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Faculty Searches 2015-2016September 30 and October 1, 2015
Julie Sandell, Associate Provost for Faculty [email protected]
Steven Marois, Faculty Actions Manager and Research Specialist
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We have developed an on-line Search Manual that suggests best practices and includes many resources.
Available at: http://www.bu.edu/apfd/recruitment/fsm/
We have also provided each search committee chair with a hard copy of the parent search manual:
Searching for Excellence and Diversity
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Outline• COMMUNICATION IS CRITICAL
– Attend to this throughout the process• SEARCH BROADLY and AIM HIGH
– We need to recruit from above, not below• SCREENING
– Establish criteria on which to assess all candidates– Be aware of unintended bias
• RECRUITING– Tips for a successful on-campus visit– Interviewing – Problem questions vs. Need-to-Know (and how
to help)• MAKING THE DECISION
– Best practices and hiring the best, final steps
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Communication: Plan Ahead & Follow Up
– Acknowledge receipt of materials
• check up often if a support person is tasked with this
– Respond to questions• develop a “party line” for
anticipated questions • know your timeline – this
is a very common question
– Confidentiality– Don’t forget to contact
unsuccessful candidates
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Search Broadly• We automatically advertise for you in Inside
Higher Ed, Higher Ed Jobs, BU HR, Monster.com, and HERC– Let us know when your job is filled
• Know your market and availability– we must reach great candidates in all markets – Does diversity of the pool reflect or exceed the
market?• Steve Marois is your main contact in the Provost’s Office for
help with the search process itself. – [email protected]– 617-358-4843
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Without a diverse applicant pool we may overlook great candidates
• There are general compendia of potential applicants, such as the CIC Doctoral Directory– https://www.cic.net/students/doctoral-directory/
introduction• You will need extra effort to enrich your pool• Specialized advertising venues/job boards:
– See list at: http://www.bu.edu/apfd/recruitment
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Keeping Track of your Pool• You enter applicant e-mail addresses into an on-
line tool called AARF (See http://www.bu.edu/provost/ao/fas/instructions/recruitment-2/aarf-instructions/)
• AARF sends an e-mail to applicants, asking them to self-ID by race/ethnicity and gender
• There is a firewall that prevents us from matching responses to any individual; legal requirement
• The sooner you do it, the more responses we get• Waiting until the end is not acceptable
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AARF, continued• Once a month, or upon request, we send the
search chair and the dean the data we have on the composition of your pool, by search
• This is self-ID, the only legal option• Deans will be asked about the diversity of the
applicants, interviews and offers in his or her annual review
• We are exploring ways to intervene in searches if the pool is not diverse, but the search committee is closest to the situation
White Asian Hispanic Black Other/None Specified0%
2%
4%
6%
8%
10%
148
39 10
15
2
49
8
4
7
0
37*
7
4*
4*
0
Charles River CampusSuccessful Unmodified Faculty Searches AY 2014/15
Interviewed Offered Hired
2572 1153 295 186 168
% o
f su
bgro
up a
dvan
cing
to e
ach
stag
e of
sea
rch
# in pool
6567 Applicants4019 Self-IDs205 Interviews65 Offers49 Hires
*1 hire self-identified as Hispanic and Black 2 hires self-identified as Hispanic and White
Sociology
Psych & Brain Sci
Physics
Philosophy
Math & Stats
International Studies
Hist of Art & Arch
History
Economics
Earth & Enviro
Chemistry
Biology
Anthropology
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
Doctorate Availability by Race/Ethnicity (NSF data 2013)CAS Successful Junior Searches AY 2014/15
Black Hispanic Asian Am Ind/AK Native White Other or Unknown
Mechanical Engineering
Biomedical Engineering
Electrical & Computer Engineering
All Engineering Fields
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
3
1
4
1
1
Doctorate Availability by Race/Ethnicity (NSF data 2013)ENG Successful Junior Searches AY 2014/15
Black Hispanic Asian Am Ind/AK Native White Other or Unknown
Male Female0%
2%
4%
6%
8%
10%
122
82
3926
31 18
Charles River CampusSuccessful Unmodified Faculty Searches AY 2014/15
Interviewed Offered Hired
13452663
% o
f sub
grou
p ad
vanc
ing
to e
ach
stag
e of
sea
rch
# in pool
6567 Applicants4019 Self-IDs205 Interviews65 Offers49 Hires
Sociology
Psych & Brain Sci
Physics
Philosophy
Math & Stats
International Studies
Hist of Art & Arch
History
Economics
Earth & Enviro
Chemistry
Biology
Anthropology
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
Doctorate Availability by Gender (NSF data 2013)CAS Successful Junior Searches AY 2014/15
Male Female
Mechanical Engineering
Biomedical Engineering
Eletrical & Computer Engineering
All Engineering Fields
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
3
1
1
5
Doctorate Availability by Gender (NSF data 2013)ENG Successful Junior Searches AY 2014/15
Male Female
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Aim High• We should strive to interview and hire from the top 20
schools in the discipline. • You should be cautious and we will be skeptical about
a candidate who is “underplaced.” • If you recruit such a person, we will be looking for
objective evidence that the recruit is better than other finalists in your search from peer-plus institutions.
