May 14, 2008
Can't Everyone Do This Job?
In my last post, I asked about weird questions that folks asked (great responses, by the way — I needed the comic relief this week). I have a related topic: weird applicants.
I don’t mean weird candidates, such as “denim-jumpsuit guy” or other candidates who are qualified for positions but who are idiosyncratic. I mean weird, completely unqualified applicants you may have seen as a part of searches.
Whenever our English department advertises a position, it never ceases to amaze us how we receive applications from folks who say things like “I really like to read and though I never went to graduate school, I know I could teach as well as most literature professors.”
Yeah, that will impress actual English professors who “wasted” the better part of a decade at paltry graduate-assistant wages in order to qualify for their jobs.
Or the music candidate whose “entire family” says she really is talented and should teach because she loves to sing so much.
How about it? Surely my institution isn’t the only one that receives these kinds of applications!
By Gene C. Fant Jr. | Posted on Wednesday May 14, 2008 | PermalinkComments
Commenting is closed for this article.
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No, you’re not the only one — academic libraries receive them all the time. Sadly, just using the library a lot doesn’t qualify you to run one, any more than being an enthusiastic restaurant patron enables you to dash into the kitchen and whip up a few things.
— AK May 14, 12:22 PM #
When I was a doctoral student, one of my classmates earned a few too many “C” grades & did not complete the program.
Not only was he not committed to the program but he should have been committed. His favorite topic of conversation was his large gun collection. He especially liked to talk about his guns & how he might use them in front of faculty who were considering giving him a “C”.
Later he was admitted into another lesser doctoral program (they must have been hard up for students?) where he presumably was finishing a degree. He applied for a position in my department – where I was clearly chairing the search committee.
This also makes me wonder, do people actually read the job ads or just apply for everything rather blindly?
— Dr CW May 14, 12:53 PM #
We have someone local with a Ph.D. in a related field and military experience who applies for EVERY (and I mean every) job opening in my department. He discusses his military skills (sharpshooting for example) and how these will help him be a good university professor. I think he also worked as a parole officer.
— Comm May 14, 09:40 PM #
Our film search (I’m in an English dept) generated the most weirdos for us. A number of applicants thought “liking movies” was enough to qualify them, despite the fact that the ad required a Ph.D.
— AR May 15, 08:24 AM #
As chair of a search committee I once read a cover letter threatening that if we did not give the candidate an interview she would sue the university. Great strategy!
— JW May 15, 08:26 AM #
Academic departments are notoriously conservative and respond to applicants accordingly. “Weird” applicants may in fact be better teachers than those who “wasted” a decade in some arcane scholarly pursuit—itself a questionable choice and not at all a qualification for adequate, let alone superlative, teaching.
— DB May 15, 10:10 AM #
My favorite applicant (for a position in microbiology) had some experience as a surgeon for matadors. Ole!
— Owen May 15, 10:29 AM #
At a university with a fervent football fan base we get applications for professional staff positions from fans with no experience or credentials in hopes of getting quicker access to football tickets. We can usually tell who they are when they sign the cover letters with our version of “Go Team”.
— MJS May 15, 10:31 AM #
The weirdest applicant we have ever received was for an Interpreter/Tutor position requiring proficiency in American Sign Language. This applicant assured us he was bi-lingual because he spoke Hindi, but had no idea what ASL was.
— FAP May 15, 10:35 AM #
This happens in business all the time as well. People with degrees in other areas who apply and have NO relevant experience with the subject matter (other than they shop – umm a) business is more than shopping and b) I suppose using the same reasoning by breathing you’d then qualify for a position in biology?). Also on the upswing are the international applicants (with MA’s, MBA’s or PhD’s) who clearly haven’t read the job posting carefully, don’t fit at all and then to top it off don’t bother to have someone fluent in English read their materials and correct them. If they can’t do even this, have application materials full of major basic gramatical errors I’d hate to have to listen to them try to teach in English…
— annon May 15, 11:22 AM #
Happens on the administrative side too. I was heading a search for an experienced PR person (for a college) and got someone who worked as a driver at an elementary school in Long Island for ten years. I headed up another one for a print graphic designer and got someone who didn’t have any print pieces in her portfolio. She had been designing shoes for the past seven years, and brought five pairs in. I wouldn’t believe it myself if there weren’t six other people in the room with me.
— PRDirector May 15, 11:36 AM #
There are some fields where adherence to a particular school of thought is the most important qualification. For instance, English, Linguistics (e.g. Chomsky), psychology before 1980, Gender Studies, …. In those fields, the content that is taught is partially a tradition or religion, and some pretty mediocre people get appointments because they had the right thesis advisor.
In fields like that[*] a smart guy with no qualifications might not be all bad…
* I work in one of these fields, and while I know some very impressive people, I also know some who are better at politics and parroting the party line than anything else.
