Oh yes, the job misery. I know it well. I was on that side of the desk 4 years ago before I ended up at a mediocre, no-name college in the frigid northeast. But I am grateful as all get-out to NOT be looking.Yet, with only a little experience on search committees, I can share a little misery, too, if it's all right.
We're hiring a director of writing for an English department. The ad has been active for more than a month and we already have 150 applications. Our ad stipulated a PhD in comp/rhetoric. Our ad stipulates a minimum of X years of being a director elsewhere. Our ad stipulates an active research agenda and publications in the field of composition/rhetoric, and a 20 page writing sample.
I was one of 2 committee members who got to be first readers on the big pile. Some numbers for you:
150 applicants:
- 44 with PhDs in comp/rhetoric. the majority of the rest have lit degrees with the occasional secondary field or comprehensive exam in some kind of comp.
- 28 with the minimum years of directing experience. 80 with NO experience as a director or asst. director of a writing program or writing center.
- at least half of the applicants offer nothing in their letters or vitas about a research agenda, not even a sentence's worth. and, only about 20 of the applicants send writing samples that are actually in comp/rhetoric. I hit a run of about 10 dossiers this morning where applicants submitted batches of their poetry or short stories.
Listen, English is full of all kinds of mini-disciplines. I know poets. I like poets. But we're not hiring a poet to run the composition program.
On one hand, this winnowing process has made our jobs easier, but in another way, we're now got a much smaller set of "actual" candidates than we ever suspected. I want someone great to get this job. I want to give all kinds of applicants a chance. But people who apply for jobs when they are not qualified, are just making the process harder on everyone.
- Bald Brian (my name is not really Brian, but I am REALLY bald.)
Rhet comp is still a real bear to hire in sometimes.
ReplyDeleteSo you have what--15 suitable applicants or so? Expect not to get your first choice. Or your second. In fact, you might have to lower your standards.
Which is what those other applicants are thinking as well.
@Stella: LOL!
ReplyDelete@Bald Brian: Out of 150 applicants, I have come to figure we'll have 25 or so that actually meet the requirements. Fairly often, we have trouble getting five we want to interview (the minimum per union). Sometimes not.
One of the frequent pieces of advice for job hunters (or job changers) goes something like: "the requirements described in any ad are for the perfect applicant. As long as you're in the ballpark: submit....you never know..."
ReplyDeleteI run one of several summer internship programs at the large government organization where I work. Our ad is very explicit: "must be full-time student", "must be in a junior status at time of application, and graduating in either (fall or spring of the next school year), must be majoring in one of the following areas...."
More than half of the applications we get will not meet these three basic requirements (and the total number of applications approaches a thousand).
Even though it takes about 30 seconds to figure this out....multiply this by many hundreds, and the time invested is non-trivial.
For another time: gems from the resumes.
Not unique to proffies
Brian,
ReplyDeleteThat breakdown of candidates is almost exactly what we saw last year when we ran a similar search.
"One of the frequent pieces of advice for job hunters (or job changers) goes something like: "the requirements described in any ad are for the perfect applicant. As long as you're in the ballpark: submit....you never know...""
ReplyDeleteExactly. As someone looking for a non-academic job, if I only applied to those for which I match the "requirements", I'd barely apply to anything at all. Most places indeed aren't interested in me, but there's enough bites for it to (probably) be worth the time.
I've been in my current spot for 12 years and we've hired about 20 people across 4 different departments in our division.
ReplyDeleteThis notion of applying in the ballpark would have netted those applicants absolutely nothing here.
But that is just one institution, and obviously just anecdotal data concerning my school.
Well, as bad as things seem, you probably dodged a bullet (or ten) by making the ad specific enough to discourage many of the supplicants. Being exact in your language, saying "we want someone with X years of experience in Y," nonetheless does narrow down your pool. Just, y'know, not a whole lot.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, something like "we want someone with experience in writing, not gonna tell you how much experience or what kind" just opens the floodgates.
