Sergio Tenenbaum, a philosopher at the University of Toronto, writes:
As we get close to the American Philosophical Association [Eastern Division Meeting, which is also the hiring convention], I thought it might be worth having a thread on what counts as acceptable or unacceptable practice in the hiring process. Here are some of my views; I’d be curious to know how widely shared they are, and whether others have their own pet peeves.
(1) Having job candidates stay with Faculty members to save the department a few hotel bills- I think it is completely unacceptable. It leaves the job candidate with no “down time”, and often creates extremely awkward situations.
(2) Asking about other interviews, etc.- I also find this unacceptable. The only reason I can see to ask these questions before an offer is made is to check whether one is going after a “hot” job candidate or not. But hiring based on hype is not a very good practice…
(3) Early junior offers- By that I mean offers that job candidates have to accept or decline before they can be expected to hear from other jobs. When I was in the job market, a few places would fly out job candidates in November, make them offers in December, and give them two weeks to accept or decline. I don’t know if anyone still engages in this practice, but I would put it in the unacceptable column too, since it’s obviously an attempt to force a job candidate to accept a less desirable job.
(4) Not notifying job candidates in the short list about how the search is developing. I take it that anyone who is interviewed for a job deserves the courtesy of being informed, as soon as possible, that he/she is no longer being considered for a job, or that he/she is still being considered for the job, but an offer has been made to someone else.
(5) Making job candidates commit before an unconditional offer is made-In a few places, job candidates are made to accept an offer prior to its being approved by the Dean, or Provost, or other members of the higher administration. Often it is a foregone conclusion that the offer will be approved, but still it seems unfair to make a job candidate commit to an offer weeks before the institution commits.
(6) Interviewing job candidates in hotel rooms- I must confess I have mixed feelings about this one. Hotel suites are obviously preferable, but there’re never enough suites at the APA (and I don’t find the interview tables a very good solution).
Here are my own views on the topics Professor Tenenbaum raises: (1) it is obviously better for the job candidate to have "down time," but budgetary realities are budgetary realities; departments that really have to ask candidates to stay with faculty ought to do so with an eye to the issue Professor Tenenbaum raises; (2) finding out where else a candidate is interviewing provides far more information than just "hype": if it is a candidate a department is keen on, it gives an idea of what the competition will look like (which can affect planning, timing of visits, and so on); knowing that colleagues elsewhere judged the candidate worthy can provide important confirmation of one’s own judgment–selecting job candidates for interview is not a science, and it can be helpful to know that sensible colleagues elsewhere came to a similar (or different, as the case may be) appraisal (on the law teaching market, this kind of information is exchanged all the time); (3) schools do still engage in this practice, for the obvious strategic reasons–my impression is it generally backfires, in part because of the difficulty of enforcing employment contracts, especially when oral; (4) it really would be desireable if departments were better about this; (5) such commitments, even if given in writing, to non-existent offers are almost never legally binding, so departments that do this–and I concur with Professor Tenenbaum they are to be condemned for doing so!–are fooling themselves; (6) I have no view on this.
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