As we’ve been conducting our campus interviews this year, I’ve begun to think more about how candidates’ days on campus are arranged. Even at a small institution with comparatively accessible administrators, such as mine, it’s difficult to arrange on-campus interviews so that each of, say, two or three candidates meets the interviewers in the same order.
Not being able to arrange that order does, I fear, change the dynamics for candidates who meet with the dean, the president, and me at different points during their campus visits. For me, meeting a candidate early in the day means that she won’t yet have the experience of meeting with the faculty, having lunch with a student group, and doing her teaching demonstration. For the president, it means the candidate won’t yet have talked to me or met the others, either. Those variables will inevitably change the tenor and content of our meetings with candidates, and it’s hard to correct for these differences as we consider which candidates to pursue further.
We therefore try hard to be consistent when arranging candidates’ interview schedules. But that can cause some other interesting issues to arise.
We recently completed campus interviews for a position in composition. Three strong candidates came to the campus. All three of them met with me at 8:30 in the morning, after having breakfast with the same member of the search committee. So far, so good. But the trouble was that at that point in the campus interview, the candidates hadn’t yet had the opportunity to learn what issues might arise that would be of concern to them.
My preference is to discuss candidates’ experiences and questions as they come up. Except in my home discipline, English, I don’t feel comfortable discussing their academic work except in the most general terms. That’s why search committees comprise people from the discipline. I do want to talk about teaching strategies, the nature of the campus community, what kinds of interests candidates could bring that would add strength to our programs, and similar sorts of issues.
In an hour’s conversation, there really is time for a candidate to probe his or her concerns or special interests in our position, and discuss with me issues regarding tenure and promotion, salary, moving, faculty development, and other nuts-and-bolts topics on which I am the “answerer of record.”
So—from here on out, I’m going to throw another wrench in the scheduling of campus interviews by asking to meet with candidates toward the end, rather than at the beginning, of their visits.
I am curious about others’ experience with the layout of campus interviews, from either side of the table. Have you experienced a setup that worked particularly well or badly, and, if so, why?
Follow On Hiring through your favorite RSS reader:
5 Responses to Setting Up the Interview Day
jruiz - January 30, 2010 at 9:12 am
Things must have changed at BVU since I was there. My interview started at 7:00 am, breakfast with the VP. Then a whirlwind of activity until 4:30 when I got into the rental car and headed for Sioux Falls airport. Never did meet the president, nor any students beyond the class I taught. While I appreciated not incurring any upfront expenses, it was the most hectic on-campus visit I ever had.
david_r_evans - January 30, 2010 at 2:41 pm
J, if I’ve inferred your timeline correctly from our earlier exchanges, I think I’m probably the fourth VPAA after the one you dealt with, so I’m not terribly surprised at the changes.We can’t really fly people in and out of Sioux Falls anymore, as there are almost no flights and they’re exceedingly expensive. Normally what we now do is have a candidate arrive the day before (usually now to OMA) and come up to town, have dinner with someone, and spend the day interviewing and drive back to OMA in the evening for an AM departure. If the flight is in the afternoon, we’ll put them up here in Storm Lake for the second night, and get them back to the airport in the morning.
jruiz - January 30, 2010 at 3:19 pm
At the risk of giving away too much, the VPAA was into ground squirrels and a member of the faculty was mayor of Storm Lake.
johnw86 - February 1, 2010 at 12:30 pm
As a department chair, my preference was to meet with candidates at the very start of the interviews. I could get a feel for them before they had a chance to “read” what others told them about the position/campus. Also, it gave me a chance to preview the day and what they could expect. I then had a shorter meeting at the end of the process when I could again tell them what would happen next…when they could expect to hear from us, etc. I think a VPAA and President would do well to be slotted at the end of the series of interviews, but I know how difficult it is to maintain that kind of sequencing.
dianapaque - February 4, 2010 at 5:38 pm
As Provost, I have always wanted extra time with dean candidates or others I directly supervise at a high level. Generally I go with the flow of the interview process, working with HR to keep the experience for each candidate as comparable as possible. If there are two candidates, I arrange to have dinner with each of them to have a more comfortable- off the record- conversation with each. One candidate I usually see before their interview on the campus and one after. For that candidate with whom I have dinner before, I always schedule and additional time at the end of their visit to do a debrief. In this way I can answer questions they have and at least get a sense of their visit as I will with the candidate with whom I dine after their meetings