My Successor Hired

In case you were all waiting on pins and needles ...

After a great response (though, alas, from very few post-academics) to our ad, we narrowed it down to five we wanted to interview in person. We interviewed them this past Monday and Tuesday. Of the five, three turned out to be not quite as good in person as they seemed on paper and on the phone (alas, among these was the only post-ac who made it to the interview stage), and two were really great. Between those two, it was a difficult decision because they had acquired their qualifications in very different environments, brought different "enhancements" to the position that went above and beyond the requirements (e.g. firsthand experience running a small business vs. outstanding MS Office proficiency and industry knowledge), and had extremely different personalities. Ultimately, it came down to who New Think Tank President and Other Colleague felt they could best deal with personality-wise on a day-to-day basis. Even then, it was a tie, and even though I am leaving and won't have to deal with this person on a day-to-day basis, I ended up weighing in to break the tie.

Perhaps fittingly, the person who will replace me as New Think Tank Operations Director spent exactly the same seven years (2003-2010) I spent working on my PhD owning and operating hir own independent bookstore. Like many independent bookstores, hir business suffered a lot first from the increasing sales of online retailers like Amazon and then from the explosive popularity of e-readers. Despite heroic efforts, ze had to close the store and move on. Similar market forces to the supply/demand problem for academic labor? Maybe ... but, no, not really. In book sales, consumers ultimately did express preferences for the ways they wanted to browse, buy, and read books. Suppliers either adjusted to meet their demands or went (sadly, since I do still love bookstores) out of business. Contrastingly, in academe the same parties control both supply (graduate students entering the profession) and demand (number of crappy contingent positions vs. decent tenure-track ones). In book retail, the market kinda sorta works, but in academe, the "market" (why do we still call it that?) really is broken ...

But I digress.

Some general (and maybe more specific) things about being on the other side of the hiring process that struck me:

A lot of people are looking for work. Seriously, I don't know if this is the norm or not, but we got way too many applications. Well over 100, I'd say, within barely a week of posting the ad. For an admin job.

A great many of these were from people who were probably applying for every single similar job, of which (fortunately for those people), there are plenty. However, many of them simply did not qualify for New Think Tank Operations Director for any number of reasons. For starters, we said we wanted someone smart and described what we meant by that. On this qualification, misnaming a school you attended doesn't help your credibility -- especially when the person reading your application, whose job you would be taking over, happened to teach at that very same school WHILE YOU WERE GOING THERE! If you learned nothing else, one would hope you would at least have learned the NAME of the school you went to. What would happen if you were editing a press release at New Think Tank and misnamed the organization you were working for? And I'm talking misnaming, too, not merely misspelling, although we had plenty of applications with spelling and basic grammar errors, too.

Then there were the etiquette errors. In 2012, does anyone ever still address a cover letter to "Miss" anybody? Yes, apparently, and it sends their application straight to the trash. I'm not asking for "Dr." It's not appropriate in a lot of nonacademic situations and I certainly don't require it, although addressing me that way would have been one way to show you had at least visited New Think Tank's website (and quite a few people had). But, "Miss"? Please. Maybe you are from another country where that's appropriate -- I don't know -- but your resume indicates you went to an American university and an American law school (yes, we did get several applications from law school graduates, some who had actually had practiced law -- but apparently the job market's not great for them, either). AND you're not so old that you grew up when "Miss" was still commonplace ... It's "Ms.," OK? You have no idea whether I'm married or not. Okay??? Do you get why??????

OK, enough about the crappy applications. After eliminating those, we were left with about roughly 20% that could have taken the job and done at least reasonably well at it. How to narrow it down? You have to look at more than simply base qualifications at this point, especially given that for this type of job one could acquire those qualifications in any number of different ways. And those ways themselves become important in what they tell you about a person -- about their interests, their work ethic, whether they are pushed from one job to another (not so good) or pulled from job to job (good).

