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[Job seeker]

Here are some suggestions for search committees on improving search procedures and reducing applicants' distress:

1. Advertise the position(s) only when the department positively feels that there is a need and a budget. Advertise only when you are sure that you need a person and have got money to hire someone.
   
   The ad should not contain wording such as "subject to approval," "may hire one or two," "we are in the process of hiring 5 faculty over the next five years."
   
   
2. Avoid advertisements that suggest a possibility of hiring in other areas of specialization. Specify the exact rank at which you are planning to hire.
   
   
3. Spell out the requirements of the position: e.g.,  a Ph.D. (or other acceptable degrees), two years' or more teaching experience, minimum number of high-quality publications, expertise required (explicitly spell out the areas), professional society memberships, industrial experience.  
   
   
4. Provide a deadline for the application submission. Don't merely wait until a suitable candidate has been found. I personally think this is very important.
   
   Also, acknowledge the receipt of the application and thank
   the applicant for his/her interest in the position.
   
   
5. Provide details/dates of search-committee meetings that are
   planned to select the candidates for interviews.
   
   
6. Provide a possible/exact date on which the rejection letters will be posted.
   
   
7. Provide the possible dates (specify the week) in which candidates may be interviewed.
   
   
8. Provide a date when the final selection will be made and
   final rejection letters will be sent.
   
   
9. Maintain a Web site so that applicants can check the status of
   their applications and monitor the progress of the selection-commitee meetings.
   

[Anon]

One or two of the items you list are legitimate and common complaints, such as acknowledging receipt of your application. With regard to the others, though, do you actually think these things happen for no reason and that they are done just to bug you? I can only address a handful of your Diva demands (maybe you should be on American Idol looking to be a rockstar instead of seeking a job in academe!).

You would know that almost all of your suggestions are not in any way realistic, or even possible, if you had ever held an academic position and/or observed how a search committee works, or seen all the stages and steps a chair must go through in dealing with deans and chancellors.

Chairs often need to time searches, despite budget vagaries, which may extend beyond the college level -- e.g., New York and California currently have multi-billion dollar deficits, which are all over the news. All state systems are in limbo, and public institutions make up the majority of institutions; however they are fairly sure that eventually, when the governors and state assemblies make their agreements, that funds will come free for hires. Yet if they postpone their searches, they will not be able to hire.

So should a year go by with no searches in any departments except those at wealthy private schools? How would that affect your job search? All department chairs have to fill out a form or write a letter to the dean or provost asking for permission to recruit. They don't just up and write an ad! If they get the green light from the administration, then they do so, since they assume the dean usually knows what the odds are that funds will appear (and usually they do). Once in a while a search is cancelled, but many are not.

Departments conduct open-rank and open-specialty searches when they are looking for someone really good, rather than someone who fits a narrow slot. Thank God for this, since people with even moderately unusual areas of study might otherwise hardly ever get the consideration they are due. For most people this works in their favor.

Many of the things you mention, such as deadlines for applications or lists of requirements/qualifications, are included in 99.9 percent of ads already. If you see an ad that doesn't include these things, all you need to do is call the department secretary and ask.

At a community college, where job applications go through a large personnel department, the department might have time to make and maintain a Web site where applicants can check on the status of their application, but most academic departments (especially small ones) are unlikely to have time to maintain such a site. The Web site, if they have one, will probably only say what the job is and when it closes, at any rate.

I'm a faculty member with a lot of knowledge about computers and I have many of my own Web pages/course pages, but I can barely keep them up for my classes. I'm in a typical, large Research I department with many staff and student workers, yet despite all that, maintaining a high-tech, interactive Web site for searches is out of the question.

Web designers are just beginning to create Web sites for online student grades, etc., but creating something similar for the hundreds of applicants who apply for one job is unrealistic. Departments would have to hire a Web designer to do this, but as I'm sure you've heard, higher education is in a money crunch. Institutions can't even pay adjuncts a decent salary (and sometimes departments can't even pay full-time people what they deserve).

