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MY STRATEGIES for hiring were conceived through a painful process marked almost as much by failure as by success. I describe that process here in the hope that others will benefit from my experiences and at the very least avoid some of my mistakes. I am convinced that hiring is one of the chair's most important functions, if not the most important. In my six years as chair I have filled more than thirty faculty positions on Loyola University's Chicago campuses, including tenure-track, visiting, and part-time appointments in French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Russian, Japanese, and Arabic. Several of these were made as the result of a merger with Mundelein College. We now have nineteen full-time faculty members in Chicago, two full-time faculty members based on our Rome campus, and twenty-eight part-time faculty members.
Loyola University, Chicago, is an urban, private PhD-granting institution with a student body of over fifteen thousand. Our department has majors in French, German, Italian, and Spanish. In addition, we have a graduate program in Spanish, and we participate in the English department's PhD program and the master of liberal studies program with offerings in literature in translation and comparative literature.
Our department, like all others, suffered through the turbulent times of falling enrollments, lost requirements, and lost lines—times, too, when Loyola, traditionally a teaching institution, became research-oriented. Our chance to turn things around came with a confluence of events—rising enrollments and mass retirements (five in three years). The rising enrollments, coupled with aggressive advocacy, enabled me to retain all the lines. After explaining to everyone what we do and why it is of vital importance today and will become even more important in the years ahead, I succeeded in having the language requirement increased and gaining permission to hire. I realized that I had a unique opportunity to reshape my department, and I set out to hire the best talent we could attract. I began recruiting and hiring in my second year; in four years I ran seven tenure-track searches for five positions. Three of the searches failed; four were successful—one permitting us to fill two vacancies. We hired two professors of French and one each of German, Italian, and Spanish, all but one for entry-level positions. We got our first-choice candidate for each hire. (Fortunately, I had the administrative support to make fairly competitive offers.)
We have always tried to maximize our chances by doing our homework well. We take care in wording the advertisement published in the MLA Job Information List, and we have learned to make it as explicit as possible. We found, for instance, that we were inevitably dissatisfied with candidates who were not knowledgeable about theory, but we had not asked for this competence in our ads. When we finally did, we got better-qualified candidates. In other words, when what had been an unconscious hidden agenda became explicit, everyone benefited. We look for candidates with excellent language skills who are as interested in scholarship as they are in teaching. Our ad always says that we want near-native fluency both in English and in the target language—and we mean it. The interview at the MLA convention is conducted in both languages. We have rejected many otherwise excellent candidates because their language skills did not meet our standards. Inadequate English means an inability or an unwillingness to teach literature in translation courses, which are very important to us. It also means the candidate will probably not represent us well at the college or university level. Inadequate skills in the target language are, of course, disastrous in the classroom. All our professors must have mastered at least one foreign language well; that foreign language may be English.
We ask for full dossiers in the ad, despite the recommendation to the contrary by the MLA Committee on Academic Freedom and Professional Rights and Responsibilities, which discourages departments from asking for full dossiers in the October List. We do it because full dossiers permit a more judicious selection. The letters of recommendation, in particular, give valuable insights. Although I would encourage more truth telling in these letters, the perceptive reader finds them helpful despite their exclusively laudatory nature: what is not said is almost as important as what is said. All tenured and tenure-track members of the section hiring scrutinize all material submitted and make the initial cuts. Our final short list is developed by the departmental advisory committee, which comprises members from all our sections. Input from outside the section doing the hiring has proved particularly valuable, even if it has been initially resented on occasion.
The next step involves calling everyone on the short list to set up appointments at the MLA convention. I also request additional data at this time, including samples of the candidate's scholarship and sample teacher and course evaluations. We want to make it clear that teaching and scholarship are equally important to us. We also notify all candidates who will not be interviewed that we can no longer pursue their candidacies. I initially omitted this important step, thinking that candidates who were not called would realize that they were out of the running, but I discovered that this was not true. Hope springs eternal and must be mercifully put to death before the convention.
