Holding Job Search Committees More Accountable

by Cliopatria

Michael Bowen just came out with a provocative article on the academic history job market that, among other things, calls upon the AHA to"Make the Job Register service a privilege that has to be earned." Let me first state that I sympathize with Bowen's argument. However, I think it is based on some flawed assumptions that undermine his recommendations for the AHA's Job Register. I would like to propose something more radical.

In a recent blog post, I noted that only a quarter of the jobs listed in Perspectives, and only one out of every seven history jobs listed on H-Net, made use of the AHA's Job Register facilities for interviews. Bowen is correct in stating that"most tenure-track positions are advertised in the AHA Perspectives," but he likely errs when he implies that most of the interviews for these job searches take place at the AHA. Similarly, Bowen is technically correct when he states that the AHA"has a great deal of control over . . . the interview process," but he overlooks the fact that interviews for only a relatively small proportion of academic history jobs occur with the assistance of the AHA's Job Register staff.

So here is what I would propose. The AHA has records of all the individuals who registered for the 2008 convention. It also knows which departments reserved a room in the Job Register for interviews. With a little bit of digging, it could extract the names of job search committee chairs from recent job ads in Perspectives and H-Net. The AHA could then compare and contrast these three lists. It could produce a report that tells us how many job search committee chairs registered for the convention. The report could point out how much this number exceeds the 260 job searches that made use of Job Register facilities earlier this month. (Not all of the interviews for these 260 job searches were held in the official Job Register Rooms; job search committees that held interviews elsewhere were required to notify the Job Register staff of their location and, in return, they received c.v.'s collected by the Job Register staff.) This would then give us an idea of how many departments are circumventing the AHA's policies and procedures by not disclosing the location of their interviews to the Job Register staff. The AHA should then consider revealing the names of these departments, since job seekers deserve to receive warnings about the unethical practices of these departments. If the AHA does not want to make this list widely available, it could adopt Bowen's suggestion for a listserv and send notifications to only the individuals who had applied for specific jobs advertised by noncompliant departments.

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More Comments:

Robert B Townsend - 1/21/2008

I remain deeply ambivalent about going to department chairs and asking what their colleagues were doing at our meeting. That still seems like a violation of privacy.

But I do take your point about sending the guidelines only to our advertisers. We also maintain a listserv for department chairs, so I will make a point of sending the Guidelines to that list early next fall.

Jonathan Dresner - 1/20/2008

The data mining could be automated pretty quickly, I imagine, but that's not the primary issue. If a search was flagged as potentially problematic, the chair confirm that the interviews were done elsewhere/elsewhen, and the cloud could be lifted.

And the fact that H-Net carries more ads than Perspectives suggests that mailing the guidelines only to committees that have advertised in Perspectives would be both too little and too late.

Robert B Townsend - 1/20/2008

In response to Sterling's original proposal: Even if we had the staff to mine and compare those lists (which we don't), I can't share your assumption that a search committee chair would only come to the meeting to conduct a search. We know that many searches are completed before the annual meeting these days (particularly by elite universities trying to get a jump on other hiring institutions), while other searches only begin the interview process after the meeting. So it is not hard to imagine "outing" someone who is just there to deliver a paper or conduct other business. I think they could fairly consider that a pretty gross violation of privacy.

In response to Jonathan Dresner's suggestion that we mail a reminder to department chairs every year, I should note that we e-mail the "AHA Guidelines for the Hiring Process" (also available on our web site at http://www.historians.org/Perspectives/eib/hiring_guidelines.htm ) to every search committee that advertises in Perspectives as part of the job register form packet each year. We also have copies available and visible throughout the facility.

Jonathan Dresner - 1/19/2008

It wouldn't be hard to make it a requirement, but it would be a challenge enforcing it. As you suggest elsewhere, a little data crunching would go a long way, and once schools got bit by an asterisk on their ads, they'd probably fall in line.

Something like a mass mailing to department chairs every summer, reminding them of the professional standards for hiring procedures, would also go a long way, I imagine. Most of the slippage is due to lack of understanding of current HR procedures and standards -- "that's not the way we did it when I was hired...." -- and could be corrected with some public education.

Sterling Fluharty - 1/19/2008

I doubled checked and you guys are rights. The AHA "strongly encourages" and "particularly urge[s]" that job search committees tell the Job Register staff where they are holding their interviews. Would it be that hard to make this notification a requirement?

Jonathan Dresner - 1/19/2008

There's no requirement to use the Job Register tables, but there is an expectation that interviews will take place in a reasonably professional manner. If a school isn't willing to give a location to the Job Register, it raises the possibility that they are interviewing in an unprofessional environment, which raises other questions about their ability to handle a search professionally.

Dave Stone - 1/19/2008

I think I'm missing something. What exactly is unethical about not using the AHA job register?