The most (and least) effective job application practices for faculty searches

The typical faculty job application allows candidates to demonstrate strengths in research and teaching, but offers little opportunity to showcase dedication to departmental and institutional strategic goals such as inclusion and campus belonging.

As a remedy, institutions are increasingly changing academic job applications to better surface commitment to institutional mission. However, evaluation criteria can remain unclear.

Ineffective Practice 1: Requiring broad statements of diversity without evaluation criteria

Without connecting the value of increasing faculty diversity and inclusion to the department’s research, teaching, and service priorities, the intention of diversity statement requirements is often unclear to faculty and applicants. Instead, use concrete criteria linked to candidate interests and departmental needs.

Rather than relying on a vague commitment to increasing diversity and inclusion, the first thing that search committees can do is identify concrete criteria in research, teaching or outreach that are clearly linked to departmental and institutional priorities. Is the department seeking candidates with expertise in inclusive pedagogy? Candidates with experience working with or mentoring underserved or minority undergraduate students? Or maybe expanding public health access to low-income neighborhoods? An expert in designing economic models that alleviate poverty?

Ineffective Practice 2: Waiting to review diversity statements until the end of the review process

A well-crafted prompt with concrete evaluation criteria is just the first step and won’t truly impact the short list unless faculty leverage it at the right time. Most often, search committees use diversity statements as “tie breakers” between two or three top candidates at the end of a search. But this is too late in the process to have an impact on the diversity of the candidate pool or inform the selection of a diverse short list. Instead, review diversity statements at the beginning of the evaluation process to increase the likelihood that underrepresented candidates make it further in the search.

Faculty in the University of California, Riverside’s (UCR) Marlan and Rosemary Bourns College of Engineering, reordered the candidate review process to allocate more weight to the diversity statement. They now assess it in concert with the research record and CV allowing them to better identify candidates with a demonstrated a commitment to diversity and also see more underrepresented candidates persisting further in the review process.