If you’re a dean or a department head evaluating a job candidate, should you call someone you know who works with the applicant, or used to? Someone who is not listed as a reference on the candidate’s CV?
Many deans and department heads I know routinely do that. Sometimes they tell the candidates, sometimes they don’t.
My personal policy is that I don’t call any listed references until I have contacted the applicant and given him or her a heads up that the checks are going to take place. Having said that, I don’t typically let candidates know when I am going to call someone who is not on their list of references.
Further, I only go off-list in rare cases — for example, in a search for a department chair — where it’s wise to have a more extensive review of an applicant’s background. I’ve heard through the grapevine that most of the administrative searches in which I have been a candidate have gone off-list in making calls about me.
My observation in faculty searches, though, has been that most off-list contacts simply reinforce the information that’s been provided by the candidates’ own references, so such contacts may have limited value. I do think, however, that their use is increasing since letters of recommendation continue to be so inflated.
If you’re a job seeker, are you surprised by the use of off-list contacts? For search-committee folks, how have you found such contacts to be helpful?
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49 Responses to The Off-List Recommendation
getnthere - September 22, 2011 at 8:42 pm
LOL!!!
He failed measurably.
He rised to the top but when he got there he didn’t do anything.
Many police officers get hurt and killed when they lack good command presents.
Perhaps an afflictive leadership style may have been a little more effective
emerick - September 23, 2011 at 6:18 am
They had a plutonic relationship.
chrisboyatzis - September 23, 2011 at 6:30 am
“my mother told me I was a child genious.”
msumlarry - September 23, 2011 at 6:46 am
And the first comment, noting how cruel this is and that students should not be made fun of and it’s probably our fault anyway, will appear in . . .
lydiatimmins - September 23, 2011 at 7:12 am
“He climbed the corporate latter to get where he is now.”
annekaliellen - September 23, 2011 at 7:58 am
“The collapse of the Soviet Union was followed by the collapse of its currency, the rubble.”
Brian Abel Ragen - September 23, 2011 at 8:19 am
Voicemail from a student who thought the English Lit. survey was named for its textbook: “HI, I’m in your Northern Anthropology of English Literature class . . .”
lmmurphy - September 23, 2011 at 8:43 am
I don’t have the exact quotes, but I had one student who consistently wrote about “Agent Oregon” when talking about the Viet Nam War. Later I had another student who wrote about “women being on the birth control bill”. The first time I saw the last one, I assumed it was a typo, but the author used that exact phrase at least ten times in the paper.
megginson - September 23, 2011 at 8:46 am
That “dinning room” gaffe seems to have been embedded in our culture long before computer spell checkers or, for that matter, the popular use of computers. I remember almost a half century ago regularly driving on U.S. 45 in Illinois, through either Gilman or Onarga (I believe the former), and being treated to the huge letters visible from at least a mile away that were inlaid in the shingles of the roof of the large building housing a popular local eatery announcing, proudly, DINNING ROOM.
susandel - September 23, 2011 at 8:57 am
“I went to the pubic library…”
educationnet2007 - September 23, 2011 at 9:00 am
“The wall was full of crooks and nannies.”
11223435 - September 23, 2011 at 9:09 am
“Many students begin their smoking of marijuana for erogenous reasons.”
Nathaniel M. Campbell - September 23, 2011 at 9:21 am
An answer proffered on a (biology) test that left my wife howling last night as she graded:
“The electronic transport train” (cue the groovy ’70′s music)
marcleavitt - September 23, 2011 at 9:40 am
I always took these mistakes for granite.
acorn - September 23, 2011 at 9:42 am
My all time favorite is a description of the Bender-Gestalt as an “erotic device.” The writer meant to write “erratic.” You can imagine the alarm of the parents when they read the assessment report.
bhay9341 - September 23, 2011 at 10:07 am
I was surprised that our enrollments didn’t increase dramatically after our college catelog stated that we were a pubic institution.
Antsy Kuhnwisse - September 23, 2011 at 10:16 am
And “library” is spelled correctly?!?
Antsy Kuhnwisse - September 23, 2011 at 10:18 am
Uh oh … “catelog”? (You’re forgiven.)
Anybody seen the letters n and i left out of “organism”?
cerebellum - September 23, 2011 at 10:43 am
This from a college professor, who referred to himself as being “on the tenor track.”
goldish - September 23, 2011 at 10:44 am
Bonding takes place at the sight of the oxygen atom. [pretty frightening atom]
prillva - September 23, 2011 at 10:52 am
One of my colleagues luckily proofread a letter of recommendation she was about to send out, when she discovered that the recommendee was “a vivacious reader.” But for student papers, my favorite goes to “cease the day.”
