The Deus Ex Machina

A search committee had selected two solid but unspectacular candidates for on-campus invitations. The phone interviews had been “good”/”OK”/”decent.” Because the position was an urgent need, the department plunged ahead with scheduling the visits, hoping for the best. Candidate A’s visit didn’t generate momentum and Candidate B’s visit had likewise been unremarkable. On the day of Candidate B’s visit, however, a new CV packet arrived. Before issuing a routine “thanks but we’ve passed the deadline for consideration” note to the applicant, the search-committee chair glanced at the application. It was fantastic. As the committee met to consider the two on-campus candidates, he gave them copies of the new packet. All of them were ecstatic when they saw the full résumé. It touched all of their needs directly, with a few added bonuses thrown in.

The search-committee chair met with the department chair and asked for permission to conduct a phone interview as soon as was possible. The department chair was uncomfortable with this since the on-campus interviews had already occurred but agreed, secretly hoping that the call would flop. The phone interview was fabulous, though, and the search committee unanimously recommended an on-campus interview.

The dean met that afternoon with the academic vice president and wanted permission to deny the third invitation: It was unfair to the candidates who had followed the posted application deadlines, it was unfair to look past the two current candidates toward the third and implicitly ignore them in the process, it was too complicated to schedule a third candidate’s visit at such a late date, and, finally, it was too expensive to bring in three candidates for a single position.

The vice president disagreed and approved the third invitation with this observation: “Look, the choice is not whether an invitation should be extended, it’s whether the search should be shut down until next year or not. Candidate C is the golden deus ex machina for the department; candidates A and B will not be considered fairly unless C is in the mix. If we don’t invite C, we may as well shut down the search right now and wait until next year.” In the end, C came to campus and ended up in the position.

This scenario is a combination of several searches’ stories but it points out the importance of clear thinking and, sometimes, taking a little risk in the hiring process.

What might the search committee have done differently? The dean? The vice president? Was it “fair” to Candidates A and B?