We usually interview ten candidates (or each position advertised, more if we have the time. Our interviews, which are set up at hour intervals, ideally last between thirty and forty minutes. The team prepares for them thoroughly, and I insist that every candidate be given full consideration and be treated with dignity and kindness. I usually begin the interview by briefly defining the job and then go on to describe the department and the university in general. I try to highlight our strengths while painting a realistic picture. I describe what the teaching load is likely to be, what the research expectations are, and what resources are available to support these expectations. I also discuss service requirements. Team members then engage the candidate, in the target language, concerning the writing sample submitted. Needless to say, candidates who cannot talk about their own work, when we can, are at a disadvantage. Two or three recent candidates couldn't remember what they had said in the articles they sent us. Although discussion of the candidates' research interests is vital, we also talk about their teaching experience. Since we don't have a two-tiered faculty, I make it clear that everyone in our department is expected to teach both language and literature. We are favorably impressed if the candidate has taken the initiative to do some research on us.
If possible, the senior people in the section should be present for the interviews. If they are not, they will be screening the candidates during the campus visit, when everyone should be in the recruiting mode, not the screening mode. This can lead to a failed search, as it did once for us. Every effort should be made to convince administrators that flying an extra interviewer to the MLA convention is less costly than a failed search. It is also a bad idea to exclude difficult faculty members from the hiring process. If they participate in it, they are less likely to try to scuttle it. You don't normally try to destroy what you feel a part of.
I would counsel against running more than one search at a time, if possible. I once conducted as many as three searches in three different languages in the same year, involving more than twenty-five interviews at the MLA convention. Even if colleagues speaking at the convention can help with the interviews, it is difficult, if not impossible, to put together effective interviewing teams for more than one search. But there is one exception: if the searches are in the same language, running more than one at a time can actually have some advantages. We really did it well only once, in 1990, when the convention was in Chicago and I was able to put together two effective teams, both of which were successful. I should also note that that year we had the good fortune to be able to interview in a suite. Our success was undoubtedly due to many factors, but I'm tempted to say that the lovely setting had something to do with it. It certainly improved our attitude toward the process. In prior years, I had always made good use of the facilities provided by the MLA, but on the one occasion when I was constrained to interview in my hotel room I found the situation uncomfortable, if not embarrassing. I have known female candidates who have expressed similar discomfort with such arrangements.
Interviewers should consult the MLA's Dos and Don'ts for Interviews and the guidelines for hiring in the Job Information List. The preconvention workshops on the job search and the mock interviews sponsored by the ADFL at each MLA convention may prove useful to interviewers as well as candidates, as may my article, “The MLA Job Interview: What Candidates Should Know.” Bettina Huber's statistical analyses of the job market, which appear regularly in the MLA Newsletter, provide helpful indications of how much competition there will be in each discipline.
After the convention interviewing is completed, the team ranks the candidates. Those who will not be invited to the campus are notified in writing as soon as possible. I begin calling the finalists in early January to determine whether they are seriously interested in the job. This consideration is crucial, and candidates who do not seem eager for the job during their convention interviews are not likely to be selected for campus visits. For each position we normally invite three candidates to Chicago. We usually plan these visits for the second week of class in January (if we are running two searches, we schedule the second trio for the fourth week of class). Although these visits occasion a great deal of stress for both the department and the candidates, they can be valuable for everyone, and we try to organize them carefully. Each candidate is sent teaching materials and a schedule for the appointed day, and each is expected, during the visit, to teach a language class and to present a paper before the entire department. Other activities include a private meeting with me and one with the humanities dean. We allot ample break time along with the opportunity to meet and talk informally with faculty members. Of course, we also wine and dine our candidates and show ourselves off to our best advantage. We put them up in a charming, small hotel in downtown Chicago, near our Water Tower campus. We capitalize on our exciting urban setting, stressing how affordable and livable Chicago really is.
The good news about these campus visits is that we've seen some excellent teaching, particularly among candidates for Spanish and Italian posts. The bad news is that much can go wrong. My first experience was particularly stressful. The first candidate was fine, but he told us that he had another campus visit later that week at a very prestigious university. There was a racial incident in the class taught by our second candidate. The third candidate insulted one of our part-time instructors. So, after screening over a hundred applicants for the job, we were left with only one viable candidate who was by no means a sure thing. The story has a happy ending—due, I am convinced, to divine intervention—but we suffered much travail along the way.
The worst thing that can happen, though, is something that is just sensed and cannot be proved: the adverse response of colleagues who, for reasons fathomable and unfathomable, seem to feel threatened by a candidate. Only excellent candidates inspire these regrettable feelings. Full departmental participation in the selection process is probably the sole way to minimize this danger, since only those from the section hiring seem to be vulnerable in this regard.