Such a site would have to have individual passwords, etc., since you wouldn't want just anyone to be able to look at the status of your job application, would you? And it probably violates privacy laws if not done this way. Secretaries are not Web masters, and while some departments hire a grad student to do a few updates on the department's homepage, such as adding new faculty members once in a blue moon, unless it is a computer-science department, you will never find anyone to manage such a thing. Departments have much more important things to spend their time and scarce funds on.

With regard to planning dates for letters, creation of long- and shortlists, meetings, and actually notifying job seekers of them -- have you been in grad school all this time? Or in academe at all? This is the weirdest thing I've ever heard suggested.

Unless your department is so lousy that everyone sits on their asses eating donuts and chatting all day, professors, in case you haven't noticed, are not in Monday - Friday from 9-5, and have hectic schedules when they are. If you think they will put off a grant deadline, a publication deadline, grading 100 exams or a dozen 40-page grad papers, or somehow re-arrange all these activities into some narrow schedule to make the hiring-committee meeting their greatest priority for your convenience, when there are not enough hours in the day to do all that is necessary -- once you actually get a job, you are in for a big surprise.

The only people who have time for this are those people ready to retire or deadwood. Is that who you want to evaluate your applicaiton and hire people? Often, committees don't know until a couple of hours beforehand when they can all gather for a meeting. Everyone has to read all the dossiers -- they might hope to meet on a certain day, but if any of the above is pressing, the meeting will be put off. Grants, publications, and teaching get you tenure, not adjusting all aspects of your life for 400 unknown people, only one of whom will become part of the department.

Same goes for dates of interviews. Often they are spread out over several weeks, depending on the candidates -- for example, one may be on a research trip, an overseas conference, or doing fieldwork when asked to come to campus, and most departments try to accomodate this. I once had an interview in February, and had to wait until April, when another very good candiate returned from research in Israel and Russia, before he could be interviewed and they could make a decision.  I got the job, but I'm sure that guy was happy they accommodated him.

While search committees could do a lot to make the process less complex or confusing, most of your ideas are beyond impractical.

[Dissenting job seeker]

While I am sympathetic with Job seeker's suggestions for search committees because of the shabby treatment that so many candidates receive, her/his advice is mostly impractical and unworkable. It is important to realize that you are dealing with a committee, which is always problematic, but in this case, a committee of extremely busy people. Here is my two cents:

• Job seeker wrote, "Advertise the position(s) only when the department positively feels that there is a need and a budget. Advertise only when you are sure that you need a person and have got money to hire someone."
  
  Yes, this is a great suggestion and committees should follow it.
  
  
  
• Job seeker wrote, "The ad should not contain wording such as 'subject to approval,' 'may hire one or two,' 'we are in the process of hiring 5 faculty over the next five years.'"
  
  While it would be nice if the committee knew for certain that a search
  won't be cancelled for financial or other reasons, this is often beyond the committee's control. This past year, two committees let us candidates know that their searches were being cancelled for budgetary reasons (and I was on the shortlist at one of the places). It was beyond their control, so of course I did not hold it against them.
  
  
• Job seeker wrote, "Avoid advertisements that suggest a possibility of hiring in other areas of specialization. Specify the exact rank at which you are planning to hire."
  
  I have to disagree here. Often committees are not in agreement about whom they should hire (what specializations) and they prefer to cast a wider net to see what's out there. I don't see anything inconsiderate or unethical about this. Committees want to have the freedom to consider all possibilities and not exclude somone from consideration based solely upon her or his current position (A.B.D., Ph.D. lecturer or visiting assistant professor, assistant professor, associate professor, or full professor).
  
  
• Job seeker wrote, "Spell out the requirements of the position: e.g., a Ph.D. (or other acceptable degrees), two years' or more teaching experience, minimum number of high-quality publications, expertise required (explicitly spell out the areas), professional society memberships, industrial experience."
  
  Hear, hear! Search committees, please be as specific as possible with regard to requirements.
  
  
• Job seeker wrote, "Provide a deadline for the application submission. Don't merely wait until a suitable candidate has been found. I personally think this is very important."
  
  Yes, very important! If you don't find an acceptable candidate in one round, then hire a visiting assistant professor for a year and re-announce the search in the next cycle.
  
  
• Job seeker wrote, "Also, acknowledge the receipt of the application and thank the applicant for his/her interest in the position."
  
