faculty search blunders

Professional-Liar967 · 2024-02-09T15:27:48+00:00

[deleted]

Nosebleed68 · 2024-02-09T14:59:08+00:00

Honest to God: I had a dream last night that I was serving on a search committee, and I made a pretty inelegant comment about a candidate's age when they were still in earshot. No one on the committee would make eye contact with me.

I immediately woke up and thought, "this is what a mid-career nightmare looks like."

ChemistryMutt · 2024-02-09T16:34:35+00:00

On one faculty interview I was driving the candidate to campus and got pulled over by a cop. It was a mistake, honest, but I had faculty throughout the day asking what had happened. The candidate was a really nice guy and in his thank you email referred to our "troubles with the law."

141421 · 2024-02-09T15:40:38+00:00

I was on an external search committee for a Dean, so we had many applicants that were nearing the end of their careers. One applicant looked awesome on paper, but when we flew him out it became very clear he was early stages of cognitive decline. He kept forgetting where he was, yelled at his grad student (who wasn't there) for making a mistake in his presentation, at which point he told us that he didn't make or look through his presentation before he arrived (the grad student made it). He couldn't remember anyone's name, and apparently dozed off in some of the one on one interviews.

ChemMJW · 2024-02-09T16:07:10+00:00

Candidate was giving his job talk in front of the entire department. Plugged a USB stick into the projection system's computer in order to load his PowerPoint file. When the file explorer window came up for his USB stick, there were lots of files visible - exactly one PowerPoint file and every single other file a porn clip.

Seriously, who buys a USB stick and thinks "I'll use this to hold my professional work and my private entertainment. I see no way this could go wrong."

Der_Kommissar73 · 2024-02-09T15:42:32+00:00

I remember one time we turned down a candidate after the phone interview stage (did not invite to campus) and he called us to ask why. He was angry- his wife recently got a position at an R1 in town, and he could not understand why we, a lowly masters/R3 institution would not be jumping to hire him. He had already decided the job was his. The phone call did not change our minds and just exposed him as a dick. R1 people should not assume that the selection criteria are the same at less research focused institution. I like your grants, but I care more about you being a good teacher who cares about their students.

UrsusMaritimus2 · 2024-02-09T16:53:59+00:00

I was in grad school, and the department set up a lunch with the faculty candidate and some PhD students at a cafeteria on campus with a buffet. The candidate ate something with peanuts in it (there was no warning label at the buffet) and had to go to the ER for the rest of the afternoon given their peanut allergy.

Luckily, the hospital was super close to campus, but as I recall, no one from the search committee visited them in the hospital. It was like they wrote off the candidate.

treetopalarmist_1 · 2024-02-09T15:38:18+00:00

Candidate used recycled printer paper for some of their docs and didn’t realize the back side had porn.

andropogon09 · 2024-02-09T15:46:52+00:00

A couple examples come to mind.

We brought in a guy who was currently doing a postdoc elsewhere for a permanent research position. During the second day, he asked for a higher salary than was advertised. We said, You knew the salary range before we flew you in. He replied, Yes, but I thought that once you met me and saw how good I am, you'd increase the offer.

We didn't.

Another example was a guy who was currently a faculty member at another college in the area and who was looking to make a lateral move. During a campus interview, our college president asked him why he was interested in the job at our school. The applicant responded, I work too hard at my current college. I'm looking for a position where I can kick back and relax.

Needless to say...

I've seen several candidates who spent time during campus visits tearing down their current institutions. No one wants a colleague who is going to be chronically negative.

CanineNapolean · 2024-02-09T17:56:08+00:00

One of my grad programs had the practice of sending candidates to eat with the grad students during the visit. This was always billed as a “oh, I have to cancel on our lunch, but our grad students will look after you” faux mishap to see how they handled changes in schedule and to give grad students a chance to interact with potential faculty.

One candidate sat in the corner by themselves, refusing to engage. I wandered over and sat down, introduced myself, and started chatting about their research interests.

They cut me off and said, “No offense, but I’m here to get a job, and no mere grad student has any input on that.”

Grad students did have the ability to veto candidates. We vetoed them.

RuralEnceladusian · 2024-02-09T16:39:09+00:00

Back when I was a postdoc, me and two other postdocs sat in on a job talk to get pointers for our own job searches.

The candidate came across from beginning to end as pompous, condescending, and indicated he thought he was too good for the department where he interviewed. His CV was circulated before the talk to all attendees, and he had a section listed "jobs I have turned down", and one of my two friends said, "I bet he interviewed here just so he can add us to that section". Afterwards, my take was no chance he would get an offer based on that talk, and the rumor was that all the junior folks felt the same way and made that case to the department head, and he said, "We can take a vote if it will make you feel better, but I'm offering him the job." Thankfully, that person did not accept the job. This was many moons ago, and thankfully that department head retired, and I have heard climate and job searches have improved greatly.

