Search Committee Process

[Vid]

I have a quick question, folks. How does the search process to hire a new faculty go in your institution? Does the senior faculty dominate other members in decision making? I mean is there any disagreement among the members?  I was actually involved in a search committee to hire a tenure track faculty (done with the search) and I had some suggestions which weren't well received!  My comments were about inclusion and diversity and including at least 1-2 female applicants to the pool! This is my first experience involving in a search committee. 

I appreciate your feedback, comments on this.

[research_prof]

For phone interviews, typically the committee uses agreed-upon rubrics. For the on-campus interviews, all faculty members vote secretly. All votes have equal weights.

Lately, we have a lot of HR involvement in the process as an effort to boost diversity.

[Hegemony]

Vid, that sounds dire. At our place my experience has been that everyone on the committee is reasonable, and there would be an outcry and a lot of pushback if anyone tried to dominate the proceedings, or be unreasonable, e.g. tried to insist on their own way rather than talking it over. We also have people from some central office who come and give us directives about how the process should go and on how to avoid bias. I've been on a number of committees and I haven't seen one that's been conducted objectionably, though several times the person who ended up getting hired was not my personal choice for top candidate.

[Ruralguy]

It's hard to tell how dire this is from one set of brief comments. Assuming that perception is a large part of reality though, they probably aren't being as inclusive as they could be. Or, there were simply many who disagreed with you.
Either way, next time, maybe try to get more junior faculty on the committee,or women/minorities if they exist in your department. Draw out the conversation more by asking people why they hold certain opinions. After tenure, you can do more specific things such as making sure people are clear on HR rules and inclusion. You can try that now, but people who aren't ready for that will just be dismissive of you if you don't share power with them.

[Vid]

Thank you, folks. We had a zoom interview with 10 candidates but all of them were male applicants. I tried to push 1-2 women in the pool but they said they don't have merit! This position is well aligned with my research and the finalist (negotiating) should work with me or at least collaborate closely with me. But my opinion didn't matter at all. 

When I discussed diversity and inclusion, a senior faculty said we have to have a proper answer to HR why we did not include any female applicants in the pool. another guy said the dean won't be happy if he doesn't see women in the pool, but eventually they did not include any female applicants!!

Ruralguy: Funny thing is they included a fresh Ph.D. (defended few months ago) to the final list for campus interview and when I said we need to include another candidate who has more experience (bc it is 90% research appointment, 10% Extension, so the person should be well established to bring in $$$)  they said if he gets hired you need to teach him how to write proposals so that he gets funded!! Is it really my responsibility?

I am not sad because they didn't care about my opinion, I am sad because (unfortunately) I don't see gentlemen around me here!

Thank you folks for your advice.

[Ruralguy]

Without seeing the list of candidates for myself, I can't really say much about how just your colleagues' decisions were. I can say that obviously you feel excluded, which means they and you can do more to work on that.

Thinking from their perspective a bit, can you see reasons for excluding your two female candidates (I mean aside from bias and misogyny)? Can you see reasons for including the inexperienced candidate that you didn't care for as much?

You have to work with these people for decades (of course some will leave before you or you might go elsewhere). So, you can shake your fists at everything, or see things from their perspective and figure out how to get some of what you want.
That doesn't mean you should let people violate rules. Just finesse your response. There is a lot of dynamic range between suffering in silence and calling them out for being stupid bigots (not saying you did either).

[Vid]

Ruralguy: I understand. I was strategic and I told them "Iam an NSF-funded researcher and diversity and inclusion is important to me" The reason why they did not include the female candidate was about the number of publications. She had around 8-9 but those male applicants had more publications and research activities. To me, if  I have a female applicant with 6 publications and 2 research grants and at the same time I have a male applicant with 12 publications and 4 grants, I try to include the female applicant in the pool along with the male applicant. Because besides the research responsibilities, women are the preliminary caregiver at home (kids, cooking, housekeeping, etc.) so obviously this causes delay in research activities--and it is understandable.

I have a disabled female grad student in my lab and she's thriving in research. Anyway, I am a big believer of diversity and gender balance in STEM and it seems I live in a different world :-)

Thank you for sharing your wisdom with me, Ruralguy. 

[Ruralguy]

You have no idea who is a primary caregiver or if any of these women even have children. I don't doubt that in general what you say is so, but applying this to differences you see in your female and male candidates is probably not helpful. However, I would tend to agree that if you and maybe one or two others on the committee see these differences in granting and such as relativley minor, you should include some women at least at the interview stage.

