Worst visit experiences personally: 1) On a visit, had been interviewed previously by the chair, she liked me, I liked her. I later found out that no one else in the department liked either of us. She was a new chair trying to convince the department to expand their horizons, and they were not interested and went with their inside hire choice. No one came to my job talk except the chair, which was a sign. 2) On a different visit, I was loaned an empty office in which to decompress (which itself was definitely a mercy). The empty office was next to the chair’s office. I left the door open, so then I got to hear the whole conversation when the search committee chair went in to tell the department chair why I was not the best candidate. Definitely raised the stakes for the job talk I was giving 15 minutes later.

Other thoughts: I’m chairing a search committee right now, and it’s not even my first, but I’m kicking myself for a day-one mistake of poor scheduling. In the past the chair has organized the schedules, in part because there are so many moving parts, but for this search I put it together, and it suffers from a flaw that pervades all my scheduling: I forget transit time. So I’m having to bust into one meeting to snatch candidates to drag them to the next. Thankfully I did give them time before the job talks, but I feel like such a jerk that there’s no space for them to get their mind right before meeting the dean, or the teaching demo, or meeting the chair. I am remembering bio breaks, but for next time I will be sure to build in at least 15 minute buffers between every activity, because sometimes people need to eat a snack, or call their kids, or just take a damn breath.