I just heard from a stranded and very upset job-seeker. S/he will be unable to make it to Boston before Wednesday late afternoon, if at all. An email s/he just got from one of the departments s/he's interviewing with suggests that if s/he misses the scheduled Tuesday interview, s/he may not be interviewed at all. The email was described as saying something like, "We hope you will be able to meet us at the scheduled time. If not, we will try our best to schedule a later interview."
They will "try their best" to reschedule! I sure hope this is simply a matter of unfortunate wording, and that the department in question is not intending to suggest that those who miss their scheduled interviews due to extreme weather may just be outta luck! At the very least, the department should have added some reassuring statement about scheduling phone interviews or some such. As things stand, this seems fucking horrendous.
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There is no motherfucking "try"!
given the lack of other recourse available, I would almost hope that said candidate outs that offending department.
With the APA fuckedupness, you can simply not pay your dues, or write letters. If a department is operating like this, and being so very dickish to someone they ostensibly may be recruiting, their name might need to be made known.
That's fucked.
If the job candidate is hesitant to out the department publicly--and there are some good reasons to be wary of this, I think it's time for the dissertation supervisor, any one of the recommenders and/or the graduate student/placement advisor of her/his program to take action on behalf of the job candidate.
Let the tenured make inquiries and exchange further emails, phone calls. I think this should be set right, and that the people standing behind this candidate are in the position to help "clarify" the situation with the department.
Here's something on this from Philosophy Smoker. One smoker's travel woes exacerbated by folks from Dickhead U:
My interview is on Wednesday, so there's still a slim chance that I might make it. My SC emailed me to say that they understand that there are severe weather conditions, but the interviews will proceed as planned. And they wish me safe travels.
Unbelievable.
This merely highlights, once again, how the market really isn't about the job applicants. Does it suck? Yes. Is it any worse than the list of humiliations and degradations some applicants are forced to endure? No.
Is there any word on whether search committees would welcome interview poachers? Are they going to let others parachute in to the slots vacated by people who can't make it? And are they really making no efforts to Skype or reschedule interviews that get cancelled because of weather? Appalling.
Echoing Brian Leiter's comment (over on his blog), if the department decides to dick over said candidate, fuck outing them - sue. There are legal ramifications to this sort of behavior, and a candidate who loses out of a job because of snowstorm has options - heavy duty options.
dick over the candidate?? you don't show up to your job interview, you don't get the job sorry
Do search committees rank candidates in advance of the interviews? If so, and if the highest-ranked candidates make it to the interview, but not lower ranked-candidates, are said search committees wrong if they don't go through the motions to make everyone feel like they've had an equal shot?
"We hope you will be able to meet us at the scheduled time. If not, we will try our best to schedule a later interview."
I'm a job seeker and can understand the candidate's anxiety. But maybe we should cut the SC person some slack re: her/his email. (I've met some nice SC members who, though well-intentioned, weren't always the most artful in communication). If they say they're going to 'try their best', then let's give them a chance to do so.
Anon 1:37 I can't speak for every search committee and could imagine committees doing things differently, but, in terms of the procedures we followed on the search committee I was on, we had a hard enough time getting to the candidates selected for first round APA interviews. We did not rank any of them above and beyond this selection process. We were interested in meeting each candidate.
Each candidate was asked the same questions (questions had to pass through EO). The arduous process of selecting candidates for the on-campus interviews began after the first round of interviews.
I'm with 1:46. Quite apart from inartfulness of language, the SC might have problems of its own to deal with: a Dean/Provost who says everything must be done by date X, trouble gathering its members - or enough to do some interviews- fielding anxious messsages from planned interviewees and people who hope they could ow get an interview, and so on.
Chances are, the person who wrote the message is dealing with lines and travel screw ups of his/her own.
Let's try to keep in mind that most of our colleauges are not 'dicks' and do not wish to be thought of as such.
Variations on a Theme by Spiros
Are you fucking me? Kidding!
Are you kidding, fucking me?
Are you kidding me? Fucking?
Me fucking? Are you kidding?
Regarding the ranking of candidates before APA interviews, I was struck by this comment on Leiter's thread:
I've served on six or seven search committees. I can count on one hand the times that initial interview (be it at the APA or on the phone) has substantially changed my opinion about who deserves an on campus interview - i.e. who is among the 3 or 4 really top candidates...I was speaking to another philosophy friend about this and he's had the same experience.
Even if some SCs don't explicitly rank candidates before the APA, I wonder how many SC members unconsciously rank candidates and adhere to those latent rankings throughout much of the process.
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