Aiming high is NOT in conflict with diversity goals. We will provide extra resources to recruit people who bring extra value to BU. Great candidates are valuable.
Previous Institution Ranking for New T/TT FacultyP
erce
nt o
f N
ew F
acul
ty
USNWR Ranking of Previous Institution
Top 20 21-40 41-60 61 and below0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
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Screening• Develop a method and timeline in advance• Agree on screening criteria in advance – what is
required, what is desirable?• See sample checklists on p. 64 and 67 of printed
search book• Screening with established criteria
– helps minimize decisions based on hearsay– helps ensure that all applicants get due consideration– saves time
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Issues In Evaluating Candidates• Your explicit criteria should not be so
narrow or rigid that they only identify clones of the current faculty
• Look for someone more than merely satisfactory and sufficient– consider future impact – we must strive to
hire people who are better than we were at that stage.
• Issues of biases and judgment ----– Unconscious assumptions based on social
categories (e.g. race/ethnicity, sex, and age) shape consequential evaluations, even among people who value equality.
Why do we generalize our associations to create stereotypes and possibly act in a biased way?
• Unconscious assumptions about categories of people allow us to organize and retrieve information – to make judgments and understand – quickly and economically.
• But, these unconscious assumptions drive perceptions of people and our expectations of them in ways that do not reflect reality. https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/
• When are these most likely to influence decision making?
• Complex tasks• Cognitive overload• Time pressure• Need for quick judgments• Fatigue• Lack of clarity about standards• Lack of accountability• Unwarranted faith in your own
fairness and objectivity
Factors Increasing Likelihood of Discriminatory (Biased) Behavior
even if you care about fairness & equality
Experimental and real world examples of biases and assumptions
• Men were judged to be taller that women of the same height even when each was shown in a photograph against the same backdrop with height cues.
• Moving to “blind” orchestra auditions increased the probability that a woman would make it through a preliminary audition by 50%, and increased the probability that a woman would be hired by 7x.
• Letters of recommendation for faculty jobs have differences in the content depending on the gender of the candidate.
312 letters of recommendation for medical faculty hired at a large U.S. medical school; letters for women were:– Significantly shorter– Provided minimal assurance (lacked detail): 15% 6%♀ ♂
– Included more gender terms (e.g. “intelligent young lady”; “insightful woman”): 10% 5%♀ ♂
– Included more Doubt Raisers: 24% 12%♀ ♂
– Had more female-stereotypic adjectives: accomplishment/achievement 3% 13%; ♀ ♂
compassionate/relates well 16% 4%♀ ♂
– Included more grindstone adjectives: 34% 23% and ♀ ♂
fewer standout adjectives (“outstanding”, “excellent”)
Trix and Psenka, Discourse & Soc 14: 2003
Letters of Recommendation
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• See Wennerás and Wold, Nature 387, 1997• 114 applications (64 men, 52 women) for postdocs from
Swedish MRC, 16 men, 4 women got awards • Applicants were scored on “competence,” methods, and
relevance. Women were scored lower on all three. Study focused on “competence” by analyzing productivity (# publications; journal impact, first authorships, citations, etc.) of all applicants and showed that women of equal productivity as men were consistently scored as less competent.
