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[holdthresh]

How many of you on a search committee have taken the time to Google someone and read a blog or a RateMyProfessor entry?  How much do they factor into your decision?  Do they ever really hurt or help?

[larryc]

If you make our short list I am going to google you. I take the RMP ratings with a huge shaker of salt but I certainly would consider your blog fair game for judging how you present yourself to the world.

[yellowtractor]

I would Google anyone who made the short list also.  Don't worry, SC members are generally smart enough to differentiate academic John Smith of Cleveland from marathon-runner John Smith of Bakersfield and ex-con evangelical minister John Smith of Topeka.  But if you do have a personal website or blog that explicitly identifies you as Prof. Smith, expect that at least somebody will read same and factor what they've read into their deliberations.

[johnr]

A confession.  I googled one of our "short list" candidates last year and read their RMP profile.  It was terrible.  Really horrible.  Many ratings, all of them bad, and not bad in terms of being a hard grader, but bad in terms of organizational skills, coming late to class, ridiculing students in class, never handing back homework, and other such horrors. 

It put me on high alert and I had trouble ignoring it, even though I knew better. Fortunately, the candidate withdrew his application for some reason and the RMP rating never came into play.  Now I worry about how the RMP might unfairly affect applicants.  Since I, apparently, can't be trusted, I don't look at it now when considering candidates, but the urge to do so is nearly irresistible.  I will look at the applicant's web page however; we haven't had a candidate with a blog yet (at least not that I know of). 

Oh for god's sake, my spell checker doesn't recognize "blog". That's a bit ironic.

[helpful]

To me it is unethical to look at RMP. The site is unethical; why should I look at it?

[larryc]

How is it unethical to look at RMP, or any other site? How is the site unethical for that matter?

[helpful]

At least our course evaluations come from students in our classes. There is no way of knowing whether RMP evaluations come from our students or just any Tom, Dick, or Harriet. They could come from friends of the professor or enemies.

[larryc]

Sure, but everyone knows that. It is a crappy site and the information is highly suspect. Yet "unethical" seems a bit of a stretch.

[helpful]

Well, it all depends on what one defines as ethical practices in evaluating professors.

BTW, Larry, [interthread alert],  you should apply for that NMSU job -- right up your alley!

[comp_queen]

Here again, anyone who has a blog that isn't purely professional and isn't also PRIVATE is an idiot (which I guess would tell you something about the candidate in and of itself). 

I have a couple of those social networking profiles, but I'm only "friends" with people I already know--we basically use this as a way to share photos. 

I don't blog anymore (of course my blog was about, like, going to the hardware store, not political or juicily personal or anything, just slice of life) because I'm highly paranoid, but the fact is that if I wanted to blog my deepest darkest secrets I could . . . and no one I haven't previously approved could see them . . . because I took the five seconds to click a little "private" box.

Yeesh.

[johnr]

To me it is unethical to look at RMP. The site is unethical; why should I look at it?

You've never looked at RMP? Ever?  Amazing...you "ethical" standards are indeed saint like.  And as my mother would always say when folks would go on and on about how wonderful my father was, "Sugar, it's easier to be a saint than to live with one".

[regular_joe]

Gotta tell ya, I honestly find it disturbing that people on SCs are looking to Rate My Professor to evaluate candidates. The RMP ratings for my colleagues are almost completely very positive for the pushovers and easy graders and almost completely vitriolic or at best lukewarm for a couple of profs whom I know to be excellent, dedicated teachers who *really* care about their students learning something (and are organized and dynamic lecturers to boot). The pissed-off students are always much more motivated to write their reviews than students who are happy with the instructor. (As an example, how many times do you as consumers sit down to write letters of complaint about poor customer service compared to how many times you write letters commending excellent employees? The urge is always much greater when we're angry about something than when we are satsified or pleased.)

Elsewhere I've expressed my disregard for student evaluations and that I do not think they should be used in personnel decisions. It's not as though we can expect unbiased evaluation from students who are being graded for the course. (The only exception I would imagine is if the anonymous evals were numbered and then correlated to grades earned in a course and the professor would not see this info---just the personnel committee; for example: students #2, 5, 6, and 28 wrote scathing evals, but they earned an F, D, F, and D- respectively, so we're going to discount their comments just a tiny bit.) *Peer review*, which most departments are frankly too lazy to do, should be the chief criterion for personnel teaching reviews. This involves syllabus, test, and other material review, multiple class observations by different faculty members, reading the faculty member's narrative of lessons learned about teaching, and so on.

