The Search/Recruitment Process

Most common problems encountered in the recruitment process:

• Inability to identify women and minority faculty applicants
• Low level of women and minority faculty applicants
• Low acceptance rates of offered positions by women and minority faculty candidates
• Spousal relocation problems, related to university location in small town or rural setting with limited spousal job opportunities (Phillips, 2002).

• Request names of potential candidates from women and minorities at your university, as well as at institutions with strong graduate programs in your discipline (Ohio State University Handbook, 1988).
• Request women and minority caucuses within relevant professional and academic associations for the names of potential candidates (Ohio State University Handbook, 1988).
• Keep national higher education associations informed of present and possible future positions (Ohio State University Handbook, 1988).
• Inform the National Urban League and the national offices of Black sororities and fraternities of available positions (Ohio State University Handbook, 1988).
• Inform alumni publications at universities where women and minorities are well represented of available positions (Ohio State University Handbook, 1988).
• Consider contacting the affirmative action office at other universities, for some of them maintain lists of women and minorities at their institutions who are looking for academic employment elsewhere (Ohio State University Handbook, 1988).
• If your department is developing plans for creating an endowed chair, it may wish to consider the possibility of recruiting an eminent scholar whose interest lie in women's and minority studies. This may, in turn, attract other women and minorities to your department (Ohio State University Handbook, 1988).
• Use a personal approach in recruiting candidates. If an individual declines a nomination or does not respond to your letter of inquiry, you may wish to telephone the person to determine of his or her reasons for declining can be addressed and resolved (Ohio State University Handbook, 1988).
• Consider for the position women and minorities who have held part-time or temporary positions in your department (Ohio State University Handbook, 1988).
• Degrees from women's colleges or Southern universities must not be automatically seen as inadequate (Ohio State University Handbook, 1988).
• Reference letters from individuals not known to search committee members should not be given less credence and importance than letters coming from cronies in the "old boys' network" (Ohio State University Handbook, 1988).
  Scholarship on feminist or minority issues should not be devalued because some may believe that it is not "in the mainstream" (Ohio State University Handbook, 1988).
• It is vital to eliminate from the evaluation process any stereotyped ideas based on the candidates race, color, religion, national origin, age, or sex (Ohio State University Handbook, 1988).
• Quality work experience outside of academe should be viewed as an indication of potential for success in an academic setting. Successful nonacademic professionals should be given credit for their experience when vying for associate professor and/or senior level positions (CEMRRAT, 1996).
• Create summer and sabbatical research opportunities for visiting faculty from underrepresented groups (The MSU Idea, Institutional Diversity: Excellence in Action, 1989).
• Have search committee members contact by letter and phone previous temporary faculty of color, visiting scholars, individuals who have made diversity-related presentations on campus, and minority Ph.D. recipients and their advisors as listed in the Minority and Women Doctoral Directories ("Best Practices," 1998).
• Have search committee members request nominations from minority groups and organizations ("Best Practices," 1998).
• Have search committee members establish a vita bank ("Best Practices," 1998).
  Have a department member serve as a personal contact for all highly desired candidates. The contact's role is to supply information and answer questions about the search process, the campus, and the community. The contact may want to host the candidate during the on-campus visit ("Best Practices", 1998).
• Initiate telephone interviews to reach a larger number of potential candidates and to increase the diversity of the interview pool ("Best Practices," 1998).
• Advise the candidates of incentives that might be available to attract highly desirable candidates, such as alternate workload assignment ("Best Practices," 1998).
  Visit and do direct mailings to colleges with large minority populations (de los Santos, 1994).
• Mail packets to individual minority graduate students (de los Santos, 1994).
  Institutions can create jobs or part-time teaching positions for minority individuals and postdoctoral fellowships as an enticement to minorities for permanent faculty positions (Tack & Patitu, 1992).
• IInstitutions might consider hiring minorities who have completed all of their doctoral degree requirements except the dissertation and provide a follow-up program of faculty development that permits the completion of the doctoral degree. This strategy will ensure the women and/or minority doctoral student a guaranteed income while he or she is completing research for the dissertation, will assist him or her in gaining some needed experience as a faculty member, working perhaps under the supervision of a senior scholar in the department and will again facilitate contact by current students with outstanding women and minorities (Tack & Patitu, 1992).