What lays eggs under my skin is that, despite being vastly underqualified, each of those misguided applications represents some poor soul who's so miserable / unemployable that they're willing to put out an application and move to Siberia if need be.
Not to be harsh, but I must add that I have colleagues who maintain that applications from those “in the ballpark” are signs of arrogance, which they read as: “I know what you think you need, but I’m soooo good that my remarkable qualifications will convince you that you actually need me as I can adequately teach anything at the loser place where you are.”
ReplyDeletefrom The Dean of Reality :
ReplyDeleteWhatever fantasies applicants want to hold, the "ballpark" candidate is going to be left outside the stadium without a ticket.
Use your time and postage on jobs you're actually qualified for.
This may be more common in Rhet/Comp because every English Ph.D. thinks they can teach (and if necessary do research in) Rhet/Comp. It's part of a certain arrogance about the field itself. I recently heard my co-office on the placement committee say to a student on the market, "You will never get a Rhet/Comp job, so don't even bother applying." The student said, "I've taught comp. for 5 years!" My colleague said, "That isn't the same as doing research in the field." I thought it was quite refreshing, actually.
ReplyDeleteYour advertisment was very specific. As a job applicant in another field, I appreciate those super specific job ads and absolutely hate the ones that say "yeah, we want a generalist and we'll be nice and consider ABDs." Just tell me what you are really really looking for and if I don't have the qualifications, I won't be hurt. I'll be glad you saved me the time and the money (Interfolio job submissions add up).
ReplyDelete"Not to be harsh, but I must add that I have colleagues who maintain that applications from those “in the ballpark” are signs of arrogance, which they read as: “I know what you think you need, but I’m soooo good that my remarkable qualifications will convince you that you actually need me as I can adequately teach anything at the loser place where you are.”"
ReplyDeleteNot to be harsh, but those colleagues are assholes seriously lacking in empathy.
The reality is some employers *do* hire outside the job description. Either because they're forced to through lack of qualified applicants, or because they were being less than truthful about the real requirements. And yeah, they're the exception, but you can hardly blame the unemployed for taking the chance. Better than sitting on their backsides, surely? And, Dean of Reality, perhaps you haven't noticed the dearth of jobs out there right now. It's not likely these people are wasting time applying to unsuitable positions and missing out on those for which they're a perfect fit.
It takes a search committee all of, what, 2 minutes to discard the unworthy? This is chickenfeed in the context of the time committed to the search and really does not seem worth griping about.
To be constructive, if you really will not step even a hair outside your stated requirements, did you say so? If not, something like "Applicants who do not meet these requirements will definitely not be considered" stated in bold should cut down (at least a little) on the unqualified applicants.
ReplyDeleteHowever much you think this should be taken as read, it is not. It is not a rare piece of career advice to be a little blind to the stated requirements.
What Stew said. Your job ad looks very specific and it's pretty clear your search committee knows exactly what you want. Do you know how rare that is? Two years ago a university in my field advertised for a specialist in the language and literature of late hamster-fur. Every neo-Platonist hamster-fur weaver on the circuit applied, and some of them were pretty damn excellent. (One of them was working as an adjunct for us.) The department interviewed several and finally hired - an expert in the engineering archaeology of early hamster-fur. Whom they happened to know (friend of the chair).
ReplyDeleteThis year another local department advertised specifically for a lang & lit basket-weaving specialist.. They interviewed several, and in the end hired a historian.
These are only in my discipline mind you. But it happens all over. Because very often it doesn't matter at all what the job description says; all that matters is who wins the fight on the search committee. And given that kind of outcome, year after year in search after search, even in job ads that appear to be focussed and coherent, of course people will apply to anything in their broader discipline, because you never know.
