs, and I have a hunch that even tenure decisions are being impacted by budgets in various ways. All of these issues create scenarios where people who had not planned to be on the market are finding themselves scrambling for new positions in an already difficult environment for job searches.

Speaking as someone who has hired faculty members who were in these very circumstances, I thought I would encourage applicants to be frank in the discussion of circumstances. Here’s why: when an excellent CV or résumé arrives from another institution where a promising person is suddenly on the market, it often raises the “what’s the deal?” flag. Is there a personal problem? Is there a disciplinary problem? Why is this person on the market? Those kinds of questions can sour a committee’s deliberations, fairly or not, at the very earliest stages. When the question is defused by a statement about why a search is being undertaken, it can actually weigh in an applicant’s favor. Why not pick up a new colleague who is grateful to be in a new place of solace?

Mind you, it’s important to be frank without being snarky or overly negative. The impulse certainly will be strong to speak against the place that has created the need to look for another job, but it’s enough to be honest without grumbling.

What advice might you offer to persons who find themselves back on the market unexpectedly?

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  • chuckkle

    “He was also a freemason, farmer and student of business management.”  are you speaking of Peter Wood?  How would we know these things about him?  HE doesn’t seem to have mentioned them in his CHE essays.

  • nyhist

    Your advice is right on. My dept once interviewed a guy who seemed to be a promising candidate for a position. He was leaving an appt at an institution comparable to ours. We asked why he wanted to move. I forget what story he told us, but it sounded a bit fishy to some. A colleague who knew someone in that other dept (there’s always someone with such a contact) called his friend & inquired. Turned out our candidate had clashed with an influential senior colleague and earned his undying enmity, such that it was clear that when he came up for tenure in a year or two, he wouldn’t get it. Had he told us this story honestly, it wouldn’t have been a problem. But since he lied, we wouldn’t touch him with a ten-foot pole.

  • darccity

    How do you know that “contact…who knew someone in that other dept” was telling it straight or correctly? Talk about unreliable information! Why can’t his “story” also be true as well? When someone is only a year or two away from a tenure decision, you naturally assume they are not expecting a positive vote (or at least hedging their bet). I’ve interview several candidates over the years in this position (and been there once myself) and I would consider it unseemly to recount the dept politics in a job interview.

  • Guest

    This is why I think higher education has to be investigated the way one investigates monopolies and racketeering in other industries. Nyhist, you engaged in blacklisting. There are reasons that we are supposed to follow careful protocols and can’t just call up someone we know to get the dirt on someone else. It’s a serious breach of ethics, but in the academy, people don’t think of themselves as insider traders or blackballing cabalists, so they don’t see what’s wrong in what they do.

  • graddirector

    Maybe….  We have hired several faculty who were that couple of years prior to tenure over the years.  We have had a few be very successful at my institution which was expected since we were able to get good reasons both from the candidate and the candidates prior department about why they are moving.

    However, in one case the candidate had “glowing” letters (for a senior, tenured position) but the search committee did not call around to see what the deal was “behind the scenes”.  It turned out this person was more of a sociopath than not.  We knew we were in trouble shortly after he was hired when a number of us received calls from friends at the prior institution giving us condolences on the hire.  Unfortunately, we had to put up with this person for a number of years (this is the only person I have ever filed a formal complaint about in my career due to his bad behavior (no it was not sexist or racist, just horrible nonetheless) until  they  left for another position (hurray).   In that case, a few phone calls would have saved this person’s new institution a great deal of grief (even though we would  have been stuck with him for longer).  I agree that one should be careful about “grapevine” information, but it can sure save alot of grief too.  Particularly since sociopaths are charming when on their best behavior as in a job interview, they just can not keep it up long term.

