When Someone Else Gets the Job You Deserve

A peer and I were competing to be the head of our department. She was selected over me. I knew she had an edge on me in some ways, but I believed I would have done a better job. I let myself wallow in self-pity for exactly one day, then went to her to express my support for her leadership, my intention to help make her successful, and my desire to continue growing until/unless something else came along that I wanted to pursue. In any case, I promised not to be a candidate for anything for a year so that I could facilitate her transition. I ended up staying for 16 months before leaving for a really wonderful opportunity at another great institution that came and found me. I’ve never looked back and believe that the way I handled defeat set me up for ultimate success. Ms. Vaillancourt’s Option Six worked for me.

Been there. Ended up doing parts of the job from the sidelines because the person promoted wasn’t getting it done. Don’t recommend this long term. Your service does not get rewarded and more often than not, someone else gets credit for your work. Playing on the team doesn’t mean you always agree with the captain. Frustrating, though, to see someone else NOT doing all the things you’d like to do.

As a socially inept nerdy-type this has happened to me more than once in my life.  You get used to it. It is best to keep quiet, do your job and look out for an opportunity to leave.  Some people simply want to get rid of you – just like the behaviour of a newly hatched Cuckoo chick.  Trying to make yourself useful to them usually does not work.  OK – try it out but know when to stop trying. Be colleagial and offer the opportunity for them to collaborate with you; if they do not take up the offer do not push it.  If they offer something to you like a place on a grant application of theirs accept it; but they probably will not. If they do not simply make a mental note of that. Give them your lecture notes for the courses you taught and the Powerpoints. Do not worry – they will make much use of them and they quickly go out of date.  It is a serious mistake to allow yourself to be assigned to teach a course with them that you formerly taught alone.  It is asking for trouble.
Be polite and quietly plan to leave.  If they show signs of not liking the place do not gloat. Who knows – they might leave and your good behaviour might favour your appointment to replace them. Remember there are many people who never stay in a job for more than 2 years.

Frankly, all of these travails and the entire premise of this piece is
painfully hard to swallow for well over 50% of readers of this publication. I
am not unsympathetic, mind you. What do you think the situation of the average
adjunct is? Our lives are endless turn-downs for positions we are already showing
we are doing masterfully and deserve chances for better. We inhabit a very strange professional world in which all of the basic values to be upheld are instead up-ended. The proof in the pudding is the incomprehensibly bad management that riddles the campuses and departments where we work, and more bittersweet, in the many students who make efforts to take every course we teach, who when we tell them we cannot give academic advice come to us anyway for life guidance, and tell us point blank that we are the best thing that has
ever happened in their education (this happened to me twice only yesterday, and
many times before). But just getting an interview is practically a life-changing event. And after 9 years of looking yielded only 4, all of which were turn-downs at different institutions in my state for positions I obviously was highly qualified, three of which for reasons of political correctness over educational skill and therefore as blatant as they were unstated, I gave up three years ago. I began looking to leave this state and this profession, since clearly, this state and this profession do not want me regardless of how well I do it. It’s an illusive search in this employment climate. I feel your pain. Now, how about feeling mine? And doing something about it.

Years ago I applied for an “Assistant to…” position for which I was well-qualified and in which I was very interested. I was passed over in favor of an opportunity hire, which I understood, and could support given the university’s lack of diversity at that level, at that time. What dismayed me was the way the hire used the position to complete a dissertation on the university’s time and subsequent move to a position outside the organization. I received the nicest, and most complimentary “rejection” letter of my career (I have kept it) and stayed positive about the college and my options. Six months later I was hired by one of the Deans as an Associate Director and Special Assistant to the Dean for … which opened up great opportunities for me professionally and personally. Staying positive, continuing to good work and being a team player made the difference for me. Anger is a counter productive emotion and activity.

Yes–if you keep working hard enough, and play well with others, that’ll get you the advancements for which you’ve already been passed over.