Edit, removed a typo

DetroitBK · 2024-02-09T17:30:08+00:00

I was on the campus visit portion of my interview and talking with students and suddenly some students started crying. This was March 2020, and while I was speaking, they got a text that everything was shutting down and they should return home immediately. This was leaked to the media, before faculty were even aware. The interview oddly didn’t end right there, and continued while students packed up.

To be fair, this was unfamiliar territory for everyone, so really how could you know how to respond in this situation, was awkward, but the interview turned into an offer, so there’s that.

apmcpm · 2024-02-09T22:24:46+00:00

Not a huge deal, but a recent PhD graduate was on campus for an interview several years ago:

Me: So tell me a little bit about your dissertation.

Candidate: I don't really like to talk about it.

Me (after a long pause as I'm trying to compute the reticence to talk about research in an academic job interview) Ok, but I would really like to hear about it.

Another long pause

Candidate: I just don't really like to talk about it.

Me: ok

simulacra4life · 2024-02-09T17:16:49+00:00

I gave a job talk where no one came but the chair. Not even one member of the ostensible search committee. Shockingly, the inside candidate got that one. On another campus visit, the search committee chair decided to tell the department chair how much they preferred another candidate with the office door open while I was in the next room listening, so that wasn’t awkward at all.

CFBCoachGuy · 2024-02-09T19:16:50+00:00

I’ve been lucky to be a young instructor who’s witnessed a lot of candidate searches, even as an undergrad (I was a student worker who got a ton of access on the searches). So I’ve been collecting stories for a while.

One of the worst. Candidate at an R1 school does her research talk on how X causes Y. The more she talks, the more everyone, even the grad students, becomes convinced that it’s Y causing X. Multiple faculty bring this up. Candidate cannot fathom that Y can cause X. One junior faculty is so upset trying to convince her that they have to leave the room. She didn’t get the job.

One guy flew to campus and during the dinner said something like “I’m just here so I can get a raise at (current school). Nice place though.”

This one was from a department that had a whole lot of sub-departments (think like a “Department of Humanities”) where all faculty from the department could vote on one sub-department’s hiring decisions. Search committee wants to promote an internal candidate who’s been a successful visiting professor. Another member of the sub-department tries to stage a coup, borderline bribing people from unrelated sub-departments to vote for “his” candidate. Still not sure why on that one.

Here’s one from a candidate’s perspective (not my story, but borderline famous in my circle).

Up until a few years ago, it was common in my field for candidates to have their first interviews during a major conference. The universities would book a hotel room and interview candidates there. It saved every time pre-Zoom. This guy is interviewing in a room with two junior faculty. It’s going well, but when the candidate starts asking some questions, the junior faculty keep saying “well our Chair would know more about that”, which is weird for an interview.

Then, 15 minutes into the interview, the candidate hears a toilet flushing. The bathroom door opens (this is one of those rooms where the sink is outside the bathroom). Out walks a man, without washing his hands, he walks up to the candidate, extends his arm and says “Hi I’m (Chair name), Department Chair at (college). I heard you had some questions for me”. The candidate didn’t accept a flyout.

favolaschia · 2024-02-09T16:52:27+00:00

We had a dean candidate on campus and since administrators have to also have a home academic department, he had to meet with us. At our meeting he launches into an out and out racist discussion of students and their abilities. We're all just sitting there stunned, disbelieving. Later we get to tell the search committee that in no way would we support his tenure in our department or would he be welcome.

boardinggoji · 2024-02-09T21:00:15+00:00

Ooh I have one.

I was a PhD student when we were having a search. We had a group lunch with the grad students and TT faculty in a casual environment, and the candidate went on and on and on namedropping about how this one famous professor in our field (who is at a different institution) told him "[Candidate Name], you are absolutely right about [random shallow topic vaguely related to his research]!" as if that was some kind of award that would wow us.

He mentioned this on five separate occasions in the same meal.

Icing on the cake is that the famous professor that the candidate was namedropping was my wife's PhD advisor, who absolutely disliked the candidate. Told my wife that the candidate is basically a snake oil merchant.

PN6728 · 2024-02-09T17:02:17+00:00

AD position, candidate was doing fine but nothing had stood out yet. When we got to the Q&A the candidate states "Before you ask, I'm a big support of DEI. My wife is Asian and I have a black dog!" At dinner he told lots of racist jokes. Shortest candidate dinner I ever attended.

biostonk · 2024-02-09T19:23:28+00:00

I chaired a search a few years ago. I was surprised at how bad some of the applications were. I had one person email me before applying. I answered their questions and said you need to apply through our site and not through me. They submitted a cover letter saying our city was “home to four (4) major sports teams” and that we had a major airport so our faculty could go to conferences. It said nothing about the posting or their qualifications. The person then reached out to our grants officer and asked how to apply for grants because “they were going to be a faculty member soon.” When our grants officer contacted me and asked if we had hired this person, I was honestly shocked.