— Support Amateur Academics May 15, 11:55 AM #
I currently work in a large visual art center and have hired over 100 of our teachers. I constantly receive applications and am amazed at how many of the visual arts teaching applicants are angry at me for not calling them in for an interview when I find out they have absolutely no portfolio or examples of their own work. They made art in high school so they are absolutely qualified to teach advanced art classes, right? Incredible.
— Allison May 15, 11:59 AM #
If you think academic searches have strange applicants, you should see the applicants for positions in the Student Affairs area. I have had people apply to work with college students who believe they are qualified because they have owned a day care center, and like working with young people. My favorite was the alum who was a professional wrestler, and thought he would be a good disciplinarian for freshmen residential students. What would he do – body slam them?
— ERB May 15, 12:37 PM #
As a department head at two different universities had conducted several searches in sociology which elicited an application from the same guy several times. We would type a letter of about two sentences proclaiming that he could do the job and that he was the great-great-great grandson of Alexander the Great. He would fill the remainder of the page with a giant scrawled signature which no one could read. Top that.
— GL May 15, 12:43 PM #
I have to agree with AK (post #1) about academic libraries getting them all of the time. We’ve twice had applications from a woman who channels the dead and blogs about it, 3 apps from a guy who hasn’t worked for 25 years and who sends angry letters to department chairs excoriating them for not making their library hire him, and numerous apps from people who obviously don’t communicate well in English, who don’t have the required MLS, and who send cover letters that mention a completely different job at a completely different university. It boggles the mind.
— EB May 15, 04:25 PM #
I was a faculty member on a hiring committee to find an advisor/counselor for an urban community college. We had an applicant during the interview announce that he had no experience interacting with the “coloreds”. It looked like we might have some of “them”. Would he have to talk to them?
— Margray May 15, 05:34 PM #
Alright ,you’ve convinced me. I’m never going to apply for any kind of academic position, ever , for the rest of my life.
I’ll just stay as a happy museum educator, and leave it at that.
— Dan May 15, 07:25 PM #
We had an app for a guy who proclaimed in his cover letter that he was, (and I quote) “to put it modestly, simply the most intelligent person you will every have an opportunity to hire.
— LK May 16, 05:42 AM #
“ (end quote).
— LK May 16, 05:42 AM #
Rings true for us. I’m currently chairing a search for a VPAA at a community college. We’ve received applications from high school principals, faculty who never held an administrative position (not even dept chair!), students finishing up EdDs with NO full-time experience of any kind, educational “consultants“with no experience in a higher ed institution, and a high school English teacher. (Four days after the ad closed, the HS English teacher called wanting to know why he hadn’t heard from us yet. He acknowledged that he didn’t meet the minimum qualifications in the ad but insisted that he was, by far, the best candidate for the job.)
— DJW May 16, 06:13 AM #
I thought the applicant from #3 had applied to my office, but this one didn’t have a PhD and has applied only once (so far): a qualified expert in small arms, assault, and sniper weapons…experience in executive level protection…proven ability to communicate effectively in diverse and stressed environments.
A proven ability to communicate under stress is helpful during admissions, but I think in this case it might have a negative impact on my department’s yield.
— KD May 16, 09:11 AM #
From an on campus interview for a faculty position:
SC Question 1: So, what interests you about this position at our College?
Answer: Well, I have allergies. I have done the research: your city is one of least allergenic in the United States!
It went down from there.
— Hux May 16, 09:14 AM #
As co-chair of a library search for a cataloger, we once had a truck driver apply who said “he needed something while he was between jobs”. He did not make the cut.
— Bob May 16, 09:24 AM #
I have heard the new accepted job search strategy by my university’s Career Center is that you should apply even if you do not have all the requirements. They assured me this is the new norm.
— Anne Hasiuk May 16, 11:14 AM #
I once chaired a faculty ssearch in which we received a job application from a local retiree who had not worked in 10-20 years. It was obviously typed on a manual typewriter, the applicant listed his college graduation date as being some 60 years earlier, and then he called to say that while his references were dead, he could provide others. Most unusual.
— DRL May 16, 12:04 PM #
In an interview with the wife of an appicant for another position (the husband was considered an excellent potential hire), we asked, “why do you want to work here?”
The answer: “Because my husband wants to work here”.
— Bill May 17, 08:40 AM #
In response to #25: While this has been put out as the “new norm” for about 5 years, students need to be told that they need to explain how their other experiences fill in the gaps left by their lack of qualifications. Career centers/advisors rarely do this, or so it seems to me.
— WJS May 17, 09:37 AM #
There is a tinge of arrogance in this posting. Like many of the so-called professions, professors have enacted a number of job requirements (PhD versus whatever) that are designed to protect their own jobs, paychecks, and inflated egos. How dare those who didn’t labor for years on sometimes obscure topics of “research” think they have anything to offer students in today’s world?