I was turned down twice for the same position.  The first time I sucked it up and dealt with it.  I kept working hard and hoped that if the opportunity came again I would get the position.  So after the person who beat me out the first time was promoted, I applied again.  I was turned down a second time.  I took this to mean that my work and contributions were not being valued so I tendered my resignation.

I was in a very unusual position where I was hired as a lecturer and as technical support for a department. After a few years of employment where the department wasn’t sure they’d get money for a contract renewal for me, the dean finally told them to decide whether they wanted my position to be a dedicated lecturer. With the needs of the department being what they were, I thought they’d say yes, knowing that I was willing to teach a variety of subjects, many of which were the “undesirable” required courses. It turned out that the department wanted to create a new position that was dedicated to one subject and no longer served as technical support. The new position fit me better than position I held, so I was sure I was their candidate and that the national search was something they had to do to satisfy HR.

Turns out I was wrong. When the applications came in for the position and the committee chose their finalists, I was number 5. I was livid. I talked to the department chair (who wasn’t on the committee) and was advised to talk to the hiring committee chair to see what their reason was that I didn’t even qualify for an “in-person” interview. The committee chair gave me a non-committal, “ask the other committee members, each had his/her own reason.” I could have taken the high road and gone to each member and asked why I had not been under consideration, but instead I went to my friends in the department and complained, and told a number of my favorite students that I wasn’t going to be returning. After that I didn’t speak a word to any of the committee members. I played the part of the bitter child. I never said goodbye to them when I left and when they saw me in the hallways I looked the other way and pretended I was preoccupied. One of the people tried to be nice and would smile and say hello, but I felt too angry to be polite, so I just ignored that person.

I’m not proud of how I dealt with the situation, but at the time it was the least damaging way for me to deal with the disappointment. It turns out that the committee’s first and second choices turned them down because the pay was going to be too little for the position (it is just for a lecturer, after all). Their third choice took the job and I was unemployed for about 3-4 months. Luckily my other skills with technology saved me and I soon was receiving job offer after job offer throughout the country. I was the lucky one: I got to choose my job after that and I almost doubled my salary – all because I wasn’t the one they chose for what I thought was “my job for the taking.”

I’m not in my field any more, but after 5 years of being on the academic market and not ever being in a tenure-track job, I don’t feel like I’m missing anything. I’m getting paid more to do something I enjoy just as much as what I used to do.

People like to pretend higher ed is above the politics and cronyism in the private sector, but it’s worse. Throw in the public institutions’ perceived need for “equity” hiring, and you might as well leave higher ed for the better life in the tech industry or on Wall Street.

No wonder it’s all going downhill fast.

On a list of appalling stories, yours would be at or very near the top. My “mere”  two books (one in two editions), an article and a published essay, however, is not so uncommon a record, and a measure of the extent to which  the criticisms typically leveled adjuncts regarding our productivity or our timeliness in relation to permanent faculty are so many shibboleths. Your experience suggests another disgraceful and very common reality of turn-downs: the bad faith, cynical manipulation of Fair Hiring laws by committees to mask the fact that the posted job was never open to begin with, being either already filled or an individual already chosen. Applicants, who dedicate a week or more to the typical application (as in your experience), have no idea that they are wasting their time.

I have evolved. I now choose Option One. Why? Because the good guys on hiring committees are the obtuse ones. As your and other experiences show, most are not even that. Discovering one has wasted one’s time and  been lied to is only one of a list of crass, abusive, humiliating and cruel treatment to which applicants are routinely subjected.

This discussion is starting to resemble a psychotherapist’s office.

So don’t adjunct. Simple. Accept that we are returning (in a long-overdue movement) back to the days of a few dozen powerful and vast universities, or similarly powerful and exclusive small liberal arts colleges. Accept that this is, over the long run, far better than the ludicrous glut of “colleges” we have today, since it will force a radical cut-down in the ranks of graduates and, further down the line, instructors at all levels. Accept that, once we have only a few dozen universities and colleges worth speaking of, only those meritorious enough to get into and graduate from them will secure faculty positions, and the rest, as they should anyway, can go to vocational schools.