  This should be common courtesy, but I'm afraid that for some it is just too much to ask. One very well-known and well-regarded professor in my field recently wrote short personal e-mails to all 82 candidates who applied for his department's position, specifially expressing interest in each individual's work and thanking them for applying. It probably took him a couple of hours to write the messages, but, boy, did he make a wonderful impression on those candidates! (Yes, of course he does not need to impress these people, but he strongly believes in courtesy and civility in everyday life, and this puts his department in a very positive light.)
  
  
• Job seeker wrote, "Provide details/dates of search-committee meetings that are planned to select the candidates for interviews."
  
  Again, this is impractical. People have lives, and sometimes committee-meeting dates have to be changed.
   
  
• Job seeker wrote, "Provide a possible/exact date on which the rejection letters will be posted."
  
  Not a bad suggestion to follow when possible.
  
  
• Job seeker wrote, "Provide the possible dates (specify the week) in which candidates may be interviewed."
  
  That's a good idea.
  
  
• Job seeker wrote, "Provide a date when the final selection will be made and final rejection letters will be sent."
  
  Sometimes searches drag on for various reasons and a final date can not be determined ahead of time.
  
  
• Job seeker wrote, "Maintain a Web site so that applicants can check the status of their applications and monitor the progress of the selection-committee meetings."
  
  No search committee will -- or should -- keep applicants apprised of every move they make.
  

[Rana]

Great ideas! (The website idea is especially nice; one institution I applied to had one, and it was great.)

[Job seeker]

I beg to differ with the views of one of the respondents to my message about tips for search committees.

Please try to think like a qualified job seeker and consider how much stress he/she undergoes while waiting to hear from universities where there are no fixed deadlines and no clear guidelines, etc. from search committees.

I am not new to the world of academe. I have been to many interviews and have been offered jobs; in fact, right now I am in a faculty position. To get to this point I have endured a lot of stress because of the inefficiencies of search committees.

Some of the readers argued that many of my suggestions are impractical.

Can you answer these questions :

1. Why do search committees take their time to sit down
   for a meeting? Why is it that their time is more important than the applicant's time?
   
   
2. I am sure most of the job seekers out there will agree that
   most of the job ads appear on the Web and are published in many
   forums at least six to eight months in advance. You are telling me that
   committee members cannot make a plan eight months in advance about when they should meet and when they should decide on the outcome of the search. Don't they have calendars on which to mark the dates of their meeting, so they can stick to their schedules?
   
   Applicants are expected to stick to deadlines and wait for a call from the mothership (search committee), change their schedules to attend interviews, and generally turn their lives around for the sake of one opportunity; we should expect the same from search committees. Some committees are playing with the emotions of job seekers
   by not being punctual.
   
   
3. When a candidate is offered the job, he/she has only 15 to 30 days
   to accept or reject the offer. Will the search committee give the
   candidate six months' time to decide, as they are given to select the candidate? I feel this is really unfair. Just because the job seeker is desperate should not mean that committees have the right to do whatever they wish.
   
   
4. With regard to acknowledging the receipt of applications, this should be more than a matter of courtesy; it should be a requirement. Often applicants spend hours and hours of time preparing a job application only to find that their application was never acknowledged. The department secretary or a graduate student should be able to handle this if the committee members are hard-pressed for time.
   
   
5. Time in academe is always misused. Professors have thousands of hours for donut and coffee breaks but they have no time to
   respond to a well-qualified job seeker. Many ads say they will accept
   applications until a suitable candidate is found. If a commitee can have such a policy, then I say I should also be given time to find and accept the job offer that is most suitable for me. I need to have six months to figure out the if job offer in my hand is in fact the best one. Can I have that luxury? Absolutely not!
   
   
6. Regarding ads that list multiple specialties. Committees, make up your minds. Have your internal fights and reach a consensus and let the world know what are you looking for. If you are not sure what you want then why are you asking? Why are you wasting applicants' time and your time?
   
   
7. What is this idea of waiting until the best candidate is found?  
   If that's the goal then searchs should extend over 10 years or more. A committee may never find the best candidate, even it waits for a
   lifetime. An ideal search process should focus on what the deparment needs and in what area and not the best candidate in an area that is
   not relevant to the department's current needs.
   
