Friday, February 8, 2008

Inside Man

By Richard Riofrio

I was on the academic job market in English eight years in a row. The first four times, I applied all over the place, searching for (and eventually finding) my first tenure-track job. The next four times, I applied selectively, searching for a position more closely aligned with my academic and personal interests.

Although each year on the market was different, one thing remained constant: the conviction that the whole thing was a crap shoot. I was certain that nothing could be more unpredictable, inscrutable, and arbitrary than an academic search committee. While trying to make sense of this or that committee's decisions, I often wondered, "What on earth are those folks thinking?"

This year I got a chance to find out.

My department advertised an opening and asked me to serve on the search committee. So far, we have sifted through approximately 130 applications and identified 13 candidates for preliminary interviews. For those of you convinced that the hiring process is incomprehensible, I offer the following observations from a job-market veteran getting his first glimpse at its inner workings.

The Odds

That my university is relatively unknown, yet still received so many applications, speaks volumes about the market in English. Our department secretary came to dread the arrival of the day's mail. Even though we initially requested only cover letters and CV's from the applicants, those materials alone filled six huge binders.

With so many applications to evaluate, I wanted to get an early start. But it took me several days to move past the first few cover letters because I could not bring myself to assign scores that I knew would disqualify people. My heart went out to all those who had been kicked around, beaten down, and driven out.

As someone who had spent two years in an adjunct capacity and struggled to find a tenure-track job, I had to sympathize. But with so many super-qualified candidates, I could not help but move on. Expediency eventually won out over emotion, and I found myself reading less compassionately and more critically.

Of the 30 candidates who made our initial cut, almost all were in the final year of their Ph.D. programs. Four were in their first or second year as postdoctoral fellows, two were in their first year as visiting assistant professors, and one was in her first year as a full-time lecturer. In other words, the odds were against you if you were applying for our position as an adjunct or a lecturer -- not because we wanted a fresh Ph.D., but because we wanted promising research. And those who don't have the luxury of a graduate stipend or a light teaching load have a hard time producing scholarship on par with those who do.

The Institution

I went into the search determined to look past the letterhead and give full consideration to people who hadn't earned their Ph.D.'s from elite universities. I was disturbed, then, to discover that most of the candidates who made my short list came from prestigious places.

I read all of the files a second time seeking to counteract what was apparently an institutional prejudice on my part. Even upon a third reading, though, I found that the cover letters coming from elite institutions were dramatically more sophisticated, professional, and provocative than the letters from other universities.

Ultimately (and I suppose this might be a dodge), I resigned myself to what I saw as a close correlation between the quality of a candidate and the quality of his or her institution. That correlation is not necessarily attributable to intelligence or ability (it could just as easily result from better financial support or career counseling), but whatever its cause, the institution was indicative of a candidate's quality.

The All-Important Publication

When I was an applicant, I developed something of a fetish for the scholarly article. I tried to place as many essays as I could, convinced that a long list of publications would effectively obligate search committees to interview me. As I have reviewed the applications in our search, however, I've found that all I really want from new or budding Ph.D.'s is one strong publication.

For me, a publication is important insofar as it offsets my lack of familiarity with the field we're looking to fill. Although I'm pretty sure I can spot an innovative project, I look to the peer-review process for a seal of approval. But I need only one seal of approval, not several. In fact, there might even be a point of diminishing returns insofar as articles are concerned. If I saw too many articles drawn from a candidate's dissertation, I began to worry about the project's viability as a book.

I was also surprised at how dismissive I was of encyclopedia entries, book reviews, articles in second- or third-tier journals, and essays under consideration. While such things attest to an applicant's interest in developing a scholarly profile, they are not, in themselves, a scholarly profile.

The Fear of Overinterpretation

When sending off my own job materials, I used to shudder to think of the kind of close reading to which my cover letter and CV would be subjected. If our search committee is any indication, though, it's not as bad as all that.

Although we read carefully and critically, we were willing to forgive the occasional typo or grammatical error. We noticed -- but did not dwell on -- unexplained gaps in educational or employment history. And we assumed good motives.

We were a bit bewildered, for instance, to receive an application from an outstanding young scholar with a tenure-track appointment at a top-tier research university. We could only guess at her interest in our position, but we decided to pursue it, presuming that she had put her name forward in good faith.

Our committee tried to resist the temptation to read between the lines, because what was in the lines was often bad enough. Several candidates took themselves out of the running by divulging too much. Applicants hurt their own prospects when they were too forthcoming about their personal challenges, professional setbacks, or difficult circumstances -- not because they had experienced challenges or setbacks but because they had misread the rhetorical moment of the job letter, striking an overtly apologetic or overly personal tone in a document calling for greater reserve.

If something about an application screamed for explanation, a vague or general accounting (e.g., "family matters") was more effective than full disclosure.

The Results

Because I was suspicious that academic hires hinged on caprice as much as qualifications, I worried about our own committee's ability to settle on a short list. How would we ever align our idiosyncratic tastes in such a way as to form a consensus?

As a starting point, I suggested that we independently rate each applicant on a scale from 0 to 6. Upon compiling the scores, I was amazed at their consistency. Twenty percent of the candidates received identical scores from all four members of the search committee; another 75 percent received scores so closely aligned that the difference between their highest and lowest marks was less than two.

By and large, we were in agreement about an applicant's fit for our position. Whimsy, in other words, played a much smaller role than I had imagined.

That is not to say, however, that it was easy for us to exclude applicants. The field was deep and -- especially at the top -- tightly bunched. The hollow-sounding rhetoric of the rejection letter, with its conciliatory comments about a tremendously qualified pool of applicants and an extremely difficult set of decisions, quickly acquired the ring of truth. We really did have a tremendously qualified pool of applicants, and we really did have to make extremely difficult decisions.

The other commonplace of rejection letters that became reality is the one about fit: "The search committee was impressed by your application but ultimately favored a few other candidates who better fit our current needs." I had always thought that was an elegant yet empty excuse.

But that sense dissipated as I read through applications and tried to imagine candidates as colleagues. Although our job announcement was quite generic, I discovered that our job was not. The unique ethos of our institution and the specific needs of our department gave it a fairly specific shape, the contours of which became clear as we tried to fit people into it.

So the "fit" thing is factual. The long list of publications is not a silver bullet. And the search committee is not a many-headed monster governed by special interests and personal preferences. All of which, I must say, came as something of a surprise -- especially that last one. For the past eight years, I've styled myself the victim of hiring committees that have not seen my considerable merits because their vision has been clouded by individual prejudice, narcissistic investments, and a fascination for the latest theoretical fads.

I've changed my tune.

After seeing a search committee in action, I'm confident that most do a good job identifying the candidates best suited for their respective positions. Self-interest and group-think undoubtedly influence some decisions, but I suspect that most searches proceed pretty efficiently.

To say that hiring committees are efficient, however, is not to deny that the job search itself is highly unfair. There's nothing fair about the fact that we didn't even interview 40 applicants who were quite evidently qualified for our position. But the problem here is not with the mechanism. Search committees are adept at finding the right peg for their respective holes. It's just that there aren't nearly enough holes for all the pegs needing a place.

That is small consolation for the hundreds of Ph.D.'s who can't find a job, I know. But I now recognize that the emotion most appropriate to the job search is not hostility (at a seemingly capricious hiring committee) but rather hopelessness (at an out-of-whack equation of supply and demand).