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By Michelle Parker

It's the heart of the job-hunting season, which, if you're lucky, is a time filled with the hope of phone interviews, campus visits, and job offers. So far, however, this season has offered me a good deal of anxiety, heartburn, and big bills at the post office and office-supply store.

Actually, there has been something else -- extreme irritation at how rude, careless, and idiotic music schools and search committees can be.

I spent much of the fall assembling and mailing out job applications to music programs across the country, in what is my third attempt to find my first tenure-track job. Through November, December, and into January, I was an application machine, mailing my materials to any school whose job posting looked even faintly like a possible fit for me.

I was, and still am, proud of my application packets. With the help of friends and colleagues I revamped my written materials, recorded another CD, and even invested in a new printer to ensure that my work looked as good as it sounded. But now, many moons later, my search has come up empty. I have received e-mail messages and phone calls from a few schools, but not the sort of contact I wanted.

Case in Point 1: In October I submitted my application well before the filing deadline to School A, a small program in the upper Midwest. After a month, having received no word that School A had received my application, I called to ask. Rather than answer my question, a human-resources officer snarled into the phone: "It's not our business to check on incoming applications. We'll contact you if needed for an interview." She slammed the phone down and I wrote off School A, figuring that the opening there was not meant to be.

Four months later, I received a call in the evening from another human-resources person from School A, questioning why I had not sent in a "reference-check release form."

Confused for a moment, I told the voice that I had never received any request for such a form from the school. Her response? "It's not our problem. It's yours. We need these forms, and a CD, in our office within 24 hours." And another phone call came to an abrupt end.

Simultaneously freaked out and irritated, I immediately mailed off copies of the requested materials via overnight express. I checked on the package using an online tracker and was relieved to find that it had reached the school in record time.

Once again, School A failed to acknowledge receipt of the package, and a week went by with nary a peep from the human-resources office. Then, late one Friday afternoon, I discovered not one but two e-mail messages from the human-resources office. The first said the school still needed that "reference-release form" that I had dutifully sent (in both e-mail and paper formats) immediately. The second e-mail, which had been time-marked only a minute after the first, stated that School A had never received my transcripts, letters of reference, or CD.

In short, the office was essentially asking me to mail an entire application packet.

Again.

I am a patient person, but I have my limits. Rather than risk beating my computer into oblivion, I went for a run. When I returned, I e-mailed the office and stated that it already had the requested materials. I even offered copies of my postal-service tracking slips, if needed.

Then I decided to call the HR office, only to find that the phone number listed on the e-mail was a fax number. After a few minutes searching on the Internet I found the real number and called, only to get a recording, "We will return your call within 24 hours."

Needless to say, I have yet to receive any kind of a response to either my e-mails or my phone call.

Case in Point 2: I applied to yet another music program in the Midwest, School B, and eventually received yet another evening phone call from a cantankerous HR officer. This one demanded that I send in a DVD showing my teaching abilities within 48 hours. It had to be a DVD, no tapes, and it had to be a demonstration of me teaching college students.

After several panicky phone calls, I managed to borrow a video camera to record my weekly master class. I then transferred the tape to a DVD and sent it off two days later via overnight mail. While I know that the package reached School B, I have yet to hear a word. And again, I have a not-so-funny feeling that I never will.

I would like to think those experiences are atypical. Unfortunately, I have had similar treatment in my previous years on the market, which makes me cranky. Perhaps more important, it makes me wonder just what in the world is going on here.

For folks in business and most other professions, communication is both an art and a necessity. Employers acknowledge receipt of applications, even if they are not interested. If you are interviewed but not offered a job, you at least receive some form of rejection notice. Regardless of the situation, communication between parties is a two-way street. Just like your parents always told you, it is important to respond in a timely manner to things because manners are important.

For academe though, such niceties do not seem commonplace. In my three years on the market, I have never heard a word of acknowledgment from at least half of the schools to which I have sent in applications.

Even worse are the schools that have contacted me for an interview. There's nothing quite like the pressure of a random phone call asking you to stop everything and do a phone interview with a committee, most of whose members never identify themselves.

I actually had to stop one interview to ask not just for the names of the committee members but also for the school's name (yes, the members really did fail to identify their school).

Finally come the inevitable rejection letters. One school sent me a rejection notice six months after it had hired someone, while another sent me an e-mail rejection addressed to someone else. Most schools have simply vanished after my phone interviews, while my e-mails inquiring about how the job search was going have been ignored.

I'm not picky. I would be happy with messages sent via postcard, e-mail, Morse code, or passenger pigeon.

As for phone calls, I generally do not call a school unless I am concerned that something unpleasant has happened to my application. For the schools that receive such calls, snarling at your caller is not exactly a good way to make friends and influence people. If you are busy, or don't know what is going on with my application or the job search, say so. Tell me where to go for information. But please do not treat me in an unprofessional manner. It simply makes you and your school look bad.

If search committees want to demand elaborate job applications or extra materials from a candidate, fine. But they need to be prepared to acknowledge receipt of those materials in a timely and professional manner. What I want is a return to civility, but that seems to be all but a pipe dream at this point.

Officials at one school, after I pointed out their lack of communication, informed me that they saw no point in spending money to run a "nice search." If that is truly the case for Schools A and B, as well as the rest of them, I have a suggestion for what they can do with their job-search savings: Invest in an etiquette book.

In the meantime, I will continue to send out my job applications and wait by my phone. My parents, who have been university professors for 30 years, always say that "hope springs eternal," and having been on the job market now for three years, I think I know what that quote really means.