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Alex Rosenberg (Duke) writes:
Do you know of any phil dept which has run a search for new faculty entirely electronically? By electronic I mean submission of all materials in a job application via the internet. Has any dept required it? Would it work a hardship on potential applicants if one required it? Are there difficulties in implementing such a procedure that are not obvious?
Readers?
When I was on the market last year, about 12 of the 50 jobs I applied to had entirely electronic submissions of application materials. Sometimes this was done through a central HR kind of site. Sometimes they just requested everything emailed as pdf files. As an applicant, I have to say I wish every school switched to doing things entirely electronically. Not having to use stacks and stacks of printer paper and not having to spend money at the post office mailing all that stuff is a blessing. It was nice to just be able to upload or email and be done with it.
I second AC's remark. I'm a grad student about to go through my first gauntlet of job applications, and it would be great if everything could be done electronically, as many grad school applications are.
I can't imagine that, from an applicant's point of view, there would be any downside. If anything, it would make the process slightly less harrowing.
Perhaps there would be difficulties from the other perspective, but I suspect that the main obstacle is mere administrative inertia.
One big problem with online applications to philosophy jobs is that the applications are often set up as though the professors themselves will upload their recommendation letters. But administrators usually handle the sending-out of recommendation letters.
In our department, the administrator has sometimes uploaded the entire "dossier" (set of recommendation letters) as one file, but then the online system thought only one letter was there and the application was "incomplete".
So far, online systems are not set up to accommodate accepting a whole "dossier" at once.
Whether or not it would be a hardship per se is not necessarily the question; the question is whether it would be more of a hardship than preparing a packet and mailing it for each application. It seems there are two stages to the consideration: in the preparation of the packets and in the sending.
Preparation – scanning (when needed) v photocopying: I have a hard time imagining anyone in 2011 who has access to photocopying but not scanning (just about any copy place provides it for a small fee), should things need to be scanned (and most of what one would have to send would not need to be scanned, as it would already exist in electronic form), so it can't be said that the preparing of documents for electronic distribution would present more of a logistical burden than photocopying (plus, it only needs to be done once per document).
Sending packets – electronic submission of documents v mailing them: Electronic submission of documents automatically creates, if you'll pardon the particularly inapt expression, a paper trail of the submission – unless the recipient deletes the documents, they can be printed out, forwarded, downloaded, etc. all without changing the fact that the original electronic submission (with time and date stamps, etc.) still resides in the recipient's mail file (assuming the transaction is handled by email). The sender has in his or her own mail files copies of all files sent, so the applicant can easily check to see if a given document was in fact included in a packet, rather than relying on checklists made at the time of preparation or – worse – memory. Further, once the documents are received, they can be more quickly and easily distributed to members of the hiring committee – just a keystroke! Finally, it costs money to mail things, and none to email them; a clear win for electronic submission.
It's hard to see how there could be any downside to electronic submission that outweighs the downsides already present in having applicants prepare and mail their documents. There are numerous ways in which electronic submission is better. For instance, even assuming that a majority but not all members of hiring committees print the materials rather than reading them on computer, that still constitutes an environmental benefit over mailing out packets, and that's just one axis of evaluation we could consider.
What's amazing to me is that in the 21st century, the APA doesn't have a secure dropbox-like repository where job seekers can save relevant documents that will go to all schools and receive unique links to these documents that they can send to their potential employers – additional documentation could be requested directly. Job seekers would only have to upload most documents once and would be the only ones with the links to their own documents, so they could share them or not as they wished. Employers would just have to go to the APA site and download the relevant documents. The technology already exists, is easy to set up, and is absurdly cheap, especially compared to the community benefit that would be received and PARTICULARLY compared to the amount of money that is being spent each year by job seekers as a whole on postal fees.
As a faculty member who's had to read online applications, I can report another serious downside. I once had to separately download to my computer each applicant's writing sample, each rec letter, etc. This drove me crazy, wasted lots of time, and reduced the time I spent looking at the applications. Furthermore, there were parts of an application I didn't look at, at all, which I would have at least glanced at if I'd had a physical folder.
For another search, I was able to look at large .pdfs for each applicant that had all the materials in one place. (My school compiled each application that way.) This was much better.
— But the way the first search went, did create a real downside for applicants!!
— And if some applications are marked "incomplete" when they're really complete, that's another real downside. (See 12:29 above.)
I take it that the lesson is that online searches have to be done carefully. They do introduce new problems that need to be solved.
I know that we at Northwestern will be running a junior TT Ethics/Political search this year entirely online, and we moved to this in part to make it easier on applicants (and also in part to make it easier on our staff and on the search committee). I would be interested to hear more feedback from candidate applicants what they think; I had speculated that most would have an opinion like AC's (11:11), but perhaps that is mistaken.