• Institutional officials also need to look carefully at the cohort of part-time faculty at their institutions when searching for experienced and highly talented women and minority applicants (Tack & Patitu, 1992).
• Institutions need to explore previously untapped markets like business and industry to identify individuals who chose alternative careers but might now be interested in affiliating with a college or university (Tack & Patitu, 1992).
  As colleges look internally for prospective faculty, the population of students, alumni, clerical staff, and advisory board
• members are likely candidates for teacher training and graduate programs. No one should be overlooked, since some may currently possess the appropriate required credentials for classroom instruction. It is not unusual to discover that secretaries and lab and administrative assistants have graduate degrees in a specific discipline. Recruitment of these individuals into teaching via career change is often a matter of presenting the opportunity and providing some initial orientation and teaching methodology preparation (Owens, Reis & Hall, 1994).
• External recruitment activities can focus on minority media (newspapers, radio stations, and journals). Many of these sources are closely aligned to the culture of a particular minority community; especially where language is an important factor such as it is with Hispanics (Owens, Reis & Hall, 1994).
• Community centers, church announcements, bulletins, and bulletin boards provide additional means for outreach and notification of available positions (Owens, Reis & Hall, 1994).
• Recruit minorities from private industry to teach part time (Opp & Smith, 1994).
• Cancel positions without minority applicants (Opp & Smith, 1994).
  Place advertisements in newspapers of major cities, announcing orientation sessions. Interview possible candidates in hotels in these cities (de los Santos, 1994).
• Place position announcements in student newspapers at university campuses and in the local newspapers (de los Santos, 1994).
• Send recruitment and application packets directly to minority individuals using the Minority Graduate Database (de los Santos, 1994).
• Colleges need to look at potential candidates' full backgrounds, their life histories and experiences (Simmons, 1996).
  Institutions need to examine the ways in which its practices are allowing able people to be overlooked in the first place or, if hired, to feel simultaneously undervalued and overlooked (Simmons, 1996).
• Make administrators aware of the variety of resources available to help in recruiting faculty of color (Knowles & Harleston, 1997).
• Advertise in journals and periodicals that make special efforts to reach minority graduate students and faculty (Alger, 2000).
• Evaluate how graduate schools are ranked when evaluating candidates (Alger, 2000).
• Consider how historically Black universities and other minority-serving institutions fare in the ranking process (Alger, 2000).
• Phone calls or personal letters from members of search committees is an effective recruiting device because it shows that someone is familiar with the candidates' area of expertise and that they will be taken seriously (Smith, 1996).
• Deal directly with the issue of two-career couples (Smith, 1996).
• Colleges trying to hire minority faculty members need to re-evaluate how they conduct searches (Smith, 1996).
  Utilize diverse recruiters (Salomon & Schork, 2003).
• One approach organizations use is to attempt to recruit several members of a diverse group simultaneously, explaining to the candidates that they have the opportunity to be an important part of significant change (Salomon & Schork, 2003).
• Many companies require that a diverse slate of candidates be developed, especially when filling a senior position (Salomon & Schork, 2003).
• Look past the typical criteria for hiring. Instead of focusing on educational background, look at their talent. Look creatively at the past history of the candidates' work (Swanson, 2002).
• Provide special salary supplements and incentive packages as recruiting tools (Phillips, 2002).
• Hire retired women and minority professionals as part-time or adjunct faculty (Phillips, 2002).
  There is a need to affirm that criteria for recruiting and employing do not exclude ethnic minority faculty based on factors irrelevant to job performance (Plata, 1995).
• Advertise for applicants in foreign-language newspapers (www.thiederman.com, 2003).
• One of the most creative strategies for recruiting a diverse workforce is to utilize the resources within your organization - your current staff and managers. Put the word out that you are seeking high quality employees of all backgrounds. Invite current employees to approach friends and acquaintances and to keep an eye out at professional and personal associations for potential applicants. Motivate this effort by promising a bonus to the employee if one of their recommendations is hired and retained (www.thiederman.com, 2003).
• "Hiring, tenure and promotion decisions rest heavily on the candidate's list of publications and conference papers. As collaborative research moves toward the norm in some fields, women don't share the benefits." When men collaborate, it is seen as desirable collaboration. When women collaborate, they are sometimes viewed as coasting on the work of others. "Before you start reviewing applications, hold a department-wide discussion to set criteria for rating collaborative research. Then hold one another responsible for applying the criteria consistently" ("How to avoid," 2003).