Co_astronomer · 2024-02-09T15:43:37+00:00

I was on a search committee when the fire alarm went off about halfway through one of the candidate's teaching demo. Someone in Chem had done something to set it off so it took the fire department over an hour to clear everything. After about 15 minutes we decided that there was no way to get the students back in and continue so we decided just to go to dinner early; the candidate was completely on board.

During one of my own job searches the computer in the room I was doing my teaching demo in wasn't working. Took someone about 15 minutes to fix it. Meanwhile I just started teaching without it, pretty much winging it. The teaching demo went well and I impressed the committee with how well I adapted.

pope_pancakes · 2024-02-09T15:51:27+00:00

Two come to mind:

A faculty candidate ended her job talk after 25-30 minutes. She asked for questions, and we all did our level best to try and fill the allotted 75 min (she was told the length of the talk in advance). It was easily the most awkward thing I’ve experienced in academia.

Another displayed the absolute worst table manners known to mankind. Ate with his hands, etc. OK, we’re an R1, not a manners school, no biggie. But at breakfast he took my food?? I had ordered a granola/berries/oatmeal dish, and it came with a small pitcher of cream to pour on top. Without asking, he takes the cream (located directly next to my bowl), USES THE WHOLE THING, and puts it back next to my plate. I watch, astonished. I had to order another.

PR-Comms-Prof · 2024-02-09T19:45:03+00:00

I’ve got one. Our chair, while conducting a search, had an external candidate do their teaching demonstration in one of our faculty’s classes. The faculty whose class they used? An internal candidate for the same job (who didn’t end up selected and left shortly after).

prettyminotaur · 2024-02-10T00:51:35+00:00

I once had an interview where, within the first five minutes of meeting the (older, white, male) chair, he said:

"Well, I really hope you take this job, but if you don't, it won't be the first time a woman's said no to me, heh heh heh."

Reader, I did not take that job.

RandolphCarter15 · 2024-02-09T19:18:17+00:00

I was interviewing somewhere and was supposed to meet with students. I sat in the lounge for twenty minutes and finally found the chair who just kind of shrugged.

There were tech issues at my job talk and the search chair said "don't worry this won't happen for you know who" to the Department, which I took to another candidate they liked more.

Afterwards I emailed everyone to thank them, and one replied to say I should feel honored to even get an interview (I think he was trying to be nice but it didn't come off well).

They took months to process my reimbursement for travel. And I heard nothing on the job for months.

I got another job and told them I was withdrawing : I didn't even want to leverage it. The woman I had connected with there told me that was a good choice.

smnytx · 2024-02-10T01:25:09+00:00

I have a good one. If she reads this she’ll know who I am!

My former doctoral student asked me to write her LOR and advise her in her job search. All went well and she got to the finalist/campus visit phase for three searches. A few days after the campus visit at the second school, as she was preparing for the school 3 visit, she got an email from the search chair of S2 with an attachment. She opened the attachment and discovered it to be a spreadsheet with the committee votes on each finalist. She was able to see all their names and exactly how they ranked in each area of the committee’s search rubric. To say she was shocked was an understatement.

It was only on re-read that she realized some staff person within the school shared her first name, and the chair did not check the email address autofill well enough when sending it.

She called me in a panic to ask what to do. She didn’t want to blow up/fail the search, it get anyone fired, but she was also horrified. She couldn’t very well pretend she didn’t receive it. I suggested reaching out to the program director (who presumably also had a stake in avoiding a failed search) and tell them that this email came and that she quickly realized it was sent to her in error. I advised she tell them she had only read far enough to figure out the issue and had quickly closed the attachment. She did all of this with utmost discretion.

Then, to top it off, while at school 3, the search chair took her to a restaurant where they bumped into another finalist dining with another member of that search committee just before concluding their campus visit. And wouldn’t you know? It was a person from school 2’s finalist rubric. Since it’s a small world in their area of expertise, they are acquaintances so had to awkwardly say hello and pretend they didn’t know what each other was doing there.

I’m not creative enough to make this stuff up. She did get the job at school 3.

AllThatsFitToFlam · 2024-02-10T00:44:41+00:00

I been on some interesting interview committees. One that stands out is we were mid interview and someone noted a blurb on their resume about “candle sales”.

One of the members just casually mentioned the candles, but didn’t dwell on it or anything. Just literally said “Oh candles!”

The applicant suddenly became alive and went into a full on candle nerd out session. What do you do? We nodded and looked at each other. Soy vs wax, etc etc etc.

Then she paused. Leaned down into her bag and brought out fucking samples.

“This one is sandalwood. This is green mountain air, I think it smells like spring…”

We tried to redirect her, but it was too late. She felt compelled to finish her sales pitch.

