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faculty members and administrators may be significantly involved in hiring.

      Implications for Candidates

      When your interview is scheduled, find out with whom you’ll meet during the course of your visit. Get all the firsthand information about the department and institution that you can possibly gather. However, you should recognize that you are likely to gain, at best, only a partial understanding of the departmental dynamics. Therefore, don’t try to second guess your interviewers. Again, concentrate on the clear communication of what you have to say. And if you do indeed want this job be positive about the institution and the location throughout the interview.

       Decision Making

      After a small number of candidates have been invited to campus for an interview, the department must decide to whom to offer the position. Sometimes the choice is simple; sometimes it is agonizing. Faced with the real people who have interviewed for the position, rather than the “ideal” represented by the ad, the department may need to make very concrete trade-offs. What if the candidate who is ideal in terms of the qualities described in the ad has charmed half the department and totally alienated the other? What if no one really fits the job that was envisioned, but one candidate seems outstanding in every other respect?

      The department must make its decisions, knowing that job offers and acceptances will occur over the space of a few months. It knows the highest salary it can pay, and it knows it must give its first-choice candidate at least a week or two to decide whether to accept the offer. It may believe that the first-choice candidate is extremely unlikely to accept the position, and that the second-choice candidate, also very good, is likely to accept, but only if the position is offered within the next few weeks. Finally, if none of the candidates seem entirely satisfactory, the department must decide whether to leave the position vacant for a year and risk losing it to some kind of budgetary constraint, in the hope of reopening the search the following year.

      Usually the department comes to a decision that balances competing priorities. Depending on the department’s style, a job may be offered to the candidate who has not alienated anyone, to the candidate who is most strongly backed by a few influential department members, to the candidate who appears most neutral in terms of some controversy that has split the department, or to a candidate chosen in a close vote. Depending on the institution, the department’s decision will be endorsed by the administration or must be vigorously defended to it.

      Implications for Candidates

      Do your best to accept the fact that hiring is usually a matter not of choosing the “best” candidate by some set of abstract criteria, but of making a reasonable choice among valid, if competing, priorities, an inherently political process. Therefore, do not dismiss the process as somehow unethical. If each member of a hiring committee honestly thinks a different candidate is the best choice for the department, a decision must be made somehow. Unless it is to be settled by a duel or a flip of a coin, it must be decided through a negotiated process that acknowledges several factors not necessarily known to the candidates.

      If you insist on thinking either that there is an obviously “best” candidate for every job and that every time that person has not been chosen an immoral decision has been made, or that hiring is a random process amounting to no more than the luck of the draw, you will diminish your own ability to understand the difference between what is and is not in your control. Worse, you risk becoming angry, bitter, or cynical and therefore approaching potential employers with a visible presumption that they will be unfair.

      Approach a department as if you expect it to behave in a fair and reasonable fashion. Make it easy for those who would like to hire you to lobby for you, by being well prepared, by communicating an attitude of respect for everyone you meet during the course of the search process, and by making all your written application materials as clear and strong as you can. Let your enthusiasm for the position be obvious.

      Keep a record of the people with whom you speak during each application. Even if you do go elsewhere, you can keep in touch with them, send papers to them, and cultivate a relationship with them over the years. They may invite you back after you establish a reputation elsewhere.

       Offers and Negotiation

      Once a position is offered, there will probably be a period of negotiation about salary, terms of employment (for example, research facilities, or how many classes are to be taught in the first year), and time given to the candidate to make a decision. Sometimes there will be delays, as the department must receive approval from a higher level before making a specific offer. Every institution will have its own process and timetable. Usually other finalists will be notified of a decision only after a candidate has definitely accepted a position. And, for tenure-track positions, note that if you have not yet earned your Ph.D. your offer letter may give your title as “instructor” instead of “assistant professor.”

      Implications for Candidates

      Understand that delays may be inevitable. However, if your own situation changes (for example, if you get another offer), do not hesitate to let the department know immediately. If you are turned down, it’s natural to wonder why. Except in the event that you have a friend in the department, you’re unlikely to find out. However, you may wish to ask for constructive feedback. If you do ask, concentrate your questions on what you might have done to strengthen your presentation, rather than on how the decision was made.

       Hiring and “Inside Candidates”

      Sometimes, at the conclusion of a search, it is widely perceived that the advertised position was not truly open. There was a high probability at the outset that an offer would be made to someone already in the department; to someone the department had been wooing for the last few years; to a member of a group whose underrepresentation among faculty members was viewed as an intolerable situation; to a clone of those already in the department; and so on.

      Implications for Candidates

      Compete for every job you want as if you have a genuine chance of being offered it, whatever you guess or have been told. That way you best position yourself to take advantage of the uncertainty inherent in every hiring situation. Maybe the department does have a strong front-runner, but he or she will not accept the position in the end. Maybe you are very unlikely to get this job, but the campus interview you are offered will help you polish your interviewing skills so that you will do better at the next interview.

      Remember that, even if you are not successful in getting a particular job, you have left behind an impression of abilities, talents, and personality. Occasionally, faculty members will talk with colleagues at other schools about good candidates whom they interviewed but were not able to hire. Even if your interview at a particular school does not result in a job offer, it can serve as good advertising, depending on how you deal with the interview situation and, particularly, with any rejection.

      When you are hired, there may well be disappointed candidates who think that you had some kind of unfair advantage, so try to be generous in your assessment of the decisions made by what are, by and large, well-intentioned people operating in a complex system.

      Part II

      Planning and Timing Your Search

      Chapter 3

      Becoming a Job Candidate: The Timetable for Your Search

      It is important to begin to prepare for your job search well before you expect to finish your dissertation or your postdoctoral research. Think about your job search, your participation in scholarly organizations, and the completion of your research as a unified whole. In some fields candidates may go on the job market before completing their dissertation. If this is the case for you, be sure to be realistic about the time you will need to complete it. Most faculty members will advise you not to begin a tenure-track position before your dissertation is completed. It is important to note that in a tight job market, candidates who have completed their degrees are likely to be chosen over those who have not. Many scientists are competitive on the tenure-track market only after a few years of postdoctoral

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