Some Stanford Doctors Violate Conflict-of-Interest Rules, Report Says

Previous summer internship with the Taliban

Declining institutional prestige makes sense for applicants for faculty positions, but I don’t think it makes sense for many or even most administrators.  Is the Food Services Director at Harvard the top of the Food Services world?  If one moves from being Dean at Williams College to being President at Macalester, is that a step down?

La_profesora is on to something.  A red flag should not automatically be a poison pill (this is not, by the way, how that term is used in business).  In fact, genuine red flags–Gordon Gee’s presidential longevity advisor, say–are pretty rare.  What we’re really talking about here are probably better called yellow flags–anomalies like odd career moves, offbeat academic histories, publication in obscure journals in ex-Soviet countries, lots of years of part-time teaching, real jobs outside academia, etc.  As caution flags, these items should prompt direct questions to the candidate, but the prospective employer should be prepared to give serious consideration to the explanations.  Just as the non-traditional student has become typical, the non-traditional career is also becoming more common.  Be alert, but don’t expect a candidate today to look like you did at that age 20, 30, or 40 years ago.

Lateral moves are sometimes explainable, and sometimes a “poison pill.” I have had a history as “Director”, Associate Director”, Director, Sr. Associate Director, until my current position. Only the last of these moves was actually “lateral” and was, in fact, a good move professionally.

 I do not like to see the career arc when someone seems to regard your institution as somewhere to “retire in place.” The Dean who is moving down the food chain often wants your location over your position.

Yes, you have to watch out for presumptions about titles for duty-clusters outside the classroom.  The Director of Communication for McDonald’s Corporation would likely have a salary comparable to a top range Community College Chancellor, the Vice Chancellor of Government Relations at the University of Texas would likely have a salary equivalent to a mid-range Community College President, and the Vice President of the Apollo Group (owners of the University of Phoenix) would have a salary equivalent to a state university full professor plus when stock is added in a total compensation package, would earn more than the Presidents of most state-supported  research universities. The world of titles and compensation is not at all as intuitive or “common-sense” based as it used to be even five years ago. Just ask the professors turned-biotech and entrepreneurs at UCSD and Harvard who have become who have become multi-millionaires CEO’s/Corporate Chairs capitalizing on their discoveries while continuing as their professorial duties.  Also, there can be a change to a seemingly “lesser” position motivated by undisclosed work-place factors that a candidate might be reluctant to discuss that might appear suspect. Often, such situations can be gleaned from reference checks with former co-workers who the candidate has listed within their references. 

Yikes.  Mine was three.  Glad people weren’t thinking this a few years ago.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with a two-page cover letter if its contents are germane to the position for which the candidate is applying.  I have received several interviews and job offers with two-page cover letters.

“Real jobs outside academia” are a caution flag?  Wow.  

Or mentioning “I’d really like to retire here.”

Yikes, get a speaker next time who isn’t out-dated and out of touch with 2011 recruiting.

The red/yellow flags in a person’s CV are often the reasons for a 2-page (or longer) cover letter. There are many reasons to move from one job to another that may not be apparent in a CV. And I have rarely listed former supervisors as references as I have either lost touch with them following their retirements/moves, they have passed, and one is in jail.

Next topic: The dangers of confusing one’s metaphors in public.

Having been in academia for 26 years and served on many search committees for faculty and administrators (president, vice presidents of every stripe, etc.), at my institution the following tends to be the common practice.   In humanities area disciplines, we expect 2 1/2- 3-page letters from our tenure-track applicants (or a statement on teaching that would account for one of those pages).   Administrative applications throughout the university are typically at least three pages but should never be longer than five pages.  Criteria listed in a typical administrative job description take an applicant at least three pages to address.  At least three years in a position before moving is a general rule – regular changes at the two-year point do raise questions.  It takes a year to learn an administrative job, a year to start making progress, and a year to see at least some of those second-year initiatives reach fruition.  If you are in the market in your second year or just after completing two years, the first year was probably not a pretty picture.  Also, the writer of this post seems to have missed the “You have to move down to move up” truism for higher education.  Although some applicants for administrative positions do make lateral moves (moving from dean to provost at a like-ranked institution), the most typical pattern in higher education is for a dean to become provost at an institution ranked just below the institution where the candidate is currently dean.   There are some exceptions:  a particularly talented candidate can move up a notch but moving up more than one notch usually brings the “they’re trying to jump into too big a pond” comment from a search committee.  That said, the old truisms do get set aside, on occasion, in the quest to hire a compelling candidate who is being sought by multiple institutions. 