My department did an entirely electronic search this past Spring. The positives far outweighed the negatives. Some of us were in different parts of the country at the start of our search, but we all were able to access the materials. At our meetings, we would just bring our laptops and it was pretty easy to pull up the information for each candidate as we went along. And our overworked secretary didn't have to do anything in terms of photocopying, ever. It's amazing that everyone isn't doing it this way.
Two additional notes:
–About 10% or so of candidates still had materials that they sent in paper-copies. These became a bit annoying to keep track of as the search went on(I was constantly sending emails that said things like "remember so-and-so's 3rd letter of recommendation is in the pile in my office if you want to look at").
–Our HR person managed all the submission stuff, and we forwarded all candidates' questions and problems to her. It might be more work if someone in the department has to manage all that.
All the major Australian universities have had online-only centralised job application processes for years, and in the last couple of years most UK universities have followed suit. The US process of course is more thoroughgoing, given that departments want writing samples and references up front rather than requesting them only from shortlisted applicants, which I take it explains why relatively few US departments have gone down this route. I take it it's only a matter of time, however, before the teething trouble is ironed out and it becomes the most efficient way to do things.
This is a bit off topic–but is on a topic that this thread is likely to drift towards.
The American Mathematical Society sponsors a website called mathjobs.org that serves both to advertise academic jobs in mathematics and to collect and distribute materials for job applicants. The people who have developed this website are offering the same services to other academic disciplines through another website, academicjobsonline.org.
These websites work as follows. Hiring departments advertise jobs. Jobseekers and their letter writers upload their documents. Then job seekers choose which ads they want to apply to. The chosen departments then have access to the materials of those job seekers. Hiring departments pay a modest fee. Applicants and letter writers pay nothing.
Mathematicians have been using this service for several years and it appears to work very well. I think it would be a great thing if the APA would seriously considered discontinuing JFP and encouraging hiring departments to use academicjobsonline.org for their searches.
I strongly agree with Gordon Belot's recommendation. And thanks for the link to academicjobsonline. It was created by someone in Duke Math, but we were unaware of it here in Philosophy.
I agree w/ Landon Schurtz, Gordon Belot, and Andrew Janiak: we're long past due for moving to some sort of central system of this kind, whether it is academicjobsonline.org. I was extremely thankful as a job candidate for the departments who allowed or required submissions entirely electronically, especially jobs where one merely had to send information to an email address (some of those HR systems are not well-implemented). It was less work than printing and mailing and, of course, free. I know that some people with tenure-track jobs weren't yet out from under debt incurred during their time on the job market after a year or more in their new job; these are the lucky ones who found good jobs and had a little financial support from their PhD department. I can hardly imagine any burdens of electronic submission that are comparable to the burdens of the standard approach.
The only warnings to someone going online-only would be to make sure that you either have a really good, smoothly functioning web-based system, or an email account that can receive rather large files without difficulty.
As anon says above, there's a serious downside for faculty in terms of downloading all the files. Our university requires online submissions, but then we've had search committees *also* require paper submissions so that we have actual physical files to pass around; some of us just prefer having paper stuff to read. This past year we let the job candidates off the hook and had our secretary print out complete files, but this was an absolute waste in terms of her time (and paper). I think we subsequently thought we should have just started with printing the CVs for everyone–rather than full dossiers for non-competitive applicants–but then that raises the issue of someone with an ok CV and brilliant letters of recommendation that don't get read. Anyway, I'm not sure we've figured it all out yet. I should also say that I'm not sure it's a great deal for applicants, either, who have to make HR accounts at every school they apply to; simply typing the address into Interfolio is way faster.
We're looking into having all of our job candidates submit their applications via Interfolio — but I don't know what happens when a university has its own submission system. So, I guess one worry is the proliferation of different and possibly incompatible online systems. It would certainly be nice if we had something standardized for philosophy. Similarly, it could end up that each set of letters has to be uploaded separately for each university, again, if universities are using their own application system.
Just to be clear — I am completely in favor of moving all of this online, and even with the difficulties, it's still probably better overall. I am just worried that the U.S. is behind Australia and the UK in this regard, and will end up proliferating systems rather than having one centralized one. The academicjobsonline service sounds promising, but again, this only works well if everyone is using it.
While I'm sure Fritz Allhoff isn't the only faculty member who has run into problems with implementing an online application system, it does sound like the difficulties were in implementation specifically, and not problems that necessarily arise from going online with this process. For example, imagine if the system worked like this: a candidate "applies" to a institution by sending the link to his or her "virtual portfolio" to whomever is in charge of receiving such things at the university in question; that person distributes the links to the hiring committee; and each committee member is then free to print off the documents or just read them on the computer as he or she prefers.