   
8. With regard to providing candidates with possible dates for interviews and rejection letters, I am sure commitees have some dates in mind for completing their search and selecting a candidate. Universities require deadlines and so do departments. Why not let the candidates know this (e.g., " We will be interviewing three candidates for this position. We are planning to complete the search process by the end of  June. We intend to send rejection letters by mid July. Please contact us if you have not heard from us before July ends."
   
   This is not so hard and complicated ...
   

There are many loose ends that need to be tied in the job-search process in academe. In almost all cases, the job seeker comes across as patient and accommodating, while search committees with no sense of time and no understanding of the emotional distress of
applicants bask in their comfortable positions with the attitude " I've got
nothing to lose."

I am not trying to paint a very bad picture of the search process. The process, for the most part, is fair but it could stand to be improved and made easier on both applicants and the members of committees.  

I hope my views make some some sense to readers and search-committee members.

Thanks.

- Job seeker

[Frankly]

These tips are quite interesting to read. My own recommendations would be different for how to improve the relationship between job seekers and search committees. I would agree with "Anon" that a lot of the initially posted suggestions are impractical ... Alas, Anon's snide and antagonistic criticisms show a lack of professionalism that hopefully is not common yet.

Truth be told, I have been treated quite well by search committees thus far; much of that positive treatment has been in terms of reasonable response times, making it easy to get to and from job interviews, and a clarity of expectations during interviews. I would say that search committees would do well to keep an eye on those facets of the job-search process.

[Annoyed job seeker]

Here's my small contribution to the debate.

This is how to really annoy at least one of your job candidates. You first send a message congratulating him or her for having made the first shortlist of 10 people, and you ask if he/she remains interested. The answer is, of course. You then promise that this first shortlist will be narrowed to five people within a week, and that phone calls will come soon, and at the very least the job candidate will know shortly of his/her status. The job candidate does his/her best to accommodate your committee. Five weeks (or more) later, he/she remains in limbo, having no idea what has happened.

Now I understand the difficulties faced by committees and by all colleges in these tough financial times. People have lives, things go wrong, everyone is busy, and life is complicated. Nonetheless, courtesy does matter. If something happens, at the very least behave like another college and send the candidates brief letters, which apologize for the unexplained delay (no details are necessary); let them know they have not been forgotten, and that a decision will come as soon as possible.

You can guess which school I prefer. And don't worry, until at least one firm offer has been made, the search continues.

[Marcus Welby]

One more for the list:

If the department has a preferred candidate for the position before the search really begins, indicate such in the advertisement rather than wasting graduate students' time and energy and soiling the reputation of the department. In these "pro forma" searches, interview candidates by telephone rather than inviting them to campus. That way everyone should know where they stand.

[Anon]

Sorry for sounding snide and antagonistic! I just sometimes am astonished by the posts to this forum. About 99 percent of them are reasonable, and even if naive, posted thoughtfully and from a balanced perspective. I suppose I was caught unawares by the tone of that post and responded in kind. It is sort of like when a kid gives a parent a list of demands that says things such as no school, candy for all meals, no bedtime, etc. v. some reasonable negotiation of the rules. Some days mom and dad take it seriously and have a frank discussion, other days they get pissed off! I'll be sure to be more kindly in the future.

[Tippi]

Until there are more jobs than candidates, not much will change and we will have to hope that most departments do have a modicum of consideration. In my experience, very few fail to deliver at least the main one or two courtesies that Frankly mentions.

[Not surprised]

I saw ad that was written specifically for the visiting assistant professor that the department now has:

XYZ University "seeks applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor position in the Music Department beginning August 2003. Teaching duties include undergraduate applied horn, undergraduate and graduate music history, sight singing, and ear training. Other duties will be assigned according to the candidate's background and experience.

"Qualifications: DMA preferred, ABD required with at least one of the graduate degrees in music history. Evidence of successful performing experience at the professional level and at least two years of full-time college teaching experience."

All of the qualifications and teaching duties mentioned in the ad match those of the visiting assistant professor that they already have there at XYZ University and not one of them deviates even slightly. And these qualifications are quite specific, so it is completely obvious that the ad was written for the VAP, and there is absolutely no point in anyone else applying at all.