But, come on, people, RMP is a total joke! I mean, really! For those of you who consult it before deciding to interview someone---what is RMP telling you that you can be assured is honest and reliable information that cannot be determined from the teaching portfolio in the application or by calling up the candidate's current chair?

Since I, apparently, can't be trusted, I don't look at it now when considering candidates, but the urge to do so is nearly irresistible. 

I can't believe that anyone finds the urge to consult RMP when evaluating candidates "nearly irresistable"!

[johnr]

Gotta tell ya, I honestly find it disturbing that people on SCs are looking to Rate My Professor to evaluate candidates. The RMP ratings for my colleagues are almost completely very positive for the pushovers and easy graders and almost completely vitriolic or at best lukewarm for a couple of profs whom I know to be excellent, dedicated teachers who *really* care about their students learning something (and are organized and dynamic lecturers to boot). The pissed-off students are always much more motivated to write their reviews than students who are happy with the instructor. (As an example, how many times do you as consumers sit down to write letters of complaint about poor customer service compared to how many times you write letters commending excellent employees? The urge is always much greater when we're angry about something than when we are satsified or pleased.)

Elsewhere I've expressed my disregard for student evaluations and that I do not think they should be used in personnel decisions. It's not as though we can expect unbiased evaluation from students who are being graded for the course. (The only exception I would imagine is if the anonymous evals were numbered and then correlated to grades earned in a course and the professor would not see this info---just the personnel committee; for example: students #2, 5, 6, and 28 wrote scathing evals, but they earned an F, D, F, and D- respectively, so we're going to discount their comments just a tiny bit.) *Peer review*, which most departments are frankly too lazy to do, should be the chief criterion for personnel teaching reviews. This involves syllabus, test, and other material review, multiple class observations by different faculty members, reading the faculty member's narrative of lessons learned about teaching, and so on.

But, come on, people, RMP is a total joke! I mean, really! For those of you who consult it before deciding to interview someone---what is RMP telling you that you can be assured is honest and reliable information that cannot be determined from the teaching portfolio in the application or by calling up the candidate's current chair?

Since I, apparently, can't be trusted, I don't look at it now when considering candidates, but the urge to do so is nearly irresistible. 

I can't believe that anyone finds the urge to consult RMP when evaluating candidates "nearly irresistable"!

Regular Joe, you prove my point.  You are someone who admittedly considers RMP to be a total joke (and I consider it a total joke as well) and yet your post indicates that have spent some considerable amount of time on the site analyzing and correlating your colleague's ratings with their actual performance.  You have actively searched out your colleague's ratings. Some consider that unethical. 

My point is that RMP is out there and easy to access and people are looking at it (you're looking at it). Call me a realist, call me a pessimist, call me weak, but if I had horrible RMP ratings I would be worried about it if I were on the job market.

[larryc]

God I hate the whole hiring system and how it turns so many job seekers (including myself, a few years back) into unhappy, paranoid creatures. In this high stakes game where not everyone is going to land a job I don't blame anyone for worrying about things like RMP and working up a high dudgeon over the ethics of even visiting the site. Having someone like me admit to visiting the site probably does not help and I wish i had just lied about it.

Friends, relax. We googling search committee members are not venal or dumb. We know what RMP is and is not, and if we visit it at all we don't take it seriously. You are not going to miss out on a job because of Rate My Professor. Or because you signed that Tofu Enthusiasts Against the War petition that your room mate shoved in front of your face (who knew they would put it online!), or because of the drunk and disorderly charge you got the night you passed your comps, or because of your letter to the editor about spaying and neutering your pets.

You cannot control the information available to search committees. Just remember that we have the same level of information about your competition. If you have a strong application package and apply widely you will get something.  Good luck.


(Helpful: NMSU job? I am slow this evening!)

[fiona]

Doesn't anyone who worries about the RMP reports just post a bunch of glowing reports about him/herself?

Anyone who doesn't do that is also an idiot. That's the way to neutralize RMP and not worry about it.

The Fiona, who was given a chili pepper by an anonymous poster, I guess