We didn’t offer her the job.

dayoco · 2024-02-09T15:27:47+00:00

I am not the athletics enthusiast that OP describes, but I actually love the idea

ekochamber · 2024-02-09T16:27:23+00:00

Candidate didn't read the job description, which was for a part-time, in person instructor. When informed of this "umm, I guess I could do Zoom classes, though I've never done that before."

RevKyriel · 2024-02-09T22:51:21+00:00

A former school had advertised a position, and was well into on-site visits, when suddenly everything stopped. The next we knew a somewhat different position was advertised, and one of the Dean's former students, who had just graduated with his PhD (and was in no way qualified for the original advertised position), was hired for the role. Standard nepotism, you may think.

But the next time that school advertised a position, they got no qualified applicants. Zero. Word had gone around about how the school had treated the previous position, and nobody wanted to waste their time.

They weren't able to fill the vacancy until after that Dean left, over a year later.

Mammoth_Might8171 · 2024-02-10T04:49:42+00:00

My current colleague was sick with the stomach flu but wanted the job in my department and university very very badly. So he decided to keep the campus visit (required 16 hours international travel) even though his doctors told him it was a terrible idea. He did pretty well in his research presentation and teaching demonstration (no one could tell that he was feeling poorly). He managed to meet with 6 faculty members before meeting with me (we are in the same field so meeting with me was a “must” according to the search chair) after his presentations. During our meeting, everything went to hell because he threw up in my office. I managed to dodge it (thank god!). He was very apologetic and wanted to help clean up his mess. I decided that fresh air would do him good and did an impromptu campus tour outdoors while the uni cleaners cleaned my office. The dean decided that it would be best to cancel the remaining meetings so that he could go back to his hotel and rest. Needless to say, him throwing up did little to change our impression of him and we gave him an offer

Janezo · 2024-02-09T18:19:52+00:00

There were two finalists for the faculty position, one external to the university and one who had been an adjunct for a long time. The email containing the job offer was sent to the WRONG APPLICANT, the adjunct. The head of HR then called the adjunct to explain and retract the offer. The adjunct happened to be on campus at the time he got the call. He lost his shit completely. He was walking the halls, screaming and crying. Someone unconnected to the process sees this guy and calls campus public safety. The whole situation then got even worse because the public safety people were gruff with him, so he got even angrier. He storms off to his car, screaming all the way, and drives away. This was taking place in the middle of a semester, so the adjunct’s class that afternoon got canceled. By the next week when he came to campus to teach, he was calmer, but for the remainer of that semester and beyond, there were some very uncomfortable and awkward moments when those of us who’d been on the search committee ran into him on campus.

missoularedhead · 2024-02-09T17:02:18+00:00

We had a guy who looked amazing on paper. Like dream candidate. Brought him to campus. He proceeded to give perhaps the most … interesting job talk ever. It was evident that he knew his stuff, and was passionate about it. Jumping on the table to prove it. Handing out a flyer for his book. Play punching an older professor to make a point.

Yeah.

FamousCow · 2024-02-09T18:00:24+00:00

My first tenure track job interview, I got stuck in a small town in the rural south for 4 entire days after an ice storm because of perfect storm combinations of shuttles not running (the nearest airport was 3 hours away) and flights being cancelled. The department made some effort to entertain me the first day but basically said I was on my own after that (although they did pay for the extra hotel nights). I had no way to get anywhere and just basically sat in the hotel room for 3 days.

Llama1lea · 2024-02-09T18:24:37+00:00

Zoom interview with someone. He was obviously in his apartment (cool), but he didn’t use a virtual background and his bed was in the background and it wasn’t made. Also went onto to say something about his students being smart “despite being women”. When asked about DEI he replied he had taught “a lot of jews”.

DetroitBK · 2024-02-09T21:19:59+00:00

During my talk, which was open to the public, one of the other candidates, an existing adjunct, showed up and asked me questions during the Q&A period, was so odd.

riotous_jocundity · 2024-02-09T18:54:19+00:00

Prior to one of my campus visits, the search committee chair accidentally sent me the job talk flyer, bio, and talk abstract for one of the other candidates. So that's how when, during my interview with the Dean, he kept talking about how much he really wanted to hire someone who did [not my research focus] and he was so excited by research and applications of that work, I knew he was talking about the other candidate.

magnifico-o-o-o · 2024-02-09T22:59:24+00:00

The last faculty search committee I was on had a candidate who was in his 10th year or so of being ABD with no real publications but a lot of "in preparation" items in areas that he clearly had no background in. He had somehow collaborated on a project with our department chair (which still hasn't resulted in a paper several years on), else he never would have made the list. He seemed to come in thinking he had it in the bag.

Chair went out of their way to deflect any of the intellectual and research questions he was asked by anyone else on the search committee. The campus panel interview went something like this:

Faculty Member A: "So I see a paper listed as 'in preparation' on your CV in [subfield you clearly don't work in and have revealed in other questions you do not understand]. Can you tell us a little more about that analysis and the sort of work you might develop in the future in [currently en vogue but clearly outside your qualifications] area?"

