Why Is It So Hard to Do It Right?

In my last post, I asked about people’s good and bad experiences with campus interviews. While the comments started out with a relatively balanced discussion of positive and negative examples, they quickly turned to horror stories about dreadful campus visits.

I am constantly puzzled about why so many departments mismanage their campus interviews. There is arguably nothing more important to the future of a college or university than making strong faculty hires, and one of the best ways to ensure good outcomes for searches is to treat candidates well.

Yet over and over again, we read about candidates’ nightmare experiences — no food, careless or absent transportation, slow or nonexistent reimbursement of expenses, general rudeness, and even direct aggression seem to crop up with some regularity.

That kind of behavior is so irrational and counterproductive that it’s hard to fathom. Certainly people have bad days. Faculty members are busy and have scattered and complex obligations that drain their time, energy, and focus. Some argue that academics have, on the whole, very limited social skills, though I have not found that to be the case anymore than it is in any other sector. There is plainly something else going on, and I wonder what it is. While many institutions treat candidates with courtesy or even genuine warmth, professionalism, and transparency, there are enough exceptions to such best practices that I sometimes wonder if it’s a manifestation of some particular academic pathology.

Why do some hiring committees do such a poor job with campus interviews?