Over the last year, I’ve been fortunate to participate in a handful of job interviews. None of the experiences were exactly the same, but each one has left its mark. All used external recruiters to guide and facilitate the time-consuming, laborious, and cumbersome process. And while I learned a lot about myself with each new experience, my takeaways are largely critical and unfavourable. As a result, I harbour a rather jaundiced view of the academic hiring process, which desperately needs to change.
Academic interviews just aren’t reciprocal in nature. They are largely transactional and extractive. Fact. They lack a critical conversational (read: human) element. There’s a lot of taking with very little giving. This is a visible fault in the system, one which impacts negatively on the recruiting institution and higher-education sector more broadly. It contributes to a rigid and rote experience which not only makes it difficult for the hiring committees trying to know the candidates, but equally as challenging for the candidates to learn about an institution, its ethos and culture, and the people serving the core academic mission.
I’ve sat at both sides of the interviewing table inside universities for years. Time and again, I’ve watched with predictable horror the muddling of internal procedures and policies that prevent radical and necessary change. I continue to struggle with the many truths of recruitment that go unsaid throughout the entire process, which can knowingly leave a false impression for the party interested in the position. Because they aren’t given access to the full view – only glimpses into what others want them to see. The irony is that candidates are shielded from layers of truth that will become necessary for them to perform their jobs well. Which means that the entire system relies heavily on blind faith.
Two interviews in particular, held in close succession in different parts of the country, threw into sharp relief just how exploitative the entire search process can be. With enough distance and time between now and those past experiences, I can see and better appreciate just how flawed academic hiring has become. It needs to be fixed in order to break the vicious cycle of hiring and resigning that contributes so much instability to university leadership in particular. (The truth is always revealed in time).
Full transparency, I wasn’t offered any of the positions for which I applied and interviewed. At the time, I was disappointed in the outcome. Naturally. But I’m not writing from a place of bitterness. In hindsight, I’m relieved by the course of events.
I really wanted the gigs; I wouldn’t have invested so much time and energy otherwise. I went through the motions, as one does in preparing for a professional job interview. I learned what I could about the people and their organizations. I tried to imagine a world where I was no longer looking from the outside, but rather leading from the inside, with a clear vision for the future. None of it really mattered in the end.
BECAUSE: there is a dearth of reciprocity in academic hiring, which undermines the ultimate purpose of attracting and retaining talent. It is both counterintuitive and counter-productive.
Many universities are promoting a contradiction in leadership positions. Job advertisements frequently invoke the same language to describe the desired qualities of their ideal candidates; boiler-plate templates are made into glossy brochures and more comprehensive job profiles to present a clean and stable picture of the recruiting organization and its comprising units and people. But at their core, these recruitment efforts are saying much of the same things while actually saying very little. In short, they don’t include the most vital and truthful information because, after all, their goal is to hire successfully, not to reveal flaws and insecurities.
I get it. Sort of. To share too many truths with a prospective employee would be divulging intimate secrets or tricks of the trade. Yet, this is exactly what needs to happen. More truth. More earnestness. More transparency. More opportunities for candidates to understand the true nature and expectations of the role. The challenges and past failures – in full view. How they might complement existing support structures to advance the institution’s established goals, and what room might exist for them to leave their own mark.
The point is that academic hiring sells false hope. Knowingly. It assembles committees of the willing and unwilling to preside over and interrogate individuals – people who are putting a lot on the line. It usually keeps aspects of the interview process ‘closed’ to bodies outside the committee, which protects the candidate but realistically limits the institutional vision and understanding.
Consider the recent efforts by Memorial University’s Faculty Association to have their institution’s ongoing Presidential search result in open (short-listed) presentations. Their argument is for providing more transparency and openness around a process often mired in secrecy. While I disagree fundamentally with their more fulsome beliefs, an element of their views speaks to a well-known and long-identified problem in the overall hiring process. Even the initial decision to contract a recruitment firm for the job was vehemently opposed for reasons that fail to recognize the hiring process is meant to be a two-way street.
This example demonstrates one perspective in the hiring process – the university’s need to backfill a departed leader. What is rarely considered in these discussions, however, and by the committees tasked with interviewing, is that prospective candidates must feel valued. They deserve a larger role in the process which ultimately asks that they give everything they can, answer rote questions which typically evade the actual point of interest, exhaust themselves in preparation for presentations, institutional learnings, and meetings with various stakeholders.
The problem also lies with assuming a new hire will fix existing and future problems. This is a tall order, but one made every single time. Here’s a hole to fill, so let’s fill it with another warm body.
I came into my current role with the same hopes and dreams. With the understanding that my job offer signalled a form of agreement and acceptance. That people believed in my vision. That there was a realistic measure of buy-in for my ideas. That my experience would count and translate in some meaningful way. That my personality and mindset would provide an advantage to my unit and the institution. That my international perspective would serve and strengthen the overall organization.
I see things differently now. My current perspective has been informed by each new experience. Being interviewed in a hotel boardroom with no opportunity to meet anyone outside the hiring committee (wait, what?). No on-campus tour. No real estate tours. Being interviewed by a committee whose sole purpose, it seemed, was to read paragraph-long questions, making no eye contact, with very little discernible interest in my responses. A day chaired by a President who scarcely looked up from their script, feigning only mild interest, if only to bring the day to a swifter conclusion.
Taking. Taking. Taking. With nothing in return but feelings of tiredness and disappointment.
I’ve learned a lot about myself through these processes, namely what I don’t want in career advancement. What I refuse to tolerate going forward. What roles I’m not prepared to assume. What level of decorum I expect. How variable and unrealistic some institutional expectations truly are. And just how mis-matched the job’s core duties and responsibilities can be with remuneration and overall compensation.
All these realizations are bits of information that I’ve absorbed and processed. In my own personal journey, they’ve deeply informed my future trajectory and vision. A path that is willingly and happily absent any further participation in processes that make me feel sub-human and under-valued.