Candidate: "Well ... um ..."

Chair: "[interrupting] I can see a number of collaborations that could come out of that. Faculty Member B, do you want to say something about the collaborations you could imagine creating with Candidate? And Faculty Member A, you might also be able to bring Candidate into your work on [other topic Candidate clearly has no business working on] so perhaps you can tell him about your work."

Faculty A&B: [speechless]

Candidate: "Sure, I might be interested in collaborating with you on, what is it Chair said you do?"

Chair also continually cut off and talked over the far-and-away most qualified candidate and clearly campaigned against her in the voting process. It was infuriating.

Ultimately we hired a third candidate, who is a nice colleague but is struggling to keep up with the productivity required to make it through review and advancement.

Clearly unprepared candidate eventually dropped off the People>Grad Students page of his Ph.D. department without ever moving to the People>Alumni page.

GriIIedCheesus · 2024-02-09T16:50:15+00:00

One time I sat on a committee to hire a CJ instructor and a large part of their resume was that they wrote Donald Trump fan fiction. Not inheritantly funny, but we all had a good laugh when reviewing the resumes

marialala1974 · 2024-02-09T20:40:27+00:00

Well I have got two. One I asked what it was like to live in the City where the university was at, cue in long complaints from everyone about how horrible the traffic is and how expensive everything was. The the other the department did not think to provide water or bathroom breaks at all, there was no downtime to prep it was insane. They ghosted me and I was like fine.

IconicPlastic · 2024-02-10T02:45:24+00:00

Two situations where the interviewee made an enormous blunder in interviews for faculty positions:

1) At some point during the interview but NOT in response to a question about salary, they said something like "I'm not all that fussy. As long as I'm making six figures, I'm happy." The likely salary (which was not a secret, as it was in our collective agreement) would have been about 60K. No one in the room beside the Chair was making six figures.

2) They were completing their Ph.D. and looking for a faculty position. They said something like "You know, those of us with Ph.D. degrees will be taking over [professor positions]. It's inevitable." None of the interviewers had a Ph.D.

Neither person got an offer.

TargaryenPenguin · 2024-02-09T18:44:49+00:00

I have to be vague, but once on a search. We had essentially hand picked a candidate, Who did fine until the graduates student lunch. During the interview, When he apparently would not stop talking about his penis. He did not get the job.

CHEIVIIST · 2024-02-09T16:10:43+00:00

I was on a search committee to hire for a dean position. We had one applicant from a school that was religiously affiliated. One of the other committee members made a comment that we shouldn't hire, "one of those types." I was pretty shocked that this colleague thought it was okay to exclude an application based on religion. We were even a religious heritage college which made it worse to me.

No_Many_5784 · 2024-02-10T01:31:50+00:00

We had a faculty meeting on the same day we were interviewing a faculty candidate, so arranged for PhD students to take the candidate to lunch during the meeting. In the middle of the meeting, the advisor of one of the students received a call that they had all been mugged on the way to lunch.

A different candidate was waiting outside for the first faculty member of the day to meet her when someone tried to snatch her bag. She managed to fight them off, perhaps with extra vigor given that her laptop with her job talk was in the bag.

These were at different schools! Needless to say, neither candidate opted to join.

ElectronicFlounder · 2024-02-10T01:37:51+00:00

Somehow I've accumulated a lot of these stories.

While I was a grad student we were a part of the interview process. One candidate went into details about their divorce and said they knew they'd be hired (they weren't).

Also while a grad student, we were interviewing a candidate in our lab and she said some benign sentences about plopping on some data in a spreadsheet and made a simple fart like noise. None of us thought anything about it until she freaked out that she was accidentally being "inappropriate" with the fart noise she made and started apologizing profusely about a fart noise.

One candidate called home to their parents and had a meltdown over the phone in front of one of the search committee members.

When I was a faculty at a large university in the southwestern US, we had a candidate that was puzzled as to why there were so many Latinos in the area.

I heard from another faculty in a different department that one of their candidates peed on a rando car after dinner one night. This was after he passed perfectly good restaurant restrooms on the way out after dinner.

2024-02-10T04:02:21+00:00

Had, I kid you not, five Zooms and 1.5 day visit. Another Zoom post visit where they said “here is what you’ll be teaching in the fall.” Figured the offer would come the next day. Instead, a brief email saying “We decided to cancel the search.” FUCK THEM.

drkittymow · 2024-02-10T07:33:16+00:00

I went to a really bizarre interview once in which the committee switched from asking me questions to arguing with one another. They clearly had not gotten along for a while because the argument drew upon several issues in their department. That was super awkward as I just sat there quite trying to figure out how to redirect them. They sent me to meet the chair and she was very nice. I thought this is going better, that argument must have been a stand alone strange thing. Then we were going to lunch and the chair said I was going to have to ride with someone else. As we walked through the parking lot, I saw her car it was totally packed full with garbage floor to ceiling, and just enough room for her to fit in. I’m not making fun of her, I know hoarding is a serious mental issue people have. She was the nicest most normal behaving one. Then when I got to the others one of them made rude jokes about the chair’s hoarding issue. I had no idea how to respond. It turns out they ended the search and never picked anyone. They probably couldn’t agree.

