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Should job talks be part of the hiring process?

Brian Leiter

Philosopher Colin Marshall (Washington) writes:

Almost every department I know of gives the job talk a central role in hiring decisions, but I'm wondering whether the traditional job talk really deserves to be sacred while other aspects of the hiring process are changing. 

My main reason for skepticism is that I know a number of young philosophers who are (a) great researchers, (b) great teachers, (c) great members of the profession, and (d) great departmental citizens, but who, for various reasons, aren't great at presenting their research to a room full of judgmental strangers, most of whom are non-specialists. The latter skill isn't a bad one to have, but it's surely much less important than (a)-(d). Yet in the traditional job talk, this latter skill is what's privileged, and often used to make judgments about (a)-(d). That seems like a recipe for false negatives. 

So here's my question: what alternatives to the job talk have hiring departments tried for campus visits, and are there un-tried alternatives we should consider? I have a hunch that our profession could do much better. [There is the further question of whether we should have campus visits at all, but I'm hoping to bracket that.]

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8 responses to “Should job talks be part of the hiring process?”

  1. Richard Moore

    For various reasons, Colin Marshall's suggestion strikes me as unmotivated.

    First, the job talk isn't the only part of the hiring process, and (a)-(d) are already likely to have been well covered by the reference letters and the CV. In that case, job talks are likely to be used to compare the presentation skills of those who are already well matched on (a)-(d). That seems perfectly reasonable: as the poster points out, presentations skills are good ones to have. Moreover, the appearance of the job talk doesn't cancel out other forms of information about a candidate. It complements them. The other skills that the poster mentions will continue to be valued by the hiring committee.

    Second, I fail to see how someone who failed to be good at presenting work to non-specialists could really be a great teacher.

    Third, giving good talks is a skill at which some excel. Why should those individuals be deprived of the chance to show this strength? Again, as the poster notes, it's a great strength to have – particularly in an age in which much academic funding (in the UK especially) is connected to the ability of researchers to engage with the public.

    If researchers are not good at presenting their work to non-specialist audiences, then they should work to hone those skills.

    Reply
  2. Kenny Easwaran

    I agree with Colin Marshall. It's not just that some people aren't as good as others at giving talks – even among people who are good, there's a wide range of variance in the quality of individual talks, and quite often an individual talk just isn't representative of a person's skill.

    Also, on most hiring committees, most people don't read all the material on most candidates. However, just about everyone does attend every job talk. For that reason alone, the job talk will get disproportionate weight. Obviously it would be ideal if the entire hiring committee reads the entire file at least for all the finalists, but given that hiring committees are composed of busy academics, we shouldn't design our process in a way that works well only if all committee members perform ideally.

    Furthermore, being human, all of us tend to over-value information we experience and under-value information we read about. Recommendation letters, for all their flaws, are still likely to be more accurate information about the general qualities of a candidate as a colleague and research presenter than a single job talk, but we're not likely to treat them as such. As philosophers, we're probably able to weight the quality of someone's written work more strongly than the quality of a job talk, but most of us (especially non-specialists) are likely not to read much of the written work.

    I've seen several cases where people have argued for the elimination of candidates on the basis of a job talk, but I think the only times this has been justified are cases where a job talk led to a deeper evaluation of the written work that turned out not to be as amazingly high quality as initially thought. This has led me to think that, although job talks and candidate visits are a lot of fun, and may even be useful as last-minute confirmation of a department choice, they probably shouldn't play anywhere near as central a role in the process as they do.

    Reply
  3. Ben Laurence

    The job talk, along with the writing sample, are the only pieces of hard evidence about the quality of the candidate's research and her ability to think about philosophy alongside others to which we have access. Letters of recommendation are full of spin and hype, and so only worth so much, and anyway often represent judgments of quality that a hiring department may not share. While it's true that some people are better at giving talks than others, and this is not a perfect indicator, it's nonetheless crucial data that we don't have any other easy way of getting at. (By the way, it seems reasonable to me that any philosopher should be able to explain her ideas to other philosophers who do not specialize in her field. But I suspect this opinion turns on substantive views about how philosophy should be practiced.)

    Reply
  4. Thornton Lockwood

    At several campus interviews in the last decade I was asked to teach a class on a topic of my choosing rather than give a formal job talk or read aloud a research paper. Admittedly, most of those interviews were for "teaching" positions (i.e., colleges or universities with greater emphasis on teaching than on research). Nonetheless, it seems to me highly desirable to have some way to gauge a candidate's ability to present philosophical ideas orally to both other philosophers and/or non-specialists (including faculty from outside a philosophy department).

    Reply
  5. Mike Raven

    If one is to consider whether Marshall's concerns about the standard job talk model are ultimately well-motivated, it would seem prudent to consider in tandem alternatives to it. So I'll hazard a response to Marshall's question:

    One alternative would be to have job candidates "workshop" a pre-read paper of theirs. While the candidate might begin with a precis (and so provide some evidence of the skill of communicating to a wide audience), the bulk of the discussion would be modeled off of a seminar discussion.

    One advantage of this alternative is that it is closer to what many of us do "in the wild". Granted, it provides less evidence than the standard job talk of the candidate's skill in delivering a formal talk. But it might be reasonably debated whether that skill should play a significant role in hiring decisions. Arguably, the philosophical and collegial skills which should play a significant role in hiring decisions will be on display on the suggested alternative, just with less of the artificiality and hostility that often comes from the standard job talk format.

    Reply
  6. Michael Rosen

    In the UK, for various historical and institutional reasons, the job talk was never the norm. The job interviews that were conducted instead were at least as problematic.

    For what it's worth, I think the job talk itself is fine. The skill of presenting your ideas to a roomful of engaged and informed (yes, and critical) interlocutors is a valuable one — as well as correlating with other valuable qualities.

    The problem is much more that selection processes usually involve two kinds of participant: members of the search committee, who will engage seriously with other aspects of the candidate's work and will speak to her/him outside the job talk, and those members of departments who form their opinions on the basis of job talks alone.

    The latter often leads to bad decisions, but that is not inherent (or confined) to job talks.

    Reply
  7. Derek Bowman

    I have no strong opinions on the value of job talks in evaluating candidates, but if the only objection is that they produce "false negatives," I don't think that's much of a strike against them.

    The present ratio of qualified applicants to full time jobs guarantees that any selection method will leave a number of qualified applicants out in the cold.

    Reply
  8. Colin Marshall

    Thanks to everyone who has chimed in about this!

    Just to clarify: my question was about whether there are alternatives to the traditional job talk that we should consider as a profession. Like Kenny, I think there are problematic aspects of the job talk, but I was hoping to talk about those problems in light of possible alternatives such as the one Mike mentioned.

    So here's a rephrasing of the question:
    Say someone claimed that the traditional job talk was the only possible way of fairly evaluating job candidates during campus visits. Are there counterexamples to that claim?

    Reply

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