Well, these first applications are so annoying when departments want ALL of your materials right off the bat. I know enough to know that they could do a first cull quite easily with letters and vitae. But they don't.
It's the laborious Human Resources form with inane questions like can I lift 25 pounds and when can I start the job? (Yes, I can, but I won't - that's why I got the PhD; and "I CAN START WHENEVER THE FUCK YOU WANT ME TO.)
Rec letters, samples, lists of publications, separate list of references only, syllabi, sample assignments, teaching philosophy, separate philosophy for multi-cultural students, courses I took, courses I've taken, courses they have I can teach, have taught, will each, and then my favorite, "Suggest 2 courses not in our bulletin that you'd like to teach."
My list of recent Interfolio applications show that the smallest set of documents I've sent off since September 1st is 20 pages, and the largest has been 70.
Really? You need this right now?
I hear ya! Why do I need to type my education and employment history into dozens of online job sites when it is all listed on my CV? Can they not read? Also more irritating si the fact that several places that had VERY long online application sent out "The Position Has Been Canceled" emails. Glad I wasted hours of my life on that.
ReplyDeleteHow about spending hours to get an application in on time only to be told, almost immediately after the deadline has passed, that the position was filled? Considering that it would take several days to examine the applications and interview candidates, it's a sure bet that whoever got the job was selected ahead of time.
DeleteMy favorite question on applications was whether I had any felony convictions. I wanted to write back, "WHO WANTS TO KNOW?!?"
ReplyDeleteTotally agree. Having spent hours tracking down the phone number and address for my high school (in another country) one year, I wanted to kill HR. I might add that I never ONCE got a job at any of the schools that required the longest forms to be filled out. Those tended to be the community college jobs. My current job wanted a cover letter and CV and a list of "recommenders" (not actual letters; just people whom they would contact).
ReplyDeleteGAH! I know. Seriously? You need to know the address of the restaurant I worked at in the summer of 1979? It doesn't even exist anymore!
DeleteOddly, the less prestigious the institution, the more they seem to require a lot of unnecessary details supporting the idea that they should deign to hire you. This can make for amusing juxtapositions when one has a couple of degrees from Very Fancy places that do things their own way (e.g. count progress by something other than credit hours or don't calculate GPAs) because, hey, they're Very Fancy and historic and ludicrously selective (because they're Very Fancy and historic and everybody and their aunt applies) and they can get away with it. A human being reviewing such a transcript is likely to give the graduate the benefit of the doubt (while perhaps wondering, with reason, how well (s)he will connect with students at a very different kind of institution); an online form will keep throwing up errors because you're not doing things the way it expects you to. I suspect international degree-holders encounter some of the same problems.
DeleteI had a colleague who had taught lit for some time at the local community college. Then accreditation time came around, and somebody reviewed her transcripts -- three degrees from three Ivy-League schools, all in interdisciplinary fields that include literature -- and decided she wasn't qualified to teach lit at the 100/200 level, because she didn't have enough graduate credit house in lit specifically. That was actually the fault of the accrediting agency to some extent, though one has to wonder whether a slightly more creative-thinking sub-Dean couldn't have found a way to describe the graduate work so it "counted."
I hate to say this, but at our institution, even though applicants go through that HR hell, the actual search committee only sees letters and vitae. I believe the HR material is only used or accessed when someone is hired.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite was having to put how many words I typed per minute. As if I knew. As if it mattered.
ReplyDelete