Discover effective faculty hiring strategies
Magna Publications News Release
Madison, Wis.—November 4, 2010—Hiring new faculty can be a very high stakes process, according to Dr. Mary C. Clement, Director of the Center for Teaching Excellence and Professor of Teacher Education at Berry College in Georgia. Dr. Clement offered experienced advice on how to approach search committee duties successfully in Magna’s recent seminar on Effective Faculty Hiring Strategies: A Behavior-based Approach.
According to Clement, a weak hire can cost an institution a great deal of time and money and damage a department’s reputation. It can even hamper student achievement. Strong new hires, on the other hand, can raise the morale of colleagues, reinvigorate a program, and attract more students.
Today, a single faculty job advertisement may yield hundreds of qualified applicants, making the selection of the single best candidate a hugely time-consuming undertaking. Clement pointed out that search committee members typically are not human resource or personnel experts; therefore, they need training on how to handle their responsibilities.
Committee members must understand how to write an accurate, “information-rich” job description and they also need to develop a sensible process–beforehand–for evaluating the responses they will receive.
Clement recommended creating a checklist for all of the criteria listed in the posted job description along with a rating scale for cover letters, resumes and letters of recommendation. When conducting interviews, she advises, “Don’t ask questions that can’t be evaluated.” She also explained which illegal questions must never be asked of applicants and offered other helpful Do’s and Don’ts to keep in mind.
This seminar included samples of the following essential committee documents:
- Preliminary Job Interview Evaluation Form
- Evaluation Form for Candidate Paperwork
- Illegal Question Guidelines
Search committees, according to Clement, must always avoid relying on “gut feelings” in evaluating a pool of candidates. The best search process will follow a formalized structure and create a fair, objective process for identifying and recruiting new faculty members. This is not only essential for selecting the best candidates, but also for avoiding legal problems. Sorting applications carefully is increasingly important since, as Clement pointed out: “It is becoming more and more expensive to bring candidates to campus.”
She recommends using behavior-based interviewing (BBI) strategies as one of the most useful methods for sorting and evaluating candidates, and detailed how to do so. BBI assumes that past behavior is the best available predictor of future performance.
Whether this is your first time on a search committee or your fifteenth, you will discover helpful strategies for managing these necessary responsibilities in this timely and important Magna seminar.
If you missed the seminar and would like to purchase it for your institution, you can order the program in CD or print transcript format, both of which include the presenters' handouts.
Magna Publications is a leading publisher of newsletters and other information products in the higher education segment. Magna also manages onsite and online conferences on topics of interest to higher education.
For more information please contact David Burns, Publisher, Magna Publications, Inc., at 608-227-8109, or dburns@magnapubs.com.