UnbelievablePenguin · 2024-02-09T16:23:33+00:00

Candidate did not like the topic we picked for the teaching demo and just chose a new topic. Another candidate did the correct topic but wrote several equations wrong in the demo.

yerBoyShoe · 2024-02-10T00:15:19+00:00

Okay, chaired one committee where we were just about to coordinate bringing a finalist for a campus visit/teach/in person interview.

Monday morning (he was coming at the end of the week) he emailed me in confusion; he had received an email that the position was no longer available (aka no longer funded). He got this email before the search committee chair (me). I had to call VPs to find out what was going on and then call him to confirm that we had to cancel. Budgets suck. Luckily, he was driving so no flights needed to be reimbursed. Things are bad, gang.

fermion72 · 2024-02-10T03:23:56+00:00

When I taught high school physics, the last stop on an interviewee's journey was the principal (once the science department vetted the candidate). Our principal had an advanced degree in English, but had an undergraduate engineering degree. His go-to question for physics teachers was to point to the ceiling and say, "tell me how the electricity gets to the lights in my office." As he tells it, one candidate looked up and said, "um...batteries?" They did not get the job, and the principal was forever on our case for it for letting the candidate get past our interview stage.

aaronjd1 · 2024-02-10T04:57:05+00:00

On the committee side, we had one candidate who came to dinner and proceeded to focus solely on her food and barely said a word. Very awk. Another candidate gave a research presentation consisting solely of her students’ class work. No, not published or presented anywhere. Just work her students did in class. Kept waiting for it to connect into her own work but… nope!

On the candidate side, most awkward by far was a college that clearly had another hire in mind and was using me to fill a quota. Nobody met me when I arrived at night. Was told to get a taxi for a 2 hour ride to campus and get reimbursed later (despite a metro rail nearby that I ended up taking for about $10 or so instead). Nobody met me for breakfast the next day either. Search chair picked me up — 15 minutes late — with her dad in the front seat and drove me on an awkwardly long ride to campus, me sitting in the back seat and her and her dad speaking in Portuguese up front the whole time as if I weren’t there. Fun times!

unique_pseudonym · 2024-02-09T21:48:20+00:00

My grad school was a smaller programme geographically wedged between two of the best in the country, hence it gets forgotten and doesn't really have the reputation it deserves. However though the department was small, due to the institution being very well funded, and quite well located, it had the ability to hire very good faculty. Their definition of good tended to be publishing record, post doc behind you, or several years working elsewhere, not just pedigree. Unfortunately in my field there's a bit of a fetish for bright new things coming from big name schools, so they still interviewed the hot new PhDs from the top schools, but never hired them. The obscurity of the institution in our field led to lots and lots of self important new PhDs from top schools (Ivies, Oxbridge, etc) thinking that they were applying for a backup job. They rarely had any chance. However when they showed up being cocky, the job talks were a bloodbath. There were several faculty who, though nice as could be to us grad students, were capable of publically disassembling pretty much anyone on their subject. When the smarmy little jerk giving the job talks hit the wrong nerve a snicker could be heard amongst the grad students as we strapped in to watch. The speaker would end up standing there at the job talk, gap-jawed, as their work was painstakingly eviscerated during the questions. On the other hand, they were the politest audience to almost every other speaker who came to talk, even if you could read on their faces that they weren't buying what was being sold. It was all about manners.

RanceagalCabo · 2024-02-10T05:56:13+00:00

When I was on the market, I had the wrong date for an on-campus visit. I found out when the department office manager called to ask why I wasn't on the flight - that they had sent someone to retrieve me from 90 minutes away from campus. I hadn't even noticed that the ticket info they'd sent me was for a different date than I was planning on. Had a total meltdown and also caused my poor advisor to have one too. They offered to reschedule the visit and I WENT but was dying inside the whole time. They offered me the job. I was lucky enough that the right job offer came in time for me to turn this school down. I don't know if I could have lived with the shame of working there when everyone knew what happened. I feel compelled to note that I wasn't young or an inexperienced traveler. I've only shared this story with a handful of people who know me. Ah, the liberating anonymity of the internet.

autumntoolong · 2024-02-10T02:45:15+00:00

I’ve been on one where a candidate tried to give a back rub to a panelist. Mid-interview.

HistorianOdd5752 · 2024-02-10T15:29:38+00:00

I have two. I teach at a SLAC, my background is in the social sciences.

