A well-worn topic of discussion in The Chronicle’s forums is the differences between the faculty and corporate (or so-called “real world”) hiring processes.
The invidious comparison usually goes like this: An academic search takes months, a corporate one takes weeks (at most). An academic search involves all sorts of silly rituals based on outmoded traditions (the conference interview, the multi-day campus interview), while a corporate one is rational and driven by verifiable, objective data that simplify hiring the “right person.” An academic search is characterized by unprofessional and thoughtless conduct, such as committees not getting back to candidates in a timely fashion or communicating with them clearly, while a corporate one is smooth, professional, and efficient.
A recent article by Alina Tugend in The New York Times calls a lot of these generalizations into question. This piece describes developments in the corporate-hiring process that make it seem as though corporate America is striving to emulate the worst excesses of faculty hiring and then do the academy one better. Tugend includes stories of an accounting firm in Atlanta that engages in “a minimum of four interviews” before hiring someone. She notes that an acquaintance of hers interviewed eight times for a single position and has still not learned whether he will get the job.
The common story of the interviewee who has a great on-campus interview and never hears from the institution again turns out to have its parallel as well. Tugend recounts stories of corporate job seekers who endured months of silence before being offered a position, or being told that another candidate was hired. Sometimes, apparently, even corporations with professional human-resources departments never even get back to interviewees to inform them of their status.
It’s easy to look at the corporate world, with its (generally) higher salaries, clearer lines of accountability, and (ostensibly) trained managers and think that things must be better there, work more smoothly and professionally, get done faster, and generally “operate like a business” should. But while the academy could certainly improve its hiring process, Tugend’s article shows that the corporate world’s hiring process isn’t all that great either.
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6 Responses to Is Hiring More Rational in the ‘Real World’?
madamesmartypants - October 14, 2009 at 1:41 pm
No one says that the corporate hiring process is perfect, but having experienced both I would say that, on the whole, the corporate model is better than the academic one. For one, there tends to be a sufficient number of jobs in the corporate world for qualified people than in academia–to say nothing of the fact that you can probably find a job relatively close to where you live right now, rather than having to move across the country. Not having to plan a year in advance to get a job is also a huge plus that I don’t think this article adequately addresses; a few weeks without a job, while difficult, is a lot better than a year or more. Academic hiring also tends to be much less consistent in its practices than the corporate world–job application requirements vary widely and are often inconsistent and redundant. For academia, each application must be a handcrafted, personal tribute to diligence, commitment, and institutional loyalty, while the corporate world is really just looking for competence.
oioioi - October 14, 2009 at 2:47 pm
It’s usually harder to get rid of academics – you might be stuck with them for a minimum of 6 years. Not so in the corporate world.
david_r_evans - October 14, 2009 at 10:06 pm
Mme, you have to read the linked NYT article if you haven’t already. One of the things it’s about is how the tightness of the market (read, gross oversupply of qualified candidates) has led to some distortions in the hiring process that are readily recognizable to anyone who’s ever gone through an academic search.The geographical and temporal factors involved in academic searches cannot be helped. The market is national, and colleges and universities work on an academic-year basis. We planned this year’s budget last year, and it was set on July 1. There’s simply no possible way to bring in a professor any time except the beginning of the fall or spring semester, or sometime during the summer. If we hired someone in, say, February, what would they do? Why would we do it? Oi, it’s not too terribly hard to fire an untenured faculty member.
uidaho1 - October 15, 2009 at 2:49 pm
Earlier this year my daughter was involved with a search in a medical clinic. One hundred candidates were interviewed by telephone. Of these, thirty were invited to a one hour interview by a panel of four staff. The ten finalists were then to be interviewed by the four doctors in the clinic.All this for a receptionist position paying $13 an hour!
dianeshea - October 15, 2009 at 3:11 pm
Having conducted hundreds of searches for public and private sector clients over the past twenty odd years, my experience indicates that the process needs to be tailored to the unique requirements of the position. There is no one right answer concerning who to involve in the process but there should be a great deal of thought given to: who you are trying to attract, what are they expected to accomplish and how can we give each party a comfort level regarding success.Frankly, the private sector could be more thoughtful in who they hire and academe could benefit by being more decisive. In the end, we are all trying to reduce the risk of hiring the wrong person. The costs of mistake are excerbated in this economy. One idea academe could borrow from the real world is the idea of figuring out who is the best at doing a particular job and actively recruiting them. It happens all the time in private sector search but not so much in academe.
jruiz - October 15, 2009 at 7:26 pm
Really, the academic approach to hiring is inane. Job announcements generally come out in October, interviews are often in December after Christmas (at least the MLA), campus interviews are in February and March, offers are in April to May. Why do universities have the presumptuousness to believe they should leave hanging applicants hanging that long?