Several post-acs made it to this stage, and New Think Tank President did phone interviews with at least three of them. What differentiated the one who made it to the in-person interview from the other two? Hard to say since I didn't talk with them myself. One simply rubbed New Think Tank President "the wrong way," ze said. The other, although a PhD from one of the top schools in the country, New Think Tank President felt didn't have enough "real world" work experience to comfortably assume the responsibilities of the position, which include managing the expenses for what we expect to be an annual operating budget of close to a million dollars. While someone who had no other paid work experience besides part-time teaching certainly could do this job, the issue of work experience turned out to be a deciding factor. The post-ac we brought in for the in-person had lots of teaching experience but also experience as a bank teller and a few years of almost full-time experience as an assistant retail store manager.

It also shouldn't go without noting how damning it is of academe and its job "market" that A) somebody with a PhD from an Ivy was even applying for this job and B) they didn't make the in-person interview cut largely because they lacked the "real world" experience academe especially discourages its most "promising" graduate students from "wasting their time" acquiring. But I digress ...

What is it about this type of experience that tips the scale? I guess it says something about a person's ability to do a job for money rather than love and/or its potential to advance their academic career and yet to nonetheless take the responsibilities of that job seriously. Also, references from nonacademic employers can answer questions academic references can't, and these answers turned out also to be important in lots of ways -- for example, explaining why someone got promoted from sales associate to assistant manager tells us more about someone's day-to-day work ethic and style of interacting with coworkers, supervisors, supervisees, and the public than does an adviser's explanation of why someone's dissertation is good.

So anyway, this post is way too long already. At the in-person interviews, we narrowed it down to the former bookstore owner and somebody who is currently working as an operations manager in another city but is relocating to Crapitol City to work on a professional master's degree part-time at Grad U. Of the three we rejected outright, one appeared much less experienced and capable in person than ze did on paper, another said negative things about a supervisor (who actually gave hir a very good reference) which reflected badly on hir as an employee and coworker, and the third seemed uninterested in the interview or the work of New Think Tank (sardonically critical would have been more acceptable because it would have demonstrated intelligent engagement). Also, all three of these people got some general, are-you-in-touch-with-the-world questions wrong, like "Who is the current attorney general?"

Ultimately, Former Bookstore Owner got the job because ze seemed the most quirky, creative, resourceful, open-minded, adaptable, independent, and self-confident. Those are the qualities the person taking this job needs in addition to the basic qualifications in order to get along with others at New Think Tank, contribute to its culture, and help it grow.

Anybody want to throw any questions my way about nonacademic hiring processes that seem mysterious to you?

Horoscope

I've got a lot to say in a more substantive post about what's it's like being on the other side of the hiring process, but I don't have time or energy for such a post today. I'll get around to it sooner or later.

In the meantime, totally awesome astrologer Rob Brezsny's reading of Sagittarius (my sign) this week might amuse some of you post-acs dealing with other people judging your career choices, both inside academe and out and among your friends and family who criticize you because they don't understand what in the world you are doing "throwing away" your fancy credentials and academic career:

Nineteenth-century Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev once called his fellow novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky a "pimple on the face of literature." But more than a hundred years after that crude dismissal, Dostoyevsky is a much more highly regarded and influential writer than Turgenev. Use this as inspiration, Sagittarius, if you have to deal with anyone's judgmental appraisals of you in the coming days. Their opinions will say more about them than about you. Refresh your understanding of the phenomenon of "projection," in which people superimpose their fantasies and delusions on realities they don't see clearly.

The job description is up on Versatile PhD

I posted it up there this morning, if anyone cares.

Seriously, one or some of you should apply for this. Within 24 hours of posting on nonacademic sites, we've gotten a FUCKTON of resumes. Like 80. Out of those, only a few sound like they might be pretty good. And by "pretty good," I'm talking about the smart kid with the undergrad degree in theater and a couple years of admin experience seems the best so far. And that's not really our ideal candidate. Our ideal candidate has stronger writing and editing skills, but we're mostly getting admin types who can only do about half of this job. The admin part is easy -- we can train you for that in a week. The writing and editing skills require an EDUMACATION.

We did express this in the job ad -- essentially that you don't NEED a graduate education to do this job but we'd prefer someone who had one or who had elsewhere acquired the skills we're looking for. I'm hoping something