  • johnbarnes

    Meh.  I’m back on the job market this year, after leaving ten years ago.  Back then I was making more from writing part time than from teaching full time and needed to pay off an expensive divorce.  Now I have a stepfamily and need a steady income, ideally with a better benefits package than my spouse gets at her job, and the writing income took a long slide in the interim.  I put those facts, about that briefly and shorn into language that doesn’t cross the Human Resources TMI boundary, in the cover letter, and then put some effort and space into explaining that I liked faculty work back when I used to do it, I strongly think I’d still enjoy it, I’d still be good at it, beneficial to the students; I generally add something about which parts of my research I might want to resume and why the prospect of doing that pleases me.

    Since all that happens to be true I don’t expect to have any trouble keeping the story straight, and since I’ve remained friends with a few colleagues who are among my references, I would hope it’s easy for any committee to confirm. 

    Not a very lively backstory, but when I sat on hiring committees, I always figured the teaching/writing/artistic side should be lively, the hobbies and side interests intriguing, and the backstory all the flavor of mashed potatoes and all the color of dishwater.  Since I’d hire me, I’m trying to make sure they know who I am, and letting it go at that.

  • nybound

    The ‘grapevine’ issue is complicated. In a way, it’s not too dissimilar from checking references, and it seems like a reasonable form of ‘due diligence’. On the other hand, such information has to be taken with a grain of salt. I have known people who would make up stories like ‘I heard something bad about the candidate from a friend at his/her current school’ in order to maniuplate the hiring process.

    Furthermore, what is the motivation of the ‘informant’. If I were a self-serving sociopath, I would say bad things about the good people so we don’t lose them and good things about the bad people so we can get rid of them!

  • pangoban

    As someone who has probably chaired hundreds (it feels like thousands) of search committees, I would recommend a blend of openness and tact.  If the reason someone is back on the market is non-academic, don’t bleed all the facts on the carpet.  Whether it is to be closer to an aging parent or because of fallout from a brutal divorce, I’d recommend saying you are on the market for personal reasons and leave it at that.   If it is because the candidate is currently in a toxic or abusive university, I would recommend saying something extremely bland, like it not being a good fit.  Whatever you do, do not criticize your current boss or the university’s senior management.  The people listening will not be able to tell if they are truly cretins or whether the candidate is someone who will be permanently at war with whoever manages them, however fair and reasonable.  If you are looking to leave an institution that is truly disfunctional, everyone in the room will know its reputation and will respect you for your reticence.  For every sentence about your current workplace, try to make ten statements that show enthusiasm for the new opportunity you are exploring with the search committee.

  • graddirector

    Well, in response to nybound…

    I agree that just calling up some random informant is an issue…  But academics is a small world.  Most large/medium sized departments will have at least one faculty member who knows someone on the faculty at a large percentage of institutions .  In the best scenario, the information would be coming from a true contact whose own reputation would be known.  In our sociopath scenario, our faculty knew several people at the “donating” institution.  It was just that no one asked about what this person was really like in time……..

  • sullivab

    Not to make too big of a deal, but other “brainy” schools have won Division III in recent years: Amherst in 2007, and Wash U in 2008 & 2009.  Perhaps these institutions are not as high on the Nerd scale as MIT, but they are pretty rigorous schools.

  • 1021ajr

    Good luck, Engineers!

  • ksledge

    real student athletes!

  • nybound

    The NCAA prefers to primarily punish students by reducing the amount of scholarships available.

  • cwinton

    Hmm … we seem to have a short memory here.  I seem to recall that the NCAA mandated that UNLV suspend its basketball coach (Tarkanian) for two years, but the courts then intervened in the coach’s favor, ruling that the NCAA had not provided sufficient due process.  Due process for the NCAA is evidently a bit more convoluted than for the NFL, so I don’t think the kind of penalties the NFL is able to impose can so readily be translated to actions the NCAA can take.

  • ald8m

    The rich get richer.  

  • davi2665

    The best way to counter that is for the proceeds to be divided equally among ALL participants.  And the NCAA definitely should pay taxes instead of setting the worst example possible of tournament officials at the “not for profit” trough and then not paying any taxes. 

  • 11182967

    MIT?–you mean that former governor of Massachusetts got a college named after him?

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