The stories I am reading here are hair-rising. I am aware that there are two—three, four, or more!–sides to a story, of course, but I also tend to believe that hiring practices are more often than not far from being strictly fair or based on merit. Other things count, such as who you know, who likes you, the biases of the members of the hiring committee, etc.  In my case, I have not been selected a couple of times for what I believed to be my dream job and for which I considered myself a perfect fit. Perhaps something is wrong with me, but when not selected even for an interview, and knowing that others were selected I didn’t think were such a great fit, I cannot recall feeling more than a “oh well!” sort of brief disappointment and didn’t dwell long on it at all.  Not even more than a couple of days, if that. I cannot imagine going on a rampage about it.  Nevertheless, I don’t think the less of those that react otherwise.  If a person believes strongly that a case has to be made about it publicly or that he/she is not appreciated and should leave for another job, then maybe he or she should actually do that.  Taking what is defined here as “the high road” is not always the best thing to do for that person or that circumstance.

and help those you know who end up in similar straights.

Having just begun the “better opportunity” than the one I wanted, I’d like to share some of the challenges involved.  I had competed with a colleague in an election for department chair that he won. But I decided to throw my loyalty toward my colleague who became chair for the remainder of his tenure in the position rather than fight it or even regret it. First, it took no time at all for the inappropriateness of the choice of a less qualified person to be noticed. Department members who had not voted for me expressed regret and hinted that they would support a coup d’etat of sorts.  It took a lot of forbearance not to join the “trash the new chair” movement.  Second, it was difficult to watch consistently bad decisions being made that affected the future of both people I cared about and people who, in some sense, deserved to bear the consequences of their choice.  I had to fight a very perverse schadenfreude for several years.  Finally, when the chair crashed and burned in a rather spectacular way that even transcended some of the department’s worst expectations, I had to fight the urge (and the mixed signals from department members) to go for the chair position again. Over the year in which the old chair was on his way out and a new chair was being chosen, I finally learned in every possible way that, while I could be the chair I wanted to be, I could never be the chair my colleagues wanted.  

 babyboomer46–Thank you for sharing your experience on another rigged search.

 Swagato,

You may be able to afford this kind of flippancy.  The rest of us have bills to pay.

(And yes, it’s flippancy.  Don’t get on some high horse about the immorality of being an adjunct.  The system itself is immoral and change comes from the top down, not from the poorly-paid bottom up.)

Fly-on-the-wall,

You go! 

What happens with adjuncting is that you get so pigeonholed that no one can see you as a real candidate for a full-time job.  It’s like being the educational system’s comic sidekick and no one can see you as the main attraction. 

After a number of years, your experience can make you too expensive, especially if you work for a state institution with union representation.  I had a friend with a doctorate and 18 years experience adjuncting in her field.  Adjuncting meant that she had been teaching more hours and more students than any full timer could imagine doing, even on a bad day.  This friend applied for a tenure-track position at one of the community colleges where she had been teaching for all those years and got passed over for someone with an M.A. and two years experience.  The M.A. was cheaper.

The university is a class system, and the adjuncts are downstairs.

“I’ve also sat on committees where the committee chair didn’t want to
hire an adjunct because they figured that the adjunct was already here
for two guaranteed classes a semester and they didn’t want to bother
finding someone else to fill those classes. ”

That’s actually pretty common, mathzilla.

There’s also the little problem of a prophet not being appreciated in his or her hometown.  Adjuncts run into that all the time.  Committees often value the unknown quantity BECAUSE he or she is unknown.  There is a clean slate on which to write one’s own fantasy candidate when a new person comes in for an interview.  One can’t do that with an adjunct.

At my previous job, a colleague of mine was a finalist for a job at a better liberal arts college.  Despite the fact that he was an alumnus of said college, the job went to someone else.  Even though this happened many years ago, he was never able to let it go.  The truth of the matter is that the person who got the job had a much more impressive publication record.  Simply being an alum of a college should not guarantee getting a faculty position there down the line.  It should also never trump actual professional accomplishments.  Nevertheless, this colleague of mine never ceased referring to the person who got the job as the “man who is living my life.”