[dr_codex]

You have no idea who is a primary caregiver or if any of these women even have children. I don't doubt that in general what you say is so, but applying this to differences you see in your female and male candidates is probably not helpful. However, I would tend to agree that if you and maybe one or two others on the committee see these differences in granting and such as relativley minor, you should include some women at least at the interview stage.

^ +1 to the bolded sentences. Unless a candidate specifically addresses this in a cover letter, or has a referee do so, these should not be topics in your interviews, or in your deliberations about them.

That said, there are many reasons to value diversity, and most hiring now is expected to weigh it as a factor. My current search requires DEI statements, and candidates who don't do a competent job of them won't get an interview.

If I were a junior member, I would certainly raise the issue of diversity, citing whatever official language was in place. (EOE, etc.) But I would leave it to the Search Chair to address it with the whole committee. Searches run in a wide variety of ways, and as it's your first one, I'd listen as much as possible.

[mleok]

To me, if  I have a female applicant with 6 publications and 2 research grants and at the same time I have a male applicant with 12 publications and 4 grants, I try to include the female applicant in the pool along with the male applicant. Because besides the research responsibilities, women are the preliminary caregiver at home (kids, cooking, housekeeping, etc.) so obviously this causes delay in research activities--and it is understandable.

Yeah, as a soon to be divorced single dad with shared physical custody, I would be uncomfortable with the notion that a male applicant with twice the objective productivity of a female applicant should be viewed as roughly comparable based on the assumption that the female applicant is the primary caregiver.

[mamselle]

Agree with both.

At least the levels of complication are being considered, where they were once completely ignored.

Progress on the levels of compassion is encouraging to this female, even if more explicit nuance, like that Mleok notes above, must also be noted.

There is learning in bipeds.

M.

[mleok]

I should say that if you are truly concerned about diversity and inclusion, then the best way to achieve this is to ensure that one performs outreach prior to the application deadline, so that one has a highly qualified and diverse pool of applicants. Having said that, it seems a bit unusual that you have a phone interview list of 10 candidates, all of whom are male, and a better method of addressing this would be to reopen the job ad and perform some of the outreach I mentioned, so that you have a stronger pool of diverse candidates. If your institution is serious about diversity and inclusion, your department may be forced to do that.

[Vkw10]

The reason why they did not include the female candidate was about the number of publications. She had around 8-9 but those male applicants had more publications and research activities.

It might be helpful next time to focus the conversation on the need to assess quality instead of quantity. Pointing out that Applicant A has fewer publications, but those publications are in excellent journals and this line of research aligns well with our strategic priorities sometimes helps to move a diverse candidate forward.

[research_prof]

Ruralguy: I understand. I was strategic and I told them "Iam an NSF-funded researcher and diversity and inclusion is important to me" The reason why they did not include the female candidate was about the number of publications. She had around 8-9 but those male applicants had more publications and research activities. To me, if  I have a female applicant with 6 publications and 2 research grants and at the same time I have a male applicant with 12 publications and 4 grants, I try to include the female applicant in the pool along with the male applicant. Because besides the research responsibilities, women are the preliminary caregiver at home (kids, cooking, housekeeping, etc.) so obviously this causes delay in research activities--and it is understandable.

I have a disabled female grad student in my lab and she's thriving in research. Anyway, I am a big believer of diversity and gender balance in STEM and it seems I live in a different world :-)

Thank you for sharing your wisdom with me, Ruralguy.

So let me get that straight: you had 2 candidates A and B. In the eyes of the committee, A was "more qualified" (but was a male) and B was "less qualified" (but was a female). And you insisted that giving an interview to B instead to A simply because of their gender (without having any other evidence but only due to your implicit bias for some reason) would be the right thing to do? Because probably having a colleague that is perceived "more diverse" than the other would actually strengthen the broader impacts section of your NSF proposals? If that's the case, I am deeply concerned to hear that and you probably should not participate in hiring committees in the future because this is exactly what implicit bias is.

How do you know that the male applicant is not a single dad or he does not have to care about sick parents/family members while also working as much as possible and sleeping less to make all that happen?

[AJ_Katz]

Perhaps this be grounds for a failed search if they did not have an adequately diverse pool of applicants in the first place.  The challenge is that it is often difficult to agree upon what is considered an "adequately diverse pool" and is something that probably should have been defined before the search began.