I'm looking at an ad right now - from one of the above departments as it happens - asking for someone in"either history of basket-weaving OR literature of hamster-fur weaving. This is even worse because it signals that the department is split in half and couldn't even get their act together to agree on what they want in the first place. The search will be a chaotic mess, and every candidate in the entire weaving sub-discipline would be well-advised to send in a CV, because the chances aren't bad that they'll eventually compromise on someone in neither sub-discipline. What they'll hire is anyone's guess.
And this is why candidates ignore the specifics in the job and simply lob one over the transom for every job in anything loosely related to their field. It's not arrogance. It's outcomes like these.
@Stew. My colleagues ARE a**holes! But we e-mail every applicant to say that we received the application and when we make decisions about the next steps. So it does take more than two minutes.
ReplyDelete@Frog and Toad. I completely agree that R/C departments receive too many applications from all English PhD's who have taught writing. But we also receive too many applications from experts in History of Basket Weaving ONE when we advertise for HBW TWO positions---because usually the applicants has taken a class or two in HBW Two.
We are obsessed with improving our research status. Whatever the ad says, in the last 5-6 years we've always hired the person who the Dean/senior person from outside faculty thinks will do best in the Research Excellence Framework. Even when their references suggest they're difficult, arrogant and bad at teaching (and you know how carefully worded references are these days...), even when we beg for someone who can come in and teach that required course from day one... we get the 'person with research potential' regardless of specialism, teaching experience, sometimes even concrete research measures (like actual good papers from a post-doc as well as a PhD project).
ReplyDeleteI hate the REF. And I will probably never, ever get to leave this job because I'm an ACADEMIC, dammit, I actually like to teach well as well as research well, plus I'm too old to have 'potential'...
The last two or three FULL PROFESSORS we've appointed were all under 40 and have 'brilliant potential'. Guess what? We now have a leadership crisis because none of these people will step up to take on big admin roles. Sigh.
Question to Grumpy - let me guess, all those FULL PROFESSORS appointed for their "potential" under the age of 40 were male, right? I ask because a paper written by the female academics at Harvard in 2010 (I think) pointed out that when committees hire for "potential", instead of hiring for actual, you know, interesting research that has been published already and can be found and read, they tend to hire boys. They suggest this is because while actual RESEARCH can be assessed by, you know, looking at the bloody research, research POTENTIAL - what people might do in the future - can only be guessed at by the Hidden Signs of Research Wonderfulness. And those Hidden Signs tend, in the absence of concrete data, to turn out to be "reminds me of myself at that age."
ReplyDeleteAnd what do most of the senior faculty who tend to make up these search committees at Harvard have in common? Why yes, you're right. The majority are male. So when it comes to a vote, who wins?
There is also the problem that if a white non-disabled male is hired it's obviously just because of his uncomplicated wonderfulness. But if anyone who doesn't get a checkmark in every one of those boxes is hired, it must be because they received special consideration as a disabled/minority/female. One does not have to argue to hire a nice white boy.
I'm confused. You can't BE a Full Professor without any research to show for it, can you?
ReplyDeleteAsst Dean, I would like to see those numerous studies. Because the MLA just came out with data showing that women reach Full Professor (let alone get hired elsewhere at Full, which is very hard to achieve) at significantly lower rates than men. It's called "Standing Still: The Associate Professor Survey," available at http://www.mla.org/assocprof_survey. Men hold 3/4 of the full professorships in the U.S. MA's "assertions" are well supported by research on the career tracks of men and women.
Besides which, men who feel "alienated" by women's correct reminders that men still have the advantage are not helpful in achieving gender equality. You can't be working on equality when you think it's already achieved. Your attitude is an obstacle, not a contribution.
Thanks, F&T.
ReplyDeleteAsst Dean, I didn't claim that only white males were hired as full professors. I asked Grumpy if all the "high potential" full professors hired had been male, because I strongly suspected they were. I suspected it because they were hired for their "potential", and "potential" is, as the Harvard study argues, necessarily assessed on projections of their future work as well as (or, indeed, if they're hired straight out of grad school, mostly instead of) assessments of the work they've done already; and when guesswork about "superstar potential" is the basis of the hire, the observation of the Harvard study is that those hires tend overwhelmingly to be male.