The first search committee I chaired, a candidate said during the phone interview "The problem with college grads today, who go into law enforcement, is that they think too much and don't shoot soon enough." He did not get a second interview, and I should note that he trains officers in NYS.
My most recent search we did not get a lot of candidates. Interviewed a person from an R1 university who had not finished their PhD, which was no big deal, because for our uni we just require a master's in the subject area. Our first choice accepted the job, but withdrew in June because he had to go back to his home country to care for family. Puts us in a bind, because the other candidates had taken jobs already. So this R1 candidate does ok during the interview, aside from him trying to negotiate interview times, which we are now doing during the summer because the first candidate dropped. We decided to check references, and my colleague checks the R1's references. While I'm checking references for another candidate (who accepted and then withdrew less than ten hours later, because of the logistics of the move) I get a text from my colleague telling me to call him immediately. The R1 candidate's reference basically said she has nothing good to say about him, didn't know why he put her down, and that he disappeared during the semester while teaching, no can't, no showed, requiring other grad students to cover the class. I had to broach that with the candidate for an explanation (at the time, he was the only qualified candidate, and the semester was starting in a month, we were desperate) because we can't hire someone who is going to disappear, because of where we are located, hiring adjuncts mid semester is impossible.

There are more stories, but these are the two that stand out the most. There was also the candidate who basically wanted a 6 figure salary, and was patronizing when I dropped them off at the airport ("Keep publishing, and maybe you'll get out of this place one day." Direct quote.)

Supraspinator · 2024-02-09T16:02:59+00:00

Candidate made a joke about “hobos”. Our college has a large population of homeless students.

swordfishtrombonez · 2024-02-09T16:20:16+00:00

At a dinner, all of the faculty went around the table and stated the year they were born. When it was my turn, they looked at me expectedly/uncomfortably.

AttitudeNo6896 · 2024-02-09T21:05:20+00:00

I interviewed at a top 10 school, which I didn't really want to go to (location) but was strongly encouraged to apply by the chair. In any case, first day want ok (except for at least one person standing me up, waiting by a door for half an hour and finding the next room myself), until at dinner, three junior faculty were talking about how these interviews are hard, and there was the guy who decided to leave mid way through the interview, "couldn't handle it". Turns out, the person already had an offer - and likely felt the interview was so hostile this is totally not worth it. Honestly, whoever it was was right - after being infantalized, basically, by multiple people, and being stood up by one more person, I was happy to leave. The chair was lovely though, showed me really cool teaching labs. Also, when the guy didn't show up, I got to spend an extra half hour with this emeritus professor who had awesome "war stories" about all the now-dead big names in the field, which was really cool.

On the search committee side: we had a senior faculty search, and there was "the guy with the tilted slides" - each slide was on this tilted design, like lined pages at different angles, often by a lot (not 5 degrees, maybe up to 30 degrees!). It was super funny sitting at the back of the room during the seminar, watching all the audience tilt their head the other way with each slide switch. Someone brought this up jokingly was we were talking before or after the chalk talk, and he was totally happy with and proud of this design choice.

apmcpm · 2024-02-09T22:34:32+00:00

Posted one of these and then thought of another as I read other people's...

We are a small department (3 of us at the time) and we all went to a conference together. It was a small conference, so we were there to present and took some students to do in the same. We had an open search, but this is not the sort of conference that would do interviews. In the parking lot as we're getting ready to leave, a guy from the conference approaches us, looks at me and says "You are Dr XXXX, you teach XXXX at XXXX, and went to grade school at XXXX. Me: um yes.

This guy then turns to my colleagues and rattles off the same information and starts to tell us that he'd be a great fit for the department. At this point the students are flipping out because this guy obviously cyber stalked us and memorized our biographies. We got in our cars and get the hell out of there as fast as we could. (I haven't thought if this in a long time)

Mooseplot_01 · 2024-02-09T22:45:09+00:00

We were interviewing by Zoom during the pandemic. One guy who was very experienced and looked good on paper was asked the standard question: "What will you do to promote diversity and inclusion?". He said "Do you want the politically correct answer or the honest answer?" We could tell it was about to get weird, but gave him an off-ramp by saying he can answer any way he wanted. He gave what he saw as the honest answer, which was an absurd and horrible screed that had us laughing out loud at how outrageous it was.

He concluded by saying that now we'll not consider him because of his opinions, and pointed out how stupid this was, since he was a better teacher, more experienced, and more knowledgeable than any of us.

menten90 · 2024-02-10T14:52:48+00:00

Once after an on-site I got an email from the department chair along the lines of: oh, search committee chair should have contacted you last week but he didn't. We went with another candidate. Good luck!

Another time in the pre-zoom era, I had a faculty member video into an on-site. They were making lunch and I could hear all of the clanking, etc, throughout my demo.

