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[hulahu]

Since most SC's for legal reasons are not allowed to tell candidates why they were not hired, I thought I would start a thread on the reasons. Maybe this will help other applicants. Here are a few from my recent experience:
1. You seemed arrogant. You acted as if you were a shoo-in for the job, and that we should be grateful that you would consider working here. You implied that you were a "hot commodity" on the job market. You may be, but we still don't want you.
2. This may be specific to my departmental culture, so I am interested in whether other people would take this the same way--we are on the east coast, and you were coming from the west. Understandably, you wanted to avoid taking the red eye home after your interview. That part is understandable. But..during your on-site interview, you made the mistake of telling us what you were doing with the extra time between the end of our interview and your flight the next afternoon. It turns out that you were meeting with some colleagues at a university a few miles from ours, and you were open about this. Some of us suspected that you were job hunting/networking there, on our dime. This seemed like an over reaction to me, and you probably were just meeting to discuss mutual interests (as you stated)--but we have issues with university X.
Better tactic--make a point of saying that you want to stay over so you can stick to your morning writing schedule. Talk about how much you looking forward to working on your current manuscript before your flight home. This makes you look productive, and therefore a good fit for our department. What you actually do with that time is none of our business, in my opinion.
3. You had a poorly prepared job talk.
4. We know someone at your current university who is not on your reference list. They gave us the "real scoop" on you, and it was not positive. Or maybe we just happened to know the one person on the faculty who didn't like you. Too bad for you.

[rockprof]

I've been on SCs her at my CC.  Here are some reasons we've rejected people at the campus interview stage (if they've made it to the campus interview, they're good on paper).

1. You have no clue about CCs.  You were talking about all the cutting edge research you would be doing here (with no support from the school and a 30 credit hour per year teaching schedule? Get real!)

2. Your teaching presentation was pathetic and made it hard for us to stay awake.  No way would we inflict you upon our students.

3. You had an unpleasant personality and no one on the committee wanted you as a colleague for the next 20 years (people tend to stick around here).

4. We're in a rural area and you were making mocking jokes about it.  We choose to live in the country, you couldn't pay me enough to live in a major city, so you're mocking our homes and families.

5. We got the distinct impression you really didn't want to work at a CC, you just wanted a job and were willing to settle for us until something better came along.

[svenc]

Someone else was a better fit for our needs.

[helpful]

You didn't even deign to look at our course lists and talk about why you wanted to teach X course and had ideas on how to teach it.

When we asked you which course you would be able to teach, you said, in an off hand way, oh, X, Y and Z. When we asked why you had no answer.

[larryc]

Here are some reasons that candidates did not get hired in my department's recent searches:

1. You bombed the teaching demonstration. Your lecture was boring, sounded too much like a chapter of your dissertation, or contained huge factual errors.

2. You went out of the way whenever possible to identify yourself as a partisan of a certain part of the country. We are not in that part of the country and I can't imagine what you were getting at. And I will never find out now will I?

3. You made it abundantly clear that the main attraction of the job was the chance to leave early every day so you could be with your kids. Whipping out the pictures at dinner only reinforced this impression.

4. You had such powerful body odor that the SC members argued vociferously over who would have to drive you back to the airport.

5. You did your graduate work in Florida. Your dissertation is about Cuba. And yet you have never been to Cuba. You explained at some length how it is absolutely impossible for Americans to go to Cuba--but that is not true, I have been twice in the time you were working on your dissertation.

6. The syllabus you submitted included an autobiography by a person who made up most of the pivotal events described therein. When we brought this up you ducked the question. You did not seem to realize that when my colleagues asked you: "Does the truth have any place in your classroom?" that was a criticism.

[pink_]

You made it pretty clear that you were only interested in an offer from us to use as leverage for another job.

You were rude to the dept. secretary.

You blew the teaching demo--you didn't even bother to introduce yourself to our students, and when they asked you a question, you rolled your eyes. 

