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Recruitment Strategies

Strategies to Enhance Faculty Recruitment: Stages of a Successful Search

Pre-Search:  Begin thinking about how to build the most robust pool of candidates. What strategies will you deploy? Where will you advertise and with whom will you network? All members of the department/program should be included in these early conversations. Please raise any questions or concerns with your associate dean prior to completing Pre-Search Form (Form 1).

Forming the Search Committee: The search committee itself should be representative of your department or program. Who is being included, and is anyone being excluded? Remember that the search committee is recruiting—not just evaluating—potential candidates.

Advertisement: Will you place the ad in venues that will be seen by a wide range of candidates? Will not placing the ad somewhere undermine your chances of attracting a strong pool of candidates? In addition to including the College’s template language, could the ad be worded in a way that showcases curricular or campus strengths? Beyond discipline-specific and interdisciplinary professional associations and publications, consider placing the ad in a wider set of outlets.  The associate dean for faculty development can provide you with suggestions.

Recruitment: Be proactive. The goal at this stage—arguably, the most important of any search—is to recruit the strongest pool of candidates. Placing job ads is insufficient for accomplishing this. All members of the search committee should engage in intensive outreach, contacting professional networks. Reach out to colleagues who might know candidates (e.g., department chairs of graduate programs) and to prospective candidates themselves.  Contact the associate dean for faculty development to brainstorm resources.

Evaluating Candidates: Search committee members should protect against common biases and assumptions in reviewing applications. Once the committee meets to narrow the pool, it should discuss explicitly the criteria guiding choices and the rationale for including or omitting candidates.  In First-Round Search Form (Form 2), you will have to justify your selection.

In conducting any preliminary interviews over Zoom, search committees must make every effort to treat all candidates consistently. Assessment criteria should be the same for all candidates, regardless of the technology used. See here for guidelines​.

The following recommendations are borrowed directly from Reviewing Applicants: Research on Bias and Assumptions (Women in Science & Engineering Leadership Institute, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2006):

Suggestions for an Inclusive Search:

  • Strive to increase the breadth and depth of your applicant pool.
  • Learn about and discuss research on biases and assumptions and consciously strive to minimize their influence on your evaluation.
  • Develop evaluation criteria prior to reviewing candidates and apply them consistently to all applicants.
  • Spend sufficient time (at least 20 minutes) evaluating each applicant.
  • Evaluate each candidate’s entire application; don’t depend too heavily on only one element such as the letters of recommendation, or the prestige of the degree-granting institution or post-doctoral program.
  • Be able to defend every decision for eliminating or advancing a candidate.
  • Periodically evaluate your judgments, ensuring you’re being inclusive and fair to all candidates.
See also:
Campus Visits: Invitations to campus are more than opportunities to evaluate a candidate. They are occasions to communicate with a candidate about the full range of the College’s resources and offerings, including support for faculty development. Ideally, candidates should be given the opportunity to interact with students whose feedback can then be solicited. Prior to conducting on-campus evaluations, the search committee will submit Finalist Search Form (Form 3).  When candidates visit campus, search committees should be considering among other things how well a candidate would teach and mentor all students, and how the candidate’s own work could strengthen the College’s curriculum and research profile.

Final Selection: The chair of the search committee should ensure that the committee reviews carefully all finalists, discussing explicitly how each candidate might enhance the department/program’s overall excellence. In completing Hiring Decision Search Form (Form 4), please provide a carefully reasoned, evidence-based rationale for the final decision.

Concluding the Search: Following completion of a search, committee chairs are invited to communicate with the associate dean for faculty development about effective strategies, recruitment challenges, institutional suggestions, etc. In some cases, it may be helpful to hold meetings of recent and current search committee chairs to exchange views and lessons learned.

Additional Resources