In any job search process, there are often times when the organization has someone in mind before the search is begun. In those instances, the process is a formality and the odds are against the outsider.
It happens. It happens a lot.
To quote the somewhat canned advice of M. Scott Peck, life is difficult. Once you accept that premise, life begins to get easier.
Applying that to this model, assuming you have done your best in the application process, your only choice is in your response to the situation.
And understanding that you do need to work somewhere, bear in mind the related question: do you want to work for an institution that makes poor decisions based on seemingly arbitrary criteria?

I was an adjunct at the university of my dreams, when I was told by a tenured member of the department to apply for a new full-time position that was being created as director of the university’s writing center.  I’d held four writing center director position before, I had excellent credentials and evaluations at this university, and I had even done a small, informal study to determine how the writing center could improve service to students.  Needless to say, I was stunned when the chair called me herself to tell me that the position had gone to a male candidate (I’m female) who didn’t have the credentials that I did.  She said that she wasn’t on the hiring committee, so she had no say in the matter.  It turned out that the position had been created for this candidate and posted for only three days, in the hope that no one else would see it and apply.  I felt a little bit better when the chair told the tenured faculty member who’d recommended me that she felt the committee had made a huge mistake in hiring this guy, as I was the better choice.  I was a team players afterward and eventually left the university for a full-time professorship elsewhere, but I really do think I missed the job of my dreams, as I loved everything about that university, except, of course, its rigged hiring system.     

I had a similar experience recently. I had a great interview for a job that was basically my 2nd choice. The institution was very active in recruiting me prior to the interview. Even though I was 90% sure I was going to turn down their offer, it still was a bit of a shock when I was rejected. I don’t suspect anything unethical was at play but it just shows these situations are very much out of our control and can change quickly and aren’t predictable.

I may have to get ready for something similar this year…I had a similar experience last year when asked to take over chair position, I agreed. (I had turned it down other times because I had not yet been promoted to full professor.) Another colleague who had done it before (rather haphazardly) decided he wanted to do it. Long story short, my dept. decided on him over me. Turns out my collaborative style was their excuse…they liked it in the way I dealt with them, but didn’t want me collaborating with those other departments in the college. Wonder if my being a woman had anything to do with it. Anyway, I spoke my mind and then let go of it afer stewing for a few days. I also was very clear that I would no longer do parts of his job for him, the way we all did the last time he was chair…

On this next opportunity (a different position) what we need and my skill set again make a great match, in my opinion, and it’s time for me to make a contribution in leadersip. I’ve already decided that I’ll make myself available as a candidate for other searches, just in case. If turned down twice, that’s a signal to me that the opportunity to advance at my inst. is not there, and as much as I love it, it will be time to move on.

My comment was not at all flippant. Although I can see how it may be (mis)perceived as flippancy, you will actually note that I do not denigrate the work adjuncts do at all. Rather, I simply advocate for a somewhat rapid and perhaps “cold” downsizing of the labour glut faced by universities today. The only immorality involved here is, arguably, the immorality perpetrated by a would-be academic who persuades himself into believing he may be good enough to produce research and scholarship meriting a full-time tenure position at a leading university.

Did I miss something?  How is forcing students to redshirt going to help anything?  They’re still putting in all the same time practicing.  They’ll probably get left home on road trips, but that’s about it.  They’re still going to have to put in pretty much all of the same time they’d have to put in if they weren’t redshirting.  This makes absolutely no sense to me…

In response to jlowers and sanmarcos08, in the article I mentioned that the full funding is provided by the Albukhary Foundation. This foundation was established by Mr. Syed Mkhtar Albukhary. Coming from a poor and disadvantaged family, Mr. Albukhary made the promise some 20 years ago “to establish a university to provide opportunities to bright students from underprivileged and disadvantaged backgrounds to receive tertiary education and become useful, productive and caring members of society”