The Long and Winding Road
The Chronical of Higher Education featured this article, The Endlesse Searche, today about the extremely slowwww nature of the hiring process of academics, namely academic librarians. Having previously been a candidate in multiple searches (some bad, some good) I know exactly the frustration Mr. Gilman is talking about.
Gilman advises those hiring an academic librarian to do a few common sense things. Why? Because very often, libraries don't do these things when conducting a search and end up shooting themselves in the foot because they A) don't get the pool of candidates they want [or they don't get a pool at all], B) don't have the money to pay for the qualifications they want in a candidate, or C) slack off in their searching duties thereby allowing other institutions to snap up the good candidates in the meantime.
Gilman also advises search committees to notify candidates the minute they're no longer in the running for a position. HA! I interviewed at one instition, got along famously with everyone there, and didn't hear anything for 2 months. Come to find out, I had been the only person interviewed, HR didn't like the fact that there had only been 1 candidate, and demanded at least a second person be interviewed. The search committee scrambled to interview another person a month later and ended up hiring her. Where did that leave me? Three months after my interview with bupkus.
The job I did end up getting I had actually written off because, like I said, I had applied in February and by August hadn't heard a peep. Seven months is a freakin' long time to go without work. (Out of the 27 jobs I applied for in 2004, only about 10 even bothered to tell me "thanks, but no thanks." Talk about courtesy! Yikes.)
I stayed in said job for 18 months. Turns out the institution itself was run little better than its job searches. Fortunately for me, there's a happy ending. (Or beginning, in this case.) With a year and a half of professional experience under my belt, I applied for my current position in March, got invited to interview in mid-April, was offered the job in the beginning of May, and started working in mid-June!! Wow! It all happened so fast, I'm still suffering a bit of dizziness!
So, how do you run a good job search? It's quite easy. Even a robot like me knows.
- Figure out what qualifications you want in a candidate. Do your research!
- Figure out how much you should pay someone for such a position, then find out how much you can actually offer. Don't be a cheap bastard. Librarians aren't stupid. (Well, some of them are, but that's another rant altogether.)
- Advertise a concise and clear ad in appropriate venues. Include a description of job duties and desired/required qualifications and be sure to post a salary range.
- Conduct formal interviews. Don't ask stupid questions like, "If you were a garden tool, what would you be and why?" or "Where do you want to be in 10 years?" You'll scare off the smart candidates in a second.
- Contact candidates soon after the interview to let them know A) they're still in consideration, or B) they're not right for the job. Oh, and 'soon' doesn't mean in 3 months. It means soon, like within a couple weeks, yo? People have lives, they have shit goin' on and they shouldn't have to wait around for you to make up your mind, have HR or the dean say, "Nope," or wait for you to scramble around doing anything in steps 1-4 at this point.
- Make an offer to the top candidate and be flexible. Next thing you know, she/he will be working at your institution! They'll be happy, you and the search committee will be happy, HR will be happy, and everybody happy! Oompah!
I'm certainly not going to hold my breath about academic libraries getting their act together when it comes to hiring new librarians anytime soon; however, having recently been through a well-run and briskly-paced job search, I know it can be done. There's no need to have 10 months between receiving an application and having a candidate start work. None. Academic libraries, like glaciers, have been around for a very long time; however, longevity is one thing, stagnation is quite another.
6 comments:
D'oh! TR, you're weezing on my gig. I had an entry all heated up and ready to go on this very subject, prompted by this very article. You've covered the ground in a much more thorough and entertaining way, too. Phooey...
The only bit I can contribute to this is to note that the article's author, Mr-I'm-the-literature-librarian-at-Yale, decided to lower himself to our humble work when he discovered that he had all the advanced degrees and language mastery prefered (but not required) by most academic library gigs, so why tilt against the windmills of teaching and research? One MLS degree later (it took him like two weeks to save up enough boxtops) and he's on his way.
I'm not saying his advice here isn't worthwhile - just the opposite. However, I wouldn't really call Boola Boola Land representative of much of anything you and I are likely to encounter. Check out the last several days worth of Libetiquette for more on this very subject.
Sorry, dude. Sometimes my fingers run away and all I can do is follow. I'll leave the next library rant to you, promise!
All I know is that before I entered the academic library world, applying for and getting jobs in various other fields was relatively easy. The sense of pretentious b.s. that seems to surround the hiring of librarians in institutions of higher learning is really quite ridiculous, as you well know.
Speaking of hiring, have you kids at the ned found anyone to head my old dept yet? Or is the pool still full of brown water and leaves from last season?
Ouch. Guess I'm still a touch bitter about Ned-related things...
That last bit about glaciers is quite apt, especially after viewing would-be-President Gore's agitprop earlier this summer. The Ned's glaciers are not moving and in fact are melting under the heat of the information revolution, but the stony landscape underneath is not exactly buried treasure.
We are having another Staff Development Day next month - how much more developed can we get? The must to improve our bust melted long ago, also - during which we may be entertained by the latest version of the Ned's Five Year Plan... or not. I think that it is fair to say that the current leadership did not anticipate being here for the SDD in August, nor did her intended audience. I'm not silly enough to think there will be genuine candor or anything, but the day promises to be delightfully uncomfortable for all.
There are no plans to re-activate the search you speak of, nor will any other open positions be filled at this time. Her statement on that inaction from May still stands. To say more at this time would dry up a month's worth of cf ranting to come; stay tuned.
I think that the majority of this problem is academia period. They all move slowly, not just the libraries. I would have liked to hear how fast other disciplines hire.
And if I were a garden tool I would be a hoe because I have experience in that field, figuratively and literally. I have unearthed many kinds of soil as a young lady, working for my parents in their yard.
Yes...hoe is an obvious answer.
Wuv, ~The Booklahver
Tee-hee! "Hoe..."
But seriously...I have no idea how well or poorly candidate searches are done in other academic fields. It seems to be the norm that they make everyone trying to get into academia feel as small as possible because they're not sittin' pretty in the tenure club. What-evs.
Also, I'm really damn tired of hearing about/from these PhDs who can't get a job in their own field who come into ours and start bitchin. Nobody made them get an advanced degree in military basket weaving! Go work at McDonalds! We librarians can shit on our own parade, thank you very much! We certainly don't need anymore overanalytical musings on the sad state of academic librarianship by failed PhDs.
Ahhh!
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