Ah, but geography and weather can work both ways, particularly if the institution is in a small town or rural area, where attracting and keeping talent can be a challenge. We don’t have ‘big city’ opportunities, so we want someone who likes the area, the small town life, and the weather.  Otherwise, the first time it tops 100 in the summer, or they realize they have to drive 100 miles to get to the airport…well, they’re looking.

If moving down in the prestige scale is a problem, how are second- and third-tier institutions ever to find staff, and how are all the graduates from first-tier institutions ever to find work?  I thought it was expected that unless you were a really dazzling star you would move down a notch or two from where you were educated.  And let’s not even go off on tangents about the vagaries, imprecisions, and injustices of levels of prestige, or how a university that is regarded as among the best as a whole might not in fact be all that great in certain disciplines.

You make a good point about a person moving a lot due to being married to an armed forces member.  Do you think it would make sense to mention this even in a cover letter or would it better discussed in an interview?

First some history quibbles.  Hong Kong did not shrug off British rule.  The chinese refused to renew their lease on the “new territories” making tenure in Hong Kong impossible.  The poms left the people of Hong Kong to their fate – fortunately in the case of Hong Kong things have gone well, although most wealthy Hong Kongers have a bolt-hole in Canada or Australia just in case.
The 4-year liberal arts degree may provide students with a good general education but very easily degenerates into a superficial taste of a range of subjects and no main course.  Transcripts have to be very carefully read and interpreted to see if they have a coherent stream of subjects studied.
The three-year undergraduate degree has its advantages.  Degrees are focused and majors are clear.  Different degrees have different names.  An employer of an Australian graduate with a B Economics or B Commerce knows what sort of graduate they are employing.  An overseas student going to do an Australian 3-year degree knows what they are going to get and critically their parents do as well.  The fuzzy-fury-&-soft look of the american liberal arts degree does not attract.
One drawback to the 3-year degree is that you only see a certain type of student in classes.  For example, I taught biology in Australia over more than 20 years but I have never even met or spoken to a full-fee paying overseas student even though they make up about 20% of all undergraduate students.  Only a few do a Bachelor of Science degree and they never do biology.

A four year degree allows students to explore subjects and disciplines outside their  major–and should enable and encourage them to think creatively and innovatively, bringing to bear ideas and approaches and techniques that are not commonly used in their fields.  I certainly know that my liberal arts education has offered me many opportunities, both in business and in academic work, to “think outside the square.”

As an American-educated person and as an Australian academic, I can say from both a student and lecture point of view, 3-year undergraduate professional degrees leave a lot to be desired.  Students often lack the broader knowledge which is the foundation for professional work, instead being trained as technicians.  For example, many law students enrolled as 18 year olds in Australian law degrees have little or no understanding of psychology, political science, history, sociology, or economics–all necessary to understand the law and its practice.  Business students, too, lack a broader understanding of the world and of people as their programs focus much more on accounting, economics, and some general courses in organisational behavior, decisionmaking, etc. (often taught by people without psychology degrees or anything more than a general foundation subject undertaken in their undergraduate degree).  And teaching students who have little or no knowledge of the foundations of and for their Business subjects makes it hard work indeed.  (In my Human Reource Management classes, I have to spend considerable time year after year explaining, for example, the political system of Australia so that students understand why some laws apply in one state and not in another.  And most find it a startling new concept to learn that American laws do not apply in Australia–I have lost count of how many essays on which I have had to correct this mistake.)

Some liberal arts degrees may accept for completion a hodgepodge of subjects without any coherence, but then that is the fault of the institution and the student advisers as well as the students themselves.  However, the liberal arts degrees of which I am aware require students to identify and complete a major area of study as well as often provide guidance and encouragement to students to enable them to select from a wide variety of subjects outside their major which will enhance their understanding and broaden their perspectives.