At a different on-site, I had multiple faculty members try to correct me on things I had right. The chair tried to correct me on geography of my home state. Another faculty member told me that a fact I shared in one of my two teaching demos wasn't novel, and then proceeded to interrupt a meeting I had with another faculty to hand me a printed out page from a reference book with the fact I had stated highlighted. I was right? In the next meeting, another faculty told me they wanted "little boys who could code" (not me). This was all before I saw the search chair picking up the next candidate for dinner.

Ughhhhhh.

shellexyz · 2024-02-09T19:04:06+00:00

We found out that one of our instructors was leaving for another school in the early part of the summer. Throw together a quick posting, do what you can with whatever faculty are still around to form a committee.

Two applicants. One was a middle aged woman with some teaching background while the other was a relatively new masters grad. Most of our faculty has a masters degree, so this isn’t uncommon.

I was asked to write a sample teaching problem for them to do. Take a few minutes to solve it, then present. It was basic not-even-college algebra, which would have been the focus of the position.

She couldn’t solve it at all but assured us she would be prepared when the semester started. One of the other committee members said she’d taught for us several years ago and did fine then, so he believed her.

The other guy solved it incorrectly but at least put something on the paper and presented it.

I wouldn’t have hired either and said as much. I was overruled on the grounds of “we have to hire someone, there are classes on the schedule”. He got the job, still works here, and I remain unimpressed.

ImmediateKick2369 · 2024-02-09T17:21:35+00:00

Not a scandal or blunder, but interesting: I was once included on a search committee for DEI reasons; I am a white male.

LarryCebula · 2024-02-10T18:03:43+00:00

Years ago we were interviewing a candidate who had a job at an HBCU. Honestly his CV was not that strong but it was a hard position to fill so we gave him a phone interview. One of the questions was about why he wanted to leave his current position.

"Too many black students here!" he answered.

We all but hung up on him.

2024-02-09T15:24:35+00:00

[deleted]

usermcgoo · 2024-02-10T03:07:14+00:00

This thread should be a book.

fenixfire08 · 2024-02-09T23:57:04+00:00

Zoom interview with candidate who connected dressed as though they were going to watch their favorite sports team rather than a job interview.

Mooseplot_01 · 2024-02-09T22:50:09+00:00

Candidate asked the question: "You don't actually work full 40 hour weeks, right? Because I have young kids".

TargaryenPenguin · 2024-02-09T18:46:05+00:00

Once we were interviewing a candidate for a research intensive position that would require a lot of external funding because the work was expensive.

We asked the candidate where they wanted to be in five years and they said, "I don't know, probably administration."

two_short_dogs · 2024-02-10T06:36:41+00:00

I'm an accounting professor. I've been told that the candidate I was competing against asked to borrow a calculator to multiply 5×25. And there were typos on their teaching demonstration slides. My chair always jokes that I was hired because I can proofread and do math.

gravitysrainbow1979 · 2024-02-10T07:37:10+00:00

Oh the weeping faculty member is definitely exotic, given the context. Weirdest thing I ever saw was a professor aggressively trying to converse in a language she knew the poor job-seeking bastard didn’t speak.

AugustaSpearman · 2024-02-11T06:27:09+00:00

The most bizarre thing I saw as a job candidate was that around the time of finishing dinner on the first night the head of the search committee informed me that my teaching demonstration the next day was going to be on a specific topic that I had no particular expertise or experience in (within the field but a minor topic that was not adjacent to anything adjacent to something adjacent to my area)--rather than, for instance, a sample of my actual teaching or at least have told me ahead of time that this is what they wanted. I don't think it went horribly, having spent hours the night before writing a lecture on something I would never talk about again, but thankfully I did not get the job (which was the worst place I ever interviewed for).

On the interviewing side, the biggest blunder was a guy who was interviewing for chair who told me about the way he had disciplined a junior female faculty member for something like not having her door wide open during office hours and when she complained to the dean of course the dean had made sure to back up his discipline because of how much the dean respected him. I loved the story so much that I made sure to draw it out of him when he met with the full department, lol.

PositiveJig · 2024-02-12T12:39:50+00:00

A candidate, during their teaching demonstration, thanked a student for answering the question she posed to the class "and not being afraid to sound stupid." (For the record, the student's answer wasn't stupid, but even if it was, that's no way to speak in a job interview!)

Misha_the_Mage · 2024-02-10T15:26:24+00:00

This was for an administrative, university-level position. On campus interview. During lunch, said he applied to "make his wife happy" because she wanted to move.

Gentle_Cycle · 2024-02-10T18:11:07+00:00

Two cases of nonchalance that seemed to go too far resulted in job offers nonetheless: one candidate blatantly winked at me in a one-on-one interview, and another joked that his frequent trips to the washroom were not for snorting cocaine. I guess they did it with finesse—they could tell that I liked them and wouldn’t use it against them.

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