11223435 - September 23, 2011 at 11:18 am
Well, after all, these phrases may be written in stone for some of our students…
rbirnbau - September 23, 2011 at 11:18 am
One of my students thought that I was discussing the “locust of control.” Another apologized for being unable to attend next week’s “stimulation.” And this was graduate school!
isugeezer - September 23, 2011 at 11:29 am
My all-time favorite: an essay about salmon (swimming up river and leaping over dams to get to spawning pools) where the writer had probably originally spelled “salmon” as “samen,” and SpellCheck had suggested “semen.” Unfortunately, the writer agreed with the suggestion, and the result was hilarious.
beedhamm - September 23, 2011 at 11:48 am
Has Lingua Franca run out of real material already? One month in and we’re down to “submit your favorite hilarious mistake”? Really?
darthvader09 - September 23, 2011 at 12:04 pm
I saw several ads not too long ago offering “Tudoring Services.”
getnthere - September 23, 2011 at 12:55 pm
She had a deep seeded value…
missoularedhead - September 23, 2011 at 1:01 pm
sorry, but you owe me a new keyboard for that one. Oh my.
missoularedhead - September 23, 2011 at 1:08 pm
I have also collected these over the years, but my favorite typo induced zinger still remains “During the neolithick revolution, for the first time, people started breading animals.” It’s always the more fact-skewing ones that get me (“Rome was the apex of Greek culture.”)
dank48 - September 23, 2011 at 1:13 pm
An art department head describing his summer spent studying Appellation art.
dank48 - September 23, 2011 at 1:17 pm
As mom used to say, you can laugh or you can cry, and one feels better than the other.
It’s a bit harder to laugh, however, when you see such mistakes in the CHE blog comments all the time.
11211876 - September 23, 2011 at 4:49 pm
Mostly on surveys about library services. “I like that it’s so quite”. “Or not quite enough”, depending on the commenter’s POV. (And my computer just tried to spell-check “commenter” for me. Cementers, anyone?)
Antsy Kuhnwisse - September 23, 2011 at 5:46 pm
Presumably they don’t teach English. Many smart, academically-oriented people have talents that lie elsewhere, to put it charitably.
Diego Castaño - September 23, 2011 at 5:49 pm
Can anybody explain to me what the person meant instead of “phenomena”? I can’t figure it out. I’m not a native English speaker. By the way, since my native language is Spanish, I’m amused by the confusions English speakers make with pairs such as complement/compliment or spelling errors like “auther”! Great post!
iriselina - September 23, 2011 at 11:55 pm
I did. Its an awful illness to have and to spell !
hstmaurice - September 25, 2011 at 10:30 am
My favorite Biblical typo: “Jesus was tempted by Santa.”
mbelvadi - September 25, 2011 at 11:11 am
It has been long enough since the original post that it’s probably safe to issue a spoiler.
My best guess is “pneumonia”.
soundguy - September 26, 2011 at 8:57 am
Here in our music department, we did just get a new prof on the tenor track!
soundguy - September 26, 2011 at 8:58 am
More to the point, are things really getting so stressful that we all find ourselves in need of a good laugh so soon?
marjiestewart - September 26, 2011 at 10:12 am
My students always believe things “defiantly” and often I wish they meant it. One wrote of an uncle who “collected antics” – I didn’t get that one until a few paragraphs later when the uncle was refinishing an old rocking chair. Antiques! he collected antiques!
aemichael - September 26, 2011 at 10:37 am
“For all intensive purposes” is one of my favorites. I recently read an article that referred to these errors as “malcliches.” (in the journal College English, I think…).
Another that was strangely appropriate was to refer to folk wisdom as “old wise tales.”
Or this one: “He had no money and lived under a bridge, because he was indignant.”
Deborah Camp Gallardo - September 26, 2011 at 10:46 am
Immediately after reading this article I came across this comment about social media:
Have you noticed that there is always something new to do? Now it’s Google+, etc. More to do is surly on it’s way.
josgirl13 - September 26, 2011 at 2:54 pm
The missing “l” in “public” is a classic — think what it can do re: “public relations” and such.
jamescurrin - September 26, 2011 at 4:17 pm
Readers will have to trust me that this is true, honest to God. Years ago I found a student notebook in my Physics lab. On the very first page were the notes from another class: ”Prince of Wails—hair to the thrown of England.”
beedhamm - September 26, 2011 at 4:46 pm
So … most of these are just malapropisms. (The “pubic” and “public” one even appeared on a billboard in Indiana (or maybe Illinois)). More interesting than the nonstop hilarity, I think, is to examine why the mistake is made. Is it a sign of aphasia? a lack of a particular kind of literacy? and so on.
clt47 - September 27, 2011 at 8:29 am
Assuming these are all from native speakers, my ESOL students are doing well when they make similar spellcheck errors.
David Andrus - September 27, 2011 at 1:12 pm
From a pageant brochure, by the mother of a scholarship contestant: “She [never] seizes to amaze us.”
…and how’s this for snarky?
SHE’S NO BARBRA STREISAND
“Her gentile nature shines through her songs, which focus on love, growing up and moving on.”
Kristen Fredericksen - September 27, 2011 at 2:09 pm
Could someone please explain the Clint Eastwood comment?
beedhamm - September 27, 2011 at 3:04 pm
“odd” for “old”