hiring and retaining faculty

Besides prepping for teaching, many orgheads are gearing up for the academic labor market, either as job applicants or as members of hiring committees.  On both sides, it’s blood, sweat, and tears, particularly if committees are committed to hiring colleagues they wish to tenure.  Job-seekers examine ads, network, and pull together packets, including letters of recommendations.   Hiring committees go through hundreds of applications, arrange on-campus visits, and navigate bureaucracy to get the necessary paperwork in order.  Both sides want a “good” fit and try to ask questions accordingly.

What is often overlooked – particularly on the side of the workplace hiring practices – is that individuals are never “just” individuals.  People are embedded in a network of relations that they seek to sustain or expand.  In some cases, this network involves a dyadic relationship, i.e. a job applicant may be part of a couple, or a larger unit such as a multi-generational family.  Or, the job applicant may be seeking an environment where s/he can form and sustain a network for a vibrant social life.

Back in 2008, Stanford University’s Clayman Institute for Gender Research issued a report about university hiring practices, with a focus on dual-career couples, that should be of interest to those on the market and those seeking to hire and retain colleagues.  Besides reporting the results of a survey of academics’ experiences in selected universities, the report outlines some steps that universities can take, such as participating in agreements to consider a dual hire among departments within the hiring university and with near-by universities or offering shared tenure-track/tenured positions.  In addition, the report notes the needs of single academics, who may be negotiating caregiving for children and aging parents.  The report also addresses the concerns of same-sex couples given different states’ policies on domestic partnerships and same-sex marriage.

What I found particularly fascinating was how the report illustrated how hiring committees can anticipate the likelihood of someone being paired with another academic, based on academics’ propensity for “disciplinary endogamy” (partnering within the same academic discipline).  With this knowledge, the hiring committees can try to investigate options that increase the likelihood that the desired applicant will accept an offer and remain with the university:
On p. 32, box 5: “A well-known physics department has advertised a job. The university has the resources to hire a partner, if sufficiently qualified. Because this is a junior-level position, time is of the essence, and the department chair would like to know whether candidates who make it onto the short list have partners who may need to be considered for a job. Even without asking, the chair can have a sense of how likely it is that a particular candidate will have a partner. One candidate on the short list is a woman: Because she is a woman, there is a 40 percent chance that she has an academic partner (Figure 2). Because she is a scientist,
there is a 48 percent chance that she has an academic partner (Figure 12), and if she has an academic partner, there is an 83 percent chance she is partnered with another scientist
(Figure 13). Because the candidate is a physicist, there is 58 percent chance that partner is also a physicist (Figure 14).”

Thoughts on what universities can do to better hire and retain faculty?  Put them in the comments.