We already have someone on faculty who works in your subfield.

[mended_drum]

You did a fantastic job; so did the other candidates we brought to campus.  Candidate X, however, had a minor field that our students have expressed some interest in or which we'll need to cover when the next faculty member retires.

Honestly, this has been true eight of the last nine candidates we've interviewed on campus who didn't get the job.  None of them did anything wrong at all. 

[ptprof]

1. You bombed the teaching demonstration. Your lecture was boring, sounded too much like a chapter of your dissertation, or contained huge factual errors.

As scary as this sounds, this is the biggest problem we've faced in recent years.  We tend to assign challenging teaching topics and a relatively limited period of time, but we want to see how you handle the situation.  Skipping large areas, having huge (and I mean HUGE) and/or repeated factual errors, and not presenting on the assigned topic.  

Clearly the concept of practicing and getting feedback is seriously lacking.

[englitprof]

6. The syllabus you submitted included an autobiography by a person who made up most of the pivotal events described therein. When we brought this up you ducked the question. You did not seem to realize that when my colleagues asked you: "Does the truth have any place in your classroom?" that was a criticism.

This autobiography wouldn't have been I, Rigoberta Manchu (or something like that), would it?  But maybe saying would out the person...

[yellowtractor]

OK, here are mine, from two recent searches at two schools:

1.  Your job talk was extremely interesting, but your teaching demo was essentially an alternate version of your job talk, replete with some of the same PowerPoint slides.  This is a SLAC; our students did not enjoy being lectured at.  Nor did we enjoy hearing much of the same material repeated, without any change or additional nuance.

2.  Twice during your teaching demo you responded to student questions with boilerplate, which suggested that you did not actually hear the students' questions.  This may have simply been nerves, we realize.  But the successful candidate listened to our students.

3.  Here at HappySLAC we like faculty who have deep research interests in certain fields or subfields but who are able to connect those subfields to some sort of larger context.  In fact, we invited you because your c.v. suggested you had both breadth and depth.  In person, however, you insisted on speaking only about your dissertation and seemed reluctant to consider the idea that you might be asked to teach a subject outside of your immediate comfort zone, even in areas pertinent to your dissertation and graduate coursework.

4.  You seemed to think that your solid-Ivy vita would be enough to cover up for your lack of social skills.  We found you to be cold and distant.  We do not like cold and distant.

5.  When we discovered that we were running a little late in our schedule, you opined that we might skip the allotted time for meeting with students.  This suggested that you found meeting with our students the most expendable item on the agenda.  We felt otherwise, and so we paid even closer attention than usual to your interactions with our students.  You did not impress.

6.  You repeatedly asked with whom each of us on the faculty had studied, then tried to make connections between your graduate advisors and ours.  A little of this is called "making conversation."  A lot of this is creepy name-dropping.

7.  The theoretical models you employed in your job talk were cutting edge circa 1982.  You appear to have read no recent literature in your field.  Attempts on our part to draw you out on more recent literature--including literature you cite in your dissertation--reduced you to stuttering confusion.

8.  Actually, you did a really wonderful job.  But we also had a candidate who did just as wonderfully and who had a teaching subfield in X.  We hadn't included X in the job ad, but we'd been discussing how much we really need somebody who could teach X--so we jumped at your competitor.  We did like you.  We're really, really, really sorry.  Really.

9.  You referred to our administrative assistant as "the secretary."  In her hearing.  As if she weren't there.  Good luck, and goodbye.

[svenc]

OK, I wish I was making some of these up, but they're all from recent experience:

1) When we tried to arrange for you to stay at the hotel closest to campus (a fine hotel, and certainly most convenient for our purposes), you insisted on staying at another hotel downtown.  And you were rude to the administrative assistant about it.

2) Your job talk was on a paper that a member of the SC had reviewed last year for a journal submission.  Not only did the paper suck then, but you still had not addressed the fatal flaws that the SC member had kindly pointed out in the letter that accompanied the editor's rejection.