[A grad student]

What's kind of interesting is the contrast between faculty searches and graduate-student recruitment. There are structural similarities that should make the two processes resemble each other more (i.e., 20-50 reasonably qualified applicants for each slot -- OK, this does not approach the threshhold of 100-300 applicants per position that can occur in humanities searches, but it is a qualitatively similar phenenomenon, with committees consisting of busy, distracted/disinterested professors, unclear guidelines about proportion of people in this or that specialty to admit each year, etc.)

A big difference is the CGS (Council of Graduate Schools) deadline that forces decisions to be made and communicated prior to April 15th. Another is that technically it is probably easier to get rid of a grad student that is determined later to be unacceptable than to remove a tenure-track assistant professor, for instance, so maybe the stakes are not quite as high.  

But just going with some of the similarities for the moment it is worth noting that prospective graduate students tend to be treated with considerably more respect than prospective faculty members. In general, emails are responded to, applications are acknowledged, applicants are given approximate timelines and even updated on the status of the decision process (if they ask).  

Is it simply the absence of an externally imposed deadline that prevents such courtesy in faculty searches? Or the slightly more involved process of retroactively "righting" a mistake? Or is it simply the difference between having 100-500 applicants for 5-10 positions v. 100-300 applicants for 1 position?

[T]

I like your suggestions; many of them make a lot of sense. However, there is one thing that I have not seen mentioned in this forum yet, and that is how academic job searches relate to job searches in the "real world." Having been in that corporate world for the better part of 20 years, and attempting to make the transition to the world of academe, I can tell you without reservation that it is much the same. Unclear requirements, pro forma searches to cover backsides in hiring an already-chosen insider, insensitivity to common courtesy in notifyng candidates when decisions are made (or not) are the norm rather than the exception. The issues are the same. A prospective employer holds the future career of every candidate in his/her hands. All the excuses about lack of time, staff ect. ... are just that ... excuses. These are the facts of life. I don't mean to sound like I am whining, I am not. I have simply resigned myself to this reality, and have adjusted my expectations accordingly.

[Anon]

Thank you, T!

I have written uncountable times in this forum over the years that the job search and general work practices in the corporate/business world are usually worse than those in academe, not better or more professional, as moaning A.B.D.'s and jobless Ph.D.'s love to write.

I too speak from experience, also having had many years on the outside in business. Of course, some business searches are exemplary, as are some academic ones. My general hunch is that most academics have never had a job in business, a real job, with a good salary/benefits, etc. not an entry-level or part-time grunt job, have never worked in a withering corporate environment (I think lots of luck when I read about how they long to escape academe so they can "work from 9-5 and have more time for "life" -- yeah, if you're a file clerk!), or been screwed for promotions, raises, prestige, etc. -- all the things academics complain of too.

Academics, for the most part, just don't know what nonacademic hiring, interviewing, or work is about, thus they go on and on about how the terrible practices of academic search commitees would "never be tolerated" in corporate America. Insert wild, maniacal, pitying laughter here. But alas, it is a gripe that, perhaps because it makes people feel better, just won't die, sort of like an urban legend!

[Another perspective]

I have to add that some search committees do make an effort to keep candidates informed of the status of the search and the probable dates for various decisions. It makes sense to do this along the way, however, rather than spend the extra money to put all the deadlines in the ad as "Job seeker" suggests. (Money is tight in most departments!) In an e-mail acknowledging receipt of the application, include the probable date for setting the shortlist, and so on.

My suggestion is that job ads should state the standard teaching load at their school. Put "4/4 with possibility of teaching reduction" if that is truly the case. I try to tailor my application to the amount of teaching likely to be required in any job. Also, although I try to be flexible about my expectations, I have agreed with my partner that we will not move our family to a really undesirable location unless the job is 3/4 or better. As a result, I spend a lot of time browsing the Web site of a school, trying to determine the probable teaching load. I shouldn't waste my time and the committee's time in applying for a job I don't want. The time is well spent when it's a job I do want, but it could be better spent researching other aspects of the school rather than just counting classes on the registrar's Web site.