125 (Spring 2000): 01-02
|
|
|
|
From the Editor
DAVID LAURENCE
I SEEK readers' advice on a topic of perennial interest and occasional controversy--guidelines and standards for departmental practice in the conduct of job searches. Each year, particularly in the months following the MLA convention, job seekers call attention to unhappy experiences they have had in correspondence or interviews with departments to which they applied. The number of such complaints is small--testimony, I like to think, to the professionalism and sensitivity with which the great majority of faculty and staff members in the great majority of departments approach job searches. Nonetheless, lapses occur, and the experience can be upsetting for the unlucky job seeker and damaging for a department.
How can ADE and the MLA be most helpful? I bring the complaints the office receives to the attention of the MLA Committee on Academic Freedom and Professional Rights and Responsibilities (CAFPRR), which has found the record useful for identifying chronic trouble spots. The committee developed its pamphlet Advice to Search Committee Members and Job Seekers on Faculty Recruitment and Hiring partly on the basis of these communications received over the years. The pamphlet remains a work in progress--each year the committee reviews it in the light of comments and correspondence from job seekers and members of search committees. I invite readers to review the pamphlet and suggest additions or revisions to it. (Access the pamphlet at <www.mla.org/infocan.htm#advice>; direct comments to david.laurence@mla.org.)
We also contact department chairs informally to let them know a concern has been expressed. Without exception, these contacts have been positive and helpful. In general, it is apparent that, while we all function in an imperfect universe where mistakes are unfortunately inevitable, departments seek to do their work conscientiously and are ready to take steps to correct problems once they occur or to avoid such problems in the future.
It has been interesting for me to observe changes in the pattern of complaints over the years since I started as assistant director of English Programs in 1986. A decade ago a constant drumbeat of complaint concerned how departments failed to inform applicants of the status of applications and the progress of searches. With the advent of electronic communications this complaint has been replaced in the past three years or so by protests at abuses or mistakes in the use of e-mail to lists of applicants. The other practices that spark the greatest objection among job seekers are misleading if doubtless well-meant casual statements about department members' being available to speak with applicants at the MLA convention and requests that applicants mail writing samples or large volumes of paper at the initial stage of application.
E-Mail
Applicants properly take exception when a routine acknowledgment arrives in their e-mail in box and shows the e-mail address--and hence in most cases the identities and university affiliations--of every recipient. Departments can take advantage of a feature afforded by e-mail communication to lists of e-mail addresses stored in an applicant database: the use of the "bcc:" or blind copy addressing function rather than "To:" or "cc:." When multiple addresses are placed in "bcc," each recipient sees only that recipient's address. (For more on job search etiquette in the era of electronic communications, see Ives.)
Casual References to Meeting at the MLA Convention
Every year or two a copy of a department mass mailing arrives at the office from a disappointed job seeker who has spent a considerable sum traveling to the MLA convention under the misapprehension of being invited for a convention interview. If to the eye of the experienced person it is usually evident that no such invitation was intended, it is also clear enough how a form letter with an upbeat tone could be misconstrued by a less experienced job applicant, especially if the letter contains a sentence (as these examples invariably do) indicating that "the department will be sending faculty members to the MLA convention, and we hope to see you there" or something similar. My sense is that such unhappy misunderstandings usually mean chairs and departments have allowed an admirable wish to be positive to lead their statements a step or two too far.
Early Requests for Writing Samples
Here we enter territory under dispute. Members of departments that request writing samples or dossiers and transcripts amounting to a substantial volume of often costly items to be mailed with an initial letter of application have warmly defended the practice. Some job seekers, and on occasion their faculty sponsors in graduate departments, have as warmly protested against it as burdensome and an unprofessional abuse. The defense claims that such materials give all applicants, including those from less prestigious graduate programs, a fair opportunity to make the hiring department's list for convention interviews. The prosecution counters that a letter of application and c.v. are sufficient in the first stage of review and expresses incredulity when departments say they claim to use all the materials applicants are asked to send. I do not expect this disagreement to be settled any time soon. Meanwhile, it seems reasonable to ask departments to be cognizant of the time and expense candidates incur to provide materials and to ask candidates to recognize the advantage of focusing searches on positions well matched to their qualifications and interests.
I would be interested to hear readers' views on two additional matters--how to prepare position descriptions for the Job Information List and how to decide the number of interviews a department will conduct at the MLA convention. Better-written JIL listings show they are better written by attracting candidate pools of the right character and closer to a manageable size. There also must be an upper and lower limit to the number of convention interviews that will be useful (or tolerable) for a search committee--and worth the large expense that travel to the convention represents, for both the department interviewing and job seekers being interviewed. How many search committees, when looking through stacks of candidate files in an office in November, allow themselves to forget the limited time at the convention and unwittingly schedule a three-day marathon of hurried fifteen-minute encounters that quickly exhausts them without really letting them know more of the candidates than written communication would do? In the bargain, candidates may feel abused when rushed through what amounts less to a conversation than an information interview where little is conveyed that they could not gather for themselves over the Internet. By assisting CAFPRR in updating its pamphlet of advice to job candidates and members of search committees, departments can help job candidates--and one another--anticipate the realities of job searches and plan more effectively for them.
Ives, Maura. "Keeping in Touch and out of Trouble: E-Mail, the Web, and the Job Search." ADE Bulletin 123 (1999): 7-10. [Show Article]
© 2000 by the Association of Departments of English. All Rights Reserved.
ADE Bulletin 125 (Spring 2000): 01-02 |
|
|---|
