I'm a VAP, living an okay existence. But I was on the job market hard this year. I had a number of Skype interviews and one campus interview 2 weeks ago.That visit was great. The department was welcoming, the Dean had a copy of my book and asked me a really good question about a sort of minor point deep in its pages, I had enjoyable meals with everyone.
I knew they had an inside candidate from the job wiki, and at a drinks and farewell get-together with just the search committee, a member of that committee pulled me aside and said - verbatim - "You've got all the elements we're looking for. And don't worry about Xxxxxxx, because she just doesn't have the experience. I'm not speaking for the committee, but you're my number one choice."
I kept my optimism tempered on my trip home, but as I taught my classes I kept imagining this move, this new position, a T-T spot at a place I really liked, in a town I'd love to live in. Mentally, I was thinking of Craigsliting all my shitty furniture when I left, starting fresh!
Then yesterday I got the call from the Dean. They had hired the inside candidate. I was thanked for being a candidate, and for "really showing them a lot in my interview."
Yeah, so, I'm still going to have this shitty furniture next year it looks like.
Don't feel too bad. There are good reasons why the inside candidate is favored, and good reasons why a search must be done anyway.
ReplyDeleteYou seemed to make a good show of it so that says a lot about your employability.
The person that deserves to be thumped is the search committee member that got your hopes up. That was terribly bad form. Sometimes people on search committees get an exaggerated sense of their own importance.
Unfortunately there is often a more sinister motive as well--the committee member is cultivating an acolyte, or someone they can depend upon to be on "their side" in turf wars. They want your allegiance, and if you get the job, the fact that they said they supported you will make it seem you owe your job--and thus your allegiance--to them.
Which is why those people deserve to be thumped.
As usual, Stella hits the nail on the head: The loudmouth search committee member fucked up--badly.
DeleteStella's right, too, about the "good reasons an inside candidate is favored."
I work at a community college, so our search committees don't care much about research or publications. We're looking for good teachers.
Thought experiment: Candidate A is a part-timer in your department who's been adjuncting away for years and years and doing a fine job. You know her. She doesn't have a magic wand that turns drooling adolescents into budding scholars, but who does? She's a good, competent teacher, and she gets along with everyone. She's nice to the department secretarys, and, when you overhear her in her cubicle talking to students, she's respectful, but firm.
Candidate B, from out of town, looks great on paper--glowing testimonials from students, colleagues, and deans. She absolutely aced the interview. Apparently, she walks on water. But all you REALLY know about her is what's on paper and what you saw in a 20-minute teaching demonstration and a half-hour interview.
So who do you choose?
I haven't been on a hiring committee for years because I won't even try to resolve dilemmas like this one: I'll pick the insider every single time.
I want to be respectful here, but I have to disagree, and disagree strenuously. The thumping is deserved by every goddamned TeaPartying member of that TeaPartying search committee - lock, stock and both smoking barrels. That one committee member got Terri's hopes up more than all the other members of the search committee got her hopes up. They got her hopes up by interviewing her, inviting her to campus, and generally putting on a charade of pretending she had a chance (I hope they at least paid your expenses). But that just makes them the one member chief asshat among a whole posse of asshats.
DeleteThe "good reason that a search must be done" is to seek the best TeaPartying candidate. Obvious, one would think. The inside candidate may well turn out to be the best candidate after the search concludes. But to conduct a search where the outside candidates are a priori unable to succeed is a sham and a farce. I appreciate Philip's honesty in not participating.
I am in danger of slipping into a rant (though I suppose that is the whole point of CM). So I'll just say that after being dicked around, Terri has every right to be infuriated by a condescending "Don't feel too bad."
"Insider" candidate isn't the word I should have used because it implies some kind of shady, good-old-boy/girl connection. I don't think it's altogether accurate to call part-timers ("adjunct" is another term I don't don't like)who have been working long and well "insiders."
DeleteOf course, a search where an out-of-towner is summoned to an interview with no chance of getting the job is unfair, but that's not the situation I set up in my thought experiment above.
So I'll try again: Should a long-time part-timer who's been doing a good, solid job get some kind of preference over an out-of-towner who may (or may not) turn out to be brilliant?
This happened to me a couple of years ago, too. The person "getting your hopes" up is the suckiest part. I am very sorry this happened to you. Job hunting sucks! But hang in there because you only need one job. It WILL happen for you.
ReplyDeleteIf it's any consolation, more than once I thought I'd done so well during a job interview, and was sore when they hired an internal candidate, or an alumnus, or someone else to whom the job had been promised, and they were just going through the motions when they were interviewing me---and years later, realized "Thank goodness I didn't get that job," because the person they did hire came to grief. Departments that play rough in some ways often play rough in other ways.
ReplyDeleteWhat Froderick said.
ReplyDeleteWhat everybody else said, especially the fact that getting as far as you did is encouraging, and that the person who encouraged you behaved very badly (and perhaps with ulterior motives).
ReplyDeleteThe complementary advice/warning, drawn from my own experience, is never to believe someone -- including, perhaps especially, a chair -- who urges you to take a less-than-wonderful short term job on the argument that you will then *be* the inside candidate. Inside candidates are sometimes hired; on the other hand, a lot of other cliches -- the grass always being greener, not buying the cow when you can get the milk if not free, then at a discounted rate -- seem to apply.
For me, the scariest phrase in this post is "my book." To think that 15 years ago, my grad department was still insisting that one didn't even need an article out to go on the market. They were wrong even then, but clearly the bar is now even higher.
That sucks! Plain sucks! I hope you have good alcohol to match your furniture. Keep up the good fight!
ReplyDeleteThis has happened to me before. Not the artificial raising of hopes, thank goodness, but the optimism at least. In this, as in so many other aspects of the job market, you need to be detached from the job, yet paradoxically deeply attached to it to make an impression on the committee.
ReplyDeleteI post this from the hotel room where the committee for my own campus visit has put me up, a search that I suspect has an inside candidate of its own. And so the wheel turns.