The first time I served on a faculty-search committee, I felt awkward and unsure of my role. After all, we were looking to hire an assistant professor, and just two years earlier, I had been a candidate myself for the same type of position. What most stood out to me then — and still resonates all these years later — was a comment made by a senior professor on the committee: “Remember: If the candidates are good enough for us, then we have to show we’re good enough for them. This is wooing, not fraternity hazing.”
It made an impression because the department had treated me well during the hiring process, too — more like a future colleague than just a job candidate. And that was very different from the gauntlet of humiliation I’d been hearing from friends on the job market in my Ph.D. cohort. Since then, I have chaired my share of searches (including for three deans and a provost), overseen more than 100 faculty searches as an administrator, and heard the inside scoop on probably thousands more — and I still advocate for the importance of treating hiring as a mutual courtship.
But there’s a problem: A lot of search committees don’t seem to have gotten the message. Instead they view hiring as a one-way activity: It’s all about us. Candidates are expected to show their qualifications, demonstrate unwavering enthusiasm, and “prove themselves worthy of us.” I would like to think that such a retrograde notion is fading out, but, in truth, it stubbornly pervades academic hiring in this buyer’s market.
In the Admin 101 column, I write about all aspects of academic management, but certainly hiring is the most common and the most fundamental. Every hire seems especially vital in today’s financially stressed higher-ed economy. It falls to all of us, not just administrators, to emphasize that hiring is not just gatekeeping — it’s recruiting. It means putting our best face forward as much as the candidates do.
To that end, I am sharing here some practical steps that I have seen leaders and search committees take to improve the recruitment process. This month, I’ll focus on how to humanize the job ads and the candidate selection. In a follow-up column, I will concentrate on the all-important — for mutual wooing — campus visit.
Don’t overload the job ad. Ten years ago, academics viewed the general reduction in the number of tenure-track positions across many public and private institutions as a crisis. Now that trend has moved beyond the crisis point to become an enduring and vexing reality.
A natural consequence: When a full-time opening is advertised, it’s often overloaded with the qualifications and responsibilities that once belonged to multiple positions. Job ads today often resemble Frankenstein’s monster, cobbled together from various roles out of departmental desperation and internal compromises. I suppose it’s theoretically possible that an exceptional candidate might be found who can cover five responsibilities that once belonged to three different faculty members — but it’s unlikely. And candidates aren’t mind readers; they don’t know which of the five duties advertised are the ones that really matter.
A simplified, straightforward hiring process would benefit both search committees and candidates.
Given the oversupply of candidates for too few full-time positions, you may think that it doesn’t matter much if your department’s ad has long, unrealistic lists of qualifications and job duties. But such job ads will scare off strong candidates, who know a recipe for disaster when they see one. Not to mention, a bloated position announcement tends to further stress the search committee because its members have to comb through an unwieldy pile of applicants, most of whom are not a good fit for the position you’re trying to fill.
One easy solution: Restrict the number of “required” and “preferred” qualifications you list in job ads. If you’re overseeing or chairing a search, persuade the committee to:
- Set a limited number of required qualifications for candidates — ideally, no more than four. For instance, a department hiring an assistant professor at a research university would list the main research area, secondary research area, main teaching area, and secondary teaching area.
- Include no more than two preferred qualifications. Make clear that they fall into the category of “welcome but not required.”
- If there are exceptions or additional skills you’re willing to consider, use phrases such as “open to additional areas” or “willing to consider X.”
In short, set priorities for the job and be explicit about them in the ad.
Slim down the search bureaucracy. Another factor that diminishes the interest and enthusiasm of strong candidates is an excessively cumbersome hiring process. That point has been made by many writers in these pages, including myself, yet search committees remain attached to hiring protocols of dubious value:
- Why, in the initial stage of a search, require a list of references from each of the 100-plus candidates?
- Why ask them to complete extensive questionnaires or fill out forms before the search committee has even reviewed their CVs?