— by_gosh May 19, 07:26 AM #
I know many people who have applied for academic jobs for which they are not qualified. In my experience most have been lawyers who are bored with their lives. None were thinking about students or what they might offer them; they were focused on attaining the social status that comes with being a professor. For that matter, the long summer “vacation” was also a selling point.
— Kate May 19, 08:10 AM #
I was on a search committee for an endowed chair in education policy and testing. Our most serious applicants were directly solicited from a list of senior and respected faculty and professionals in industry (with lengthy publication records as well). Per university procedure, we also posted the ad to general academic publications like the Chronicle etc. Requirements included what you would expect for an endowed chair—PhD, 15+ years of experience in field, superb teaching, dissertation adivsing experience, etc. Some of the responses were unbelievable. Schoolteachers, principals, superintendents, education lawyers, and interested citizens whose sole qualification appeared to be having once been the parent of school-aged child applied, many of them in barely coherent sentences.
— JB May 19, 08:53 AM #
The problem of premature qualificational jubilation (to paraphrase Bud Grant) seems to be universal. For example, it afflicts the current leading Democratic candidates for president “big time,” as my college-student nephew would say.
Carefully list the primary responsibilities of the CEO of the largest, most-complex, most-difficult-to-manage organization in the world — the U. S. government — and my point becomes clear. Barack Obama compares unfavorably to the dedicated reader with a couple of months of college-level work who wants to teach comparative lit right now. Hillary Clinton, who actually did take and pay for several lessons, is the strong-like-ox family accordion enthusiast trying to get into the department of ethical musicality at Yale.
I hope neither of these candidates scores a tenure-track position.
— S. Britchky May 19, 09:09 AM #
I might like to hire the applicant in #22 to provide security for my search committees!
— G. Breland May 19, 09:35 AM #
I think people apply for jobs in academia that they aren’t qualified for because outside academia if you list a job then you want to hire someone. Whereas, in academia, if someone isn’t qualified for a job, then there is no hire for that job and the job would be posted again the following year.
Outside academia if someone isn’t found for a job well, they keep posting it until they find one. University systems don’t allow that (or at least the ones I have experience in).
— Bill May 19, 10:33 AM #
I had one applicant for a technical position who had absolutely none of the qualifications listed in the job ad. However, he did fax me over 25 pages of pictures of animals from his trip to Africa. This was an appendix to his CV. Apparently this was meant to qualify him as someone with animal care experience.
— R.Burdine May 19, 10:47 AM #
How about those postings that require PHDs and still hire those who can hardlly do the job? This seems to be the latest trend:colleges and universities require PHDs who do not know how to teach, but look good in the faculty directory.
— Masterwizardg May 19, 10:57 AM #
I think we interviewed #23’s candidate, but his research was incorrect — our locale is not kind to the allergic! A few years ago we had an applicant for a music librarian position who wrote ||: Hire Me! :|| in the letter of application. No MLS, little formal music training. No interview, either.
— MightyLibrarian May 19, 12:14 PM #
In response to #29, maybe the post is arrogant, but isn’t it also just a little arrogant to assume that without any training you can do what I do? Every time we hire in our dept. of foreign languages we get apps. from people who happen to speak the language in question, but who have no training and no teaching experience. But how hard can it be, right?
— Susan May 19, 12:48 PM #
There is a serious issue concerning native speaker vs. non-native speaker instructors. In many departments, while all the instructors have Ph.D.s, the native speakers are non-tenure track. They are more fluent in the language, are often better teachers, but they are put down for teaching their own language. It’s considered less challenging than teaching a language you are nto fluent in.
Some believe that being fluent is not a qualification at all.
At a conference, I met a native English speaker who teaches Spanish. She told me that she had received special step-by-step instruction on how to teach Spanish. She wouldn’t presume to teach English to non-speakers, because she didn’t know how!
There is this presumption that rote training in how to teach somehow makes you a professional teacher. But what does this say about a person’s intelligence that they have to be taught how to teach each language separately?
— A. Katz May 19, 02:44 PM #
I’ve had applicants for middle management positions in a research library who—in addition to having no qualifications or experience—have admitted to felony convictions for receiving stolen goods, listed amongst their “computing experience” a knowledge of Microsoft Wine, and claim as community service an involvement in organizations that affirm the self-image of the obese. And I bet you thought that the library is a dull place!
— Wants to be in the Witness Protection Program May 19, 03:55 PM #
#29:
PhD programs these days focus on pedagogy as well (at least, many do). At my alma mater, the graduate school had training sessions and workshops, in addition to departmental level workshops, courses, and support for TAs and new instructors. Even now, we have faculty development workshops that talk about pedagogy. It’s not just sharing your general wisdom or appreciation.