However I don't know if this is true at Grumpy's institution. It is true that it takes more than a penis to become a full professor. It is also true, however, that having a penis does tend to assist one towards that rank, at least statistically (do have a look at the study F&T cites).
Yeah, they were all male. We have one female full prof in the department, who was about 50 when she got the position (and was hired from a full prof position at another university, whereas the recent hires have all 'skipped a grade' and been hired from lecturer positions).
ReplyDeleteThey do have SOME research outputs (papers, grants etc.), but no more than a typical candidate with a few post-doctoral years under their belt would have for a post at a lower grade, lecturer or senior lecturer. In my (somewhat cynical) appraisal of their research info web pages, they generally have papers with multiple authors and lots of big names, and with very bold claims in the titles. Maybe that does mean that they are destined for greatness, but there are all sorts of gendered constraints on achieving paper-producing collaborations with big names... and a gender bias, I believe, on being the kind of person who makes very big claims in the titles of papers which aren't really supported by the contents (A New Model of Rodent Fur Utilisation... reading the abstract, the study is based on extrapolation from one person's use of the back fur from two Siberian hamsters).
But the plural of anecdote is not data... maybe I'm just being Grumpy.
I think there are a lot of reasons why women don't attain full professorship, and some of those reasons have to do with women themselves.
ReplyDeleteOne of the most obvious reasons is that more men who have reached full professor have families where the onus of house and child care on their wives. Women don't often have the reverse option. So, men are by and large freer to devote more time to advancement. Things are changing, of course. But I'm thinking about the past 30 years or so. It may be that women have less on their vitas because they have more on their plates at home.
Other issues include the fact that women generally consider themselves less "deserving". They don't think they're good enough. They suffer from imposter syndrome more than men do. So they're happy with the security of asst. prof, and they sweat blood to get it, but then rest on their laurels because they never feel "good enough".
Another issue (and this is just my sense of things) is that not all senior women want to help women junior to them. In fact, some women are very territorial and want to keep other women down, simply because they perceive that the portion of the pie that is assigned to women is smaller, and thus they want as much of that pie as they can get. They don't focus on making the portion bigger. They focus on their own piece. They like being the "token woman" and they don't want competition.
All I know is that I got a phone interview, during my job search, for a position that was outside my sub-specialty. So it does happen.
ReplyDeleteStella, that's an interesting point about relative lack of ambition. I know it's true in my case. Past a certain point, once your job is secure, why keep on fighting? You can just carry on working, and publishing when it seems good to do so, but why fight for another promotion?
ReplyDeleteI don't think this ambition is hormonal, though. I think it is simply that boys and girls are both trained in this culture that ambition is masculine. Girls need a certain amount of ambition to get tenure, and the obvious desirability of a secure job is enough to keep us going. But once we've got that, there's enough cultural disapproval of ambition in a woman that, well, hell, it's not going to make that much of a difference, so why should I keep fighting when it will not improve my position materially, AND people will like me LESS?
Where an unambitious male faces enough disapproval that the rewards, for him, of going up for full professor are quite real.
I interviewed for several directorships, coming out of one, last year. I'm not sure if I have the specific years' of experience you are looking for (about 4) but it was good enough for them.
ReplyDeleteIn two that I ended up in the final pool for, the folks they hired had no experience and came from lit. Based on the questions I was asked, I think it's fair to say that the heavily lit based departments didn't really want a rhet-compy at all. I'm sure that's true for other professorships as well, and many of my friends reported losing out to folks who were outside the field.
Unfortunately, for every committee that hires outside the field you are going to end up with a bunch more applicants that can get away with it.
Pick me! Pick me!!! :o)
ReplyDelete