- Why ask first-round applicants to submit teaching, research, and other “statements” — all of which sound the same anyway, thanks to job Wikis, social-media sharing, and AI — until the committee has selected the shortlist of people who are actually a match for its required and preferred qualifications?
A simplified, straightforward hiring process would benefit both search committees and candidates. Ask applicants for an assistant-professor position to submit a CV and a two-page (max) cover letter explaining their interest in, and fit for, the position. That should be enough for a committee to determine whether to continue the conversation. All of the other application materials can be elicited later.
Ultimately, the golden rule applies here: If you find a bureaucratic process frustrating and unnecessarily burdensome, why impose it on candidates, especially in the initial cull?
Be timely and efficient. In the past two decades, I’ve read a steady stream of social-media discussions about the most frustrating aspects of the hiring process in higher ed. One of the top complaints: The ways in which search committees communicate with candidates are not just random and inefficient but sometimes just plain cruel.
I offer this embarrassing case study: As a dean, I was once mortified to discover that a job candidate had not been reimbursed, for months, for their expenses from a campus visit because I had mislaid a piece of paperwork. I called the candidate personally to apologize. I hope that was enough. It was a reminder to sweat those small details even more in the future.
Your institution’s reputation for decency and courteousness must be built one search at a time.
Even the most carefully planned search can be derailed by unexpected circumstances: A committee member may fall ill, a campus crisis may demand immediate attention, an array of scheduling conflicts may cause delays, or an honest and responsible human may forget a deadline or lose track of the paperwork.
However, beyond such logistical hurdles, we must also acknowledge the cultural tendency in academe to treat searches as important but not urgent. Details of the hiring process are not always given the priority needed to press to a timely conclusion. This is where administrators can and should play a crucial role:
- Establish firm deadlines for key steps of the hiring process and be willing to police them to keep the process moving.
- Hold meetings of the search committee even when some of the members can’t attend due to scheduling conflicts. Be ready to play the “well, I think we have covered all the issues, time for a vote” and “it’s too bad everyone can’t make the meeting, but we need to wrap up next week” cards to keep on schedule.
- Set specific standards for how, and when, the committee must communicate the status of the search with the candidates.
Efficiency is also good reputation-building for recruiting. A sloppy hiring process demoralizes applicants and makes your institution and unit look bad. A very prominent colleague in the sciences told me how, at the start of his career, he got multiple offers but took the one from the department “that seemed the least scatterbrained.”
Be good for goodness’ sake (and for the sake of your brand). In politics, an old saying goes: Some people make friends by the way they say “no,” while others make enemies by the way they say “yes.” A friend of mine embodied the former in his approach to faculty hiring. As a longtime chair of a humanities department at a liberal-arts college, he aimed to make every candidate feel like they were valued, even if they were not picked. He made sure candidates were updated in timely, cordial communications.
He never sent out obviously pasted-together rejection letters. While following HR guidelines about not getting too forensic in explaining why a candidate had not advanced, he made an effort to sound encouraging and to answer questions in a courteous manner. His approach made candidates feel they had been given a fair chance and were treated with decency and professionalism.
Likewise, many of today’s chairs and members of search committees are kind and considerate people who strive to engage candidates respectfully. But clearly, job forums prove the opposite treatment remains all too prevalent. And of course it’s hard to forget those bad experiences. I once attended a colleague’s retirement party where, out of nowhere, he expressed lingering bitterness over how poorly he had been treated on the job market — 40 years earlier. A simple attitude of politeness (or the lack of it) toward candidates can have a lasting impact.
No search is an island. Administrators must ensure consistency in efficiency, kindness, and attention to detail in the formulation of welcoming, reasonable job advertisements and communications. Your institution’s reputation for decency and courteousness must be built one search at a time. If you sour it by bad conduct, trust me, in this age of social media, that negative reputation will grow and hurt you in future hires.