I’ve loved literature all my life and was always an avid reader, but before I got at least an MA-level education, I wasn’t qualified to teach it in any serious context. I could have led a great book club, though.
Furthermore, if part of your job is training upper-level undergrads and graduate students to do their own research, then having labored through your own projects, and been validated by your mentors and peers for it, does matter.
— Agalma May 19, 06:21 PM #
80% of academia is commonsense. All you need is good writing, analytical, and communication skills to be successful in 80% of academia. There is nothing that an intelligent average person can’t pick the core skills in a couple of months. The technical fields is another thing. Teaching quantum mechanics, microbiology, or any of the other esoteric technical field requires robust training and experience. The remaining 80% are well common sense with a little effort you will be as good as someone who spent decades on these fields. What a waste?
— George May 19, 09:15 PM #
I really agree with the posters who think this post smacks of arrogance. PhD programs in social sciences/humanities (except for maybe top 5 in each discipline) are ridiculously easy to get into and complete.
Sorry, but a J.D. from a good school could pick up the skills to do your typical junior faculty job in about 3 months, tops.
I speak as someone with Ivy PhD and top 25 JD.
— PhD plus J.D. May 20, 12:04 AM #
As a political scientist, I meet people every day who think that political junkie equals political scientist and you don’t need any training to do the job.
What I’ve noticed recently (I’m very new to the TT) is that the best teachers are usually very mediocre researchers. Initially, I thought that’s because they spend more time on their teaching. But I’m starting to think that it’s because they have an easier time “dumbing down” the material and offering the students black and white, straightforward “facts”, whereas reality is much more complex and we know much less about exactly how political variables relate to each other. No wonder we then produce students who think political science is easy and anyone interested in politics is basically a political scientist. I’m really discouraged by this, because with the current emphasis on teaching evaluations, I don’t see how we can change this perception.
— Political scientist May 20, 02:55 AM #
Even in the humanities, there are certain basic technical abilities that should be prerequisites to being allowed to teach at the university level.
Someone not fluent in a foreign language should not be allowed to teach it. Someone who can’t hear meter should not be allowed to teach metrical poetry. Someone who is tone deaf shouldn’t be allowed to teach music.
I agree that while these should be only necessary but not sufficient conditions to employment, they are often ignored in favor of having gone through the theoretical
training program of institutional academia.
It then happens that many people who are outside academia notice that they are better at these fields than some trained academicians.
I’ve run into vocalists at prestigious music schools who cannot pick up a tune by ear, but must have the sheet music.
I’ve run into people teaching Shakespeare who may have some theoretical knowledge about iambic pentameter but who have no ear for it and couldn’t produce it to save their lives.
And of course there are the foreign language teachers who can conjugate and decline but do not speak fluently.
They may have worked harder than the non-academician at attaining their credentials, but hard work isn’t everything. It may not be fair, but talent and fluency do count
— A. Katz May 20, 08:03 AM #
Masterwizardg (#36), I disagree with your viewpoint. You are right that colleges and universities like to fill their directories with Ph.D.s (and top 10 Ph.D. program alumni). I am, however, also observing a trend that every college and university wants “great teachers,” absolving students from any effort to learn on their own. Basically, there is a trend to turn colleges and universities into how we would like the perfect high school to be. This includes treating young adults like students at an elite high school instead of independent adults. Whatever happened to college and university students listening to boring lectures and doing all of the work themselves? That system, which all of the M.Ed.s dismiss nowadays, was the one that produced the greatest achievements in our country’s history.
— semper idem Jun 4, 10:43 AM #
I’m not sure we really disagree. The students at today’s universities think that they can earn a grade by simply “working hard”, just as many of their professors did on their advanced degrees. Nobody is willing to take responsibility for the fact that real learning doesn’t come by following a recipe, and you can’t be guaranteed that you will learn anything by doing assigned exercises, doing research (which consists merely of looking things up in the library), and by writing A papers, for which, apparently, there is some kind of formula that anyone can follow with a little effort.
I once had a student who was failing a Hebrew language class I was teaching. He asked me how he could improve his grade. I told him he should attend the class (he wasn’t ever there), do the assigned work, participate in classroom language exercises and pass the midterm and final. He asked: “Isn’t there something else I could do,instead?” I was baffled. “Such as what?” “Maybe I could write a paper about Hebrew?”
There are many programs where you can pass any class by writing a paper ABOUT what you’re supposed to be learning. But in subjects with real content, such as math, music, and foreign languages you can’t write a paper about the subject. You actually have to know it. In those classes, people with talent do well with less effort, and people without talent often fail no matter how hard they try.— A. Katz Jun 4, 02:59 PM #