Fixing Tenure-Track Hiring

Being that I am, in my day job, a professor, I read a certain number of articles relating to life in academe--all too many of which are fairly depressing. Even if the article isn't depressing, the comments often are. I was mildly skeptical, therefore, that an article entitled 5 Easy Fixes for a Broken Faculty Job Market could possibly offer anything useful.

I'm very pleased to report that this is actually a great and practical article. Whether the fixes are "easy" depends mainly on the extent to which departments choose to apply them.

First, the author recognizes that scholarly job applicants (and indeed search committees) are presently obliged to spend an insane amount of time dealing with job applications. I remember this well from both sides of the game (but especially from the applicant side). When I was on the job market 10+ years ago, we had to send off ridiculous amounts of material, and it usually had to be customized further than just inserting the correct names of school, department, and position in the cover letter. Not that I'm a foe of a good specific cover letter, but that should really be the only thing that has to be customized. In any case, if the author of this article is right, which I assume s/he is (not making any gender assumptions about a first name of Chris), things are worse now than then. When I was applying, for instance, the cover letter was supposed to be no more than two pages, and one was considered somewhat better than two. Now, apparently, the cover letter is expected to be two to four. Egad! That's criminal! Then there is a whole pile of other crap to send--much of which I had to send too, but I never had to send a Diversity Statement, and it wasn't normal to have to send transcripts.

I won't break down everything suggested in the article, but I'm all in favor of knocking the initial application down to just a few pieces, like cover letter, c.v., writing sample or a sample syllabus, and list of references. That's enough for the committee to whittle down to a list of initial interviewees. And while I do prefer in-person interviews, it is unquestionably kinder to applicants to do the first interview by phone, because yes, it costs a lot to go to professional conferences. Yes, people should try to attend for professional development and networking, but not everyone can afford to go when on the job market. Also, while video interviews are now fairly easy to do, my department chair has pointed out that they are not as fair as phone interviews; he had recently had the experience of realizing he was biased against an administrative candidate because he thought her home decor sucked. Obviously, said he, her home decor was irrelevant to whether she could do the job she was interviewing for, and he didn't want to be distracted by that.

Waiting to get references until the middle or final stages of a search also sounds great to me. It is, indeed, a time-sink for references (some of whom write very detailed, individual letters) to write masses of such letters each year. It should be enough to agree to be on someone's reference list and then provide the reference (written or oral) only if the candidate is under serious consideration. (Reference letters for students applying to grad school are a different matter, I think, and should be done at the start. Correct me if I'm wrong.)

There are other important suggestions here too, but even just implementing the above would be a huge step in the right direction. So thank you, Chris M. Golde of Stanford, for making such a practical, kind-to-all set of proposals. Here's hoping they take hold!