• To even the competence score, women needed to be 2.5x as productive as men.
• Multiple regression analysis showed two factors with significant explanatory power: gender and affiliation with a reviewer. Together they were almost insurmountable.
Aren’t CVs “objective information?”
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Summary of Unintended Bias in Evaluations
• It is usually unintended. In multiple contexts, women and men exhibit the same biases about gender and competence.
• Biases are pervasive and often unconscious, so what to do?– Some committees assign a member or add a member
to monitor for bias– establish criteria against which ALL candidates are
assessed– read (and write) letters in a more self-conscious way
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From Applicant Pool to Short List of Candidates to Campus Visits
• Develop a “long short list” for phone interviews or Skype• Choose who will visit campus – 3 or more • Invitations to campus…
• Clear expectations, schedule, etc. • Put yourself in the candidate’s shoes and answer the questions they may
not ask – like how to pay for the trip.
• Visits are as much recruitment as evaluation. • Don’t hesitate to discuss our goal of increasing diversity and ask
applicants if they have relevant experience or contributions to make. This is revealing for all candidates.
• If you identify a top candidate who would add diversity, even if the disciplinary “fit” is not perfect, talk with your dean.
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Need-to-Know vs. Illegal Questions• You might want to be helpful by finding out if
a potential faculty member needs information about family-friendly policies, or has a partner who needs a job, but…
• you may not ask about these things.– whether someone has or plans to have children,
or has a spouse or partner is not a qualification (or disqualification) for a faculty job.
• The Search Manual has a list of legal and illegal questions. See “Resources”on website.
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Strategies to Provide Information• If you provide the same
information to all candidates it is a good recruiting tool, and perfectly legal.
• If the candidate initiates a topic, you may discuss it with them.
• You can ask if there’s anything that would make it difficult for them to come here if they were offered the job.
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Questions During the Visit• If you do hear about a particular need, try to
gather more information quickly.– Speak with your Dean about partner situations ASAP
so we can start seeing what might be possible.– BU belongs to HERC, which facilitates jobs for both
faculty and non-faculty partners at other member institutions in New England, but partner hires are especially tough when both need/want TT jobs.
– We have a website with resources for Dual Career couples: http://www.bu.edu/apfd/work-life-resources/dual-career-resources/
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More Tips for the Campus Visit– Sensible schedule; sent in advance; keep it humane – Transportation from the airport; guides around campus;
provide a contact phone number– We need well-attended job talks– Consider arranging meetings with other people in the
Boston area and invite those people to the talk– Final interview with the search chair or department
chair to wrap up, answer last questions, etc.
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Making The Decision• Collect preliminary reactions right after the visit• The Department should deliberate face-to-face. Many departments
prohibit proxy votes. It is best if these rules are decided before any candidates are considered• Consider asking department faculty to privately rate each
candidate on several dimensions before discussion begins; this can help counteract one person who dominates the discussion.
• Know what your Dean wants (priority list, or X acceptable options) and communicate quickly after the decision
• Don’t settle for someone merely sufficient– Many searches roll over to next year if the first search didn’t
yield an excellent person.– The bar for successful senior appointments is very high
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Senior Searches – ASCP and PROF• ASCP and PROF need a full evaluation process similar to
promotion/tenure review, regardless of current tenure status
• All aspects of the offer are contingent upon successful completion of the review process. Please let me see your offer letters before they go out. Do NOT suggest that this review is pro forma – we do have unsuccessful cases.
• We can do the central part quickly but plan for the total time needed.
• Candidates cannot go on payroll until the appointment process is complete.
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Final Words• BU will commit exceptional resources to
exceptional faculty candidates. – We can provide extra resources to candidates who
bring extra value, and we value adding diversity– If you need extra resources to help recruit an
outstanding candidate who will add to the diversity of the faculty, let the Provost’s Office know.
• We rely on you who are searching to identify, select, and help us recruit exceptional faculty
• Please let us know how we can help.Thank you!
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Julie Sandell and Steve Marois are available at any time during the search process for assistance.
[email protected]@bu.edu