Before the campus visits begin, each candidate's curriculum vitae is circulated to all members of the department, who also receive response sheets to return to me after the visits are over. As originally designed, the response sheets elicited commentary and ratings on a scale of one to ten. I now strongly discourage use of this type of rating, which I have found to have great negative potential. It is extremely disconcerting, after the grueling selection process, to see a candidate given a rating of four or five, for example. These harsh assessments not only trash the candidates, they also trash the judgment of the recruitment team. I now recommend, instead, that each candidate be ranked as first, second, or third choice. This practice leaves little room for disparagement and ensures clearer outcomes. First choice is first choice. Under the numbering system, first choice could be a ten, an eight, or even a six. Although, in one way, the one-to-ten ratings are revealing, in another, they cloud the outcome and complicate the selection process unnecessarily.
After we have determined our first choice (and, mercifully, we have always had something approaching consensus—once we even had unanimity), I move quickly to secure the dean's approval of the salary I want to offer. I have discussed the salary with the candidates during the campus visits—privately, since I need to find out what they are currently making if they are already in the ranks. Naturally, I try to hire as high as I can. I would not, however, seek permission to make an offer out of line with our current scale, which is competitive for our area, nor would such permission be granted.
Once I have made the offer, I try to get an early decision from the candidate. Delays can jeopardize the search. (I should note that the time crunch makes it almost impossible for us to give serious consideration to senior candidates who apply for entry-level jobs, as many do these days. We cannot keep two junior candidates dangling while we try to secure the institutional endorsement required for senior appointments with tenure.)
It would be nice if I could report that after the contract is signed everything is settled. I've learned, painfully, that it is not so. One of our searches failed, as I mentioned earlier, because senior faculty members did not participate in the interviews at the MLA convention. Since they were not able to screen the candidates at that time, they did so during the campus visit, finding them all unacceptable. Another failed because the candidate signed at least two contracts, including ours, and then decided to go elsewhere. A third failed because the candidate decided to change professions—two weeks before classes began. I suppose we were lucky that neither of the last two came on board, but I didn't feel that way at the time. I will never forget the parting words of one of the candidates: “Institutions survive; people don't.” The candidate was the person; I was the institution. Yes, we chairs are the powerful ones, but we are also vulnerable.
My final topic concerns the complications and frustrations involved in, hiring foreign nationals. During my tenure as chair I have facilitated two senior-level faculty exchanges with colleagues from France. I subsequently hired one of these professors for a full-time associate-level position. The visiting experience was in effect a trial run that led to a permanent appointment when a position became available. I was also instrumental in the assignment to our department of a full-time lecturer paid by the Italian government. Because of the importance of these appointments, I was willing to undertake the intricacies of conventions and visa applications involving extensive translation of documents and other formalities. I frequently bypassed our own international offices, which are more geared to student affairs than to faculty appointments. The experiences were trying at best; yet each was worth the effort. One of our most rewarding exchanges involved a professor from the University of Western Brittany who completed the second semester of his year abroad with us. He confessed quite candidly that his first semester, at another American university, had been something of a disaster. But this disaster served as the learning experience that enabled him to succeed with us. Faculty exchanges require considerable effort, but our students are immeasurably enriched by these cross-cultural contacts.
In conclusion, it is important to note that, for the hiring process to be truly successful, the new faculty member must be effectively integrated into the department and properly guided so that he or she is positioned to make optimal contributions in teaching, research, and service to the department. This process involves faculty development as well as effective assessment and evaluation. Proper treatment of junior faculty members (the kind in which we resist the temptation to put them through what we went through) will be shaped by recommendations such as those Heidi Byrnes presents in this issue and those that reflect the enlightened self-interest Renée Waldinger endorses in her recent article on faculty development.
This article is an updated, longer version of “Strategies for Successful Hiring.” ADFL Bulletin 23.2 ( 1992): 26–28.
Bugliani, Ann. “The MLA Job Interview: What Candidates Should Know.” ADFL Bulletin 24.1 (1992): 38–39. [Show Article]
Waldinger, Renée. “Faculty Development and Enlightened Self-Interest.” ADFL Bulletin 24.3 (1993): 52–54. [Show Article]
© 1994 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
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