Just trying to get feel about a faculty position. How does it work? Do they usually have someone to hire in mind? They must know about potential candidates in advance through their work.
I am confused about what you are asking. Can you please clarify?
2 Likes
I was wondering about a faculty position. Since the community is small and probably know each other’s work well, when they advertise a position, I thought they may have someone in mind to hire. If not, come to the decision very quickly. I thought hiring process could be somewhat different from other jobs. They know each other’s work already.
2 Likes
I work at a small not very prestigious college, so it probably is different up there in the stratosphere, but our hiring process is pretty mainstream and transparent. We send out an ad for whatever specialty we’re looking for, get a stack of (hopefully good) applications, interview a handful of candidates who we’ve never heard of, and hire the best fit.
9 Likes
I worked at a very small, niche college. Calls for faculty hires were distributed worldwide, and no one had an edge over anyone else. Our alumni were often hired as faculty at other schools, and they usually didn’t have any ties to the school.
5 Likes
Hi–regional college faculty member here. Positions are in such demand that almost every college will run a national search for any tenure-track position–and sometimes for instructor positions as well. The only position that is relatively easy to get is “adjunct faculty”–but that one is only desirable if you can afford to make under 30K a year (and that’s if you get lucky and teach 3-4 courses a semester). Faculty in the humanities usually have already published for any tenure-track job that is not at a community college.
7 Likes
That’s what I thought. Some (or many) places advertise for a new faculty to hire but then often end up hiring an already established faculty. It will be good to know beforehand.
Not a “one way fits all” situation I would say. It could be a “who do we know to hire” situation, it may be a specialty position that they need or WANT to solicit from outside the university, it may be someone already at the univ OR adjunct faculty that wants a more permanent position.
Never hurts to throw your hat in the ring if you feel you have the qualifications and/or special skills to bring to the position. Don’t expect it to be a fast process. 
2 Likes
I agree about throwing in one’s hat. The question is more about how many. If you throw in your hat only places that hire more established faculty unknowingly, you are doomed.
How long does the process take? If you don’t hear back within a few weeks, is it too early to take them off the table?
1 Like
If you have the credentials to be hired in a tenure-track faculty position, then you should have a mentor from your Ph.D. program who should be helping you out with all of these questions. You need to ask faculty at your graduate institution for help.
13 Likes
Yes, in fields where the terminal degree is a PhD. It may be very different if the terminal degree is something else (e.g. faculty for nursing programs, technical education programs etc.)
3 Likes
ETA: as a general rule, faculty in fields where graduates make good money (nursing, dentistry, certain engineering fields etc) are often in demand rather than in excess. But expect to take a pay cut! A close family member of mine applied for a tenure track job in such a field, was offered the job, but turned it down as it would have involved a substantial pay cut.
5 Likes
The mentor isn’t worried. Or the mentor isn’t showing it if worried.
Just to be clear, this discussion is about a college/university position, right??? Because if it is a K-12 job, things are very different: licensure requirements, etc.
2 Likes
Yes, a college/university position
I saw both at the community college where I worked. Many faculty positions at both 2 year and 4 year schools are part time. In my state, schools are not required to advertise for those positions. Many of those positions are filled by word of mouth or when a potential faculty member checks for openings at the right time. In my experience, Deans usually despise the whole hiring process so they are happy to hire with the least possible effort.
Full time tenure track positions here require a whole posting and hiring process that takes a couple of months minimum. I have often seen the powers-that-be go through all those motions when they did already know who they were going to hire. It’s unfortunate for the candidates who are not aware that is the case. I’m guessing at my institution, this “sham” happened for, roughly, 1/4 to 1/3 of the openings-with the balance of the positions being filled after a “legit” hiring process.
1 Like
Hi – I’m a tenured professor at a regional Master’s level university. The way things usually work is as follows: a department identifies a field in which they want to hire someone, conducts a national search (most TT searches are for assistant professors, some are for advanced assistant/associate, and very few are open rank or full professors – the latter will only happen in R1 universities when they want to bring an established superstar on board). The searches are always national and adhere to strict EEOC rules.
Variations on the theme could include the following: a target of opportunity hire (when there is someone specific who would add to the department’s racial diversity), a spousal hire (sometimes this gets hidden in a national search), or an adjunct in the department who has broad support to move into a tt position (which is also usually hidden in a national search). When the department has someone specific in mind, they still often have to run a national search and that person has to apply with the rest of the applicant pool. I have seen these searches not work out for the person who appears at first glance to be favored for the job. Local people also are not automatically favored unless they fit into one of the above categories.
The time frame for these searches could take months. The typical time frame for my discipline is as follows: job searches announced early in the school year, first round interviews in late fall or early spring semester, either in person at our national conference or via Zoom. Then we bring 2-4 candidates to campus within a few weeks after selecting who moves up from the first round. Our final choice has to get administrative approval before we make the offer, and then we hope to have our final choice approved and committed by around spring break.
For faculty positions in professional programs, in which the faculty serve some clinical teaching role which may or may not be tenure-track, the applicant pool is often local (regional business schools, for example, will often hire local people who are already prominent in local business). But that’s not typical of academia outside of professional training.
FYI: I don’t know about your training or qualifications, but when my department has run searches, we have often gotten a lot of applications from local people who don’t really seem to understand how the academic job markets (or academic jobs) work – usually several high school teachers, people who are in local businesses, etc. Assuming you are not one of those people, you really should have good mentoring from your dissertation advisor and other advisors or even more senior students in your grad program to walk you through the job market.
4 Likes
Do you let people know after each round or what until the end and notify everyone at once?
Depends. Academia in general is notorious for poor job market etiquette, and a lot of departments will never let you know, or they’ll let you know after the whole search is finished and they have a contract with someone. Every once in awhile, they’ll let people know if they’re not making it to the next round – but that would happen only after the present round is over and they have their finalists. If you turned in your application a few weeks ago, it’s way too early to expect to hear anything. Committees don’t meet to decide semifinalists until several weeks after the deadline, because the committee members need time to read all the applications.
5 Likes
depends. Some of the larger colleges will have portals in which to apply and also check status. If the status says, Interviews and gives dates, and you haven’t received an interview invite, you can assume that you are not on the long short-list. (Long short-list garners zoom interviews, and from that a short-short list is culled for a handful of on-site interviews.)
I heard a recent posting for Princeton tenure track in Pscyh received 350 apps.
And yes, like any advertised job, the hiring manager could have a preferred candidate in mind before the advertisement goes out.
1 Like