The main trouble seems to come from implementations of the online concept that fail to fully employ the advantages of the electronic approach. Having the secretary print out the files, as in Allhoff's example, saves the APPLICANT time but fails to bring the fruits of this new approach to the employers. I used to work in IT, before grad school, and I saw this all the time – it's frequently the case that people who have access to shiny new tech don't know how to get real USE out of it. It certainly seems to be the case that even for those departments that are accepting online applications, some (possibly many) of them are not really improving their own lot very much, even if they are giving a (welcome) break to the applicants. It's important that we as a profession keep in mind, when evaluating the pros and cons of "going online" with applications, that some of the perceived disadvantages of an electronic submission system may not be inherent to the method but a result of poor understanding of how to reap the benefits of it.
Sorry, in re-reading my comment above, I'm not sure that I was entirely clear. In short:
– Interfolio seems like a nice solution, but I imagine it won't work for universities that have their own system where applicants upload their materials. (Please correct me if I'm wrong)
– Faculty writing letters of recommendation, or staff acting on their behalf, may have to upload letters for each university an applicant is writing to.
– We need a universal system for online applications to really work well, whether through academicjobsonline or somewhere else.
"Faculty writing letters of recommendation, or staff acting on their behalf, may have to upload letters for each university an applicant is writing to."
My experience with "streamlined" electronic application processes involved many times the work of the old system ("staff acting on their behalf"?!), in the form of incessant uploading of recommendations (often on twitchy platforms). Increasing the work (and tedium!) burden on letter writers might be justified if (a) electronic applications are significantly better for candidates, (b) the increased burden on recommenders is technologically unavoidable or, (c) there is a substantial savings in paper and resources (as opposed to search committees printing multiple copies of electronic files.) I'm not convinced any of these obtained, last year. (IME, Interfolio was little help.)
I agree that developing a workable system is an appropriate charge for the APA, working with *highly competent* IT people.
As a job applicant, I always welcomed and took advantage of the possibility for online submissions. I would suspect that the vast majority of applicants would feel the same way for reasons mentioned above (it's generally cheaper and easier). But I can imagine that some might still prefer to send hard copies, for whatever reason.
So, I think it's reasonable to infer that, from a candidate's perspective, it's better to have the choice between electronic or non-electronic applications, rather than being required to apply electronically. Once again, I suspect that almost all would prefer to apply electronically, but removing the other option does not appear to benefit candidates.
Of course, this point has to be weighed against considerations from the point of view of the hiring faculty. I've never been on a search committee, though I can extrapolate somewhat from PhD admissions and common sense. The main thing, I assume, is that it's easier to have all applications in the same format, rather than a mixture of electronic files and paper. One solution of course would be to have a secretary either print or scan files, but that's time consuming.
The other option is to require all candidates to submit applications in the preferred format. If most candidates (and the hiring committee) prefer electronic applications, then it seems reasonable – on the basis of a quasi- consequentialist calculation – to go with the majority and require everyone to apply electronically. That may impose a hardship on the few who would prefer to apply non-electronically, but seems better than requiring the many who would prefer to apply electronically to submit hard copy.
In response to Professor Millstein: Interfolio will upload letters on behalf of applicants, but it costs significantly more (to the applicant) than just having them send hard copies.
As a job applicant, between four to nine years ago, the electronic application systems I used were not at all convenient. As far as the time and effort it takes to apply goes, there's an economy of scale to hard copies. If you're going to copy all your documents, assemble them into dossiers, and mail them off, doing an additional five isn't that burdensome — it's just a little more work on the assembly line. There isn't any economy of scale to online applications. If you have to visit a special site at the university and upload everything on a web form, the six through tenth are just as time-consuming as the first five. At least, that was my experience. And the platforms were often twitchy.
Having participated in a job search with online applications, it did was much more convenient for me (perhaps not for our office coordinator); as TC said, it was very nice to be able to access the dossier online instead of having to haul the file around. (Though the letters were hard copy only.)
Gordon Belot's suggestion of a centralized one-upload system seems as though it would be ideal. Non-centralized e-submission seems to me as though it would be more time-consuming for the applicant than paper submission, but the cost savings and convenience to the hiring department might be worth it. Still, it seems to me that it'd be decidedly second best to centralization.
From my experiences on the market two years ago:
1) Interfolio worked quite well from my (the applicant's) perspective in cases where hard copy submissions were desired.
2) Every time I saw a university that had its own online application system my mood darkened considerably. Uploading my documents to their site was tedious at best and usually things weren't at their best. Usually, for example, there would be some mismatch between what the system expected me to upload and what I actually had to upload, leaving me to figure out how to convince the system that I had a complete application. By the end of that, I generally longed for the pre-internet days.
That said, I think Gordon Belot's suggestion merits serious consideration.
A proliferation of proprietary standards is undesirable. It would be better if there were (a) a single service all departments could access, rather than each university using its own system or (b) a more or less standard way of doing things that didn't involve a centralized service (which is both cheaper and technically feasible).
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