3)  You're a wonderful person.  You were also our top choice when we brought you on to campus.  You just happened to bomb the committee interview, the job talk, and the teaching presentation.  Really, if you had only bombed one of the three we would be hiring you right now, but you made it impossible.

4)  You bored us.  Boring, boring, boring.  I can't even remember your name now, you were so darned boring.  We don't care how good your research will be in five years, we just don't want you around.

5)  You weren't really a strong candidate, but you shouldn't have told me that story anyway.  No, I wasn't on the SC -- but they knew about it the next day.

[yellowtractor]

5)  You weren't really a strong candidate, but you shouldn't have told me that story anyway.  No, I wasn't on the SC -- but they knew about it the next day.

Oh yes, forgot about that one.

[larryc]

We tend to assign challenging teaching topics and a relatively limited period of time, but we want to see how you handle the situation. 

We encourage candidates to choose the demonstration topic. "We want to see you at your best," we tell them. So when you bomb your demo with us we take it badly.

[chocolate_jazz]

Disclaimer: I have never served on a search committee. I'm an ABD who's experiencing hu's first year on the market, so take what I say with a grain of salt.  From friends who've served on SCs, however, I've heard the following stories (as well as from witnessing a few job searches at my own school and getting the inside scoop from the hiring faculty):

*Candidate with a stellar scholarly record didn't ask even one question about the institution during the campus visit
*When asked how hu would expand the institution's program in X Studies, the candidate replied, "If someone's not interested in X, I can't force them to take the class"
*Candidate was condescending to a grad student during the Q&A of hu's job talk (and the same candidate introduced hu's job talk as "practice" for the talk hu would be giving at a major conference)
*Candidate had incomprehensible spoken English
*Candidate's publications were all translations or interviews, no original scholarly work
*Qualified candidate was humble when asked if hu was qualified to teach courses in X and responding in a self-deprecating manner; an offer was made to the not-so-humble candidate who proved to be not-so-qualified, either
*The job search was a sham--it was a targeted search, and the big name who was the target declined the offer; even though the other candidate was also a big name, hu was never really being considered
*This is going to come across as un-PC, but it's true: in a discipline where there are very few who identify as Martian American, a very talented Martian American was short-listed; the other candidate, a heterosexual white male, never stood a chance, even though both candidates were about the same on paper (both ABDs from Ivies, neither had publications, etc)
*Candidate's breath was unbearably bad, and hu liked to invade people's personal space when talking
*During job talk Q & A, candidate responded to a query about hu's theoretical framework by saying "I refuse to answer your question"   

[comp_queen]

This is a bit tangential--my hope is to offer more evidence of just how random this whole process is and remind people that we can't blame ourselves.  It occurred to me today that at one of my on-campus interviews last year the SC was actually TRYING to trip me up.  They deliberately misdirected me during my teaching demo--what about the red apple?  No I said what about the green apple?  No no I really want to hear about the red apple--like that.

And then the faculty person who was in on the interview with the admin people was making a "bit a lemon" face when the admin people responded quite, quite positively to me.  So they clearly had an internal candidate they wanted to hire--fine.  Where did being rude to a total stranger come into the equation?  Academe needs to stop this "must do a national search" nonsense, hire insiders when they're around, and only advertise jobs that actually ARE open.

And then back in my first year on the market, reading between the lines of what I was told in rejection phone conversations I actually performed better in every aspect of the campus visit than the person who was ultimately hired.  I was told that hu was thisclose to completing a PhD.  Okay, fine.  That's a BS reason for rejecting someone from a CC, but okay, if that's what they want.  Pursuant to this thread, I just went and checked out that school's website.  The person does not have a PhD.  Based on the terminal degree hu has, hu was never even in a PhD program.  If you're gonna lie to CQ, at least tell lies that it takes more than 20 seconds to establish as demonstrably false.

I know, expecting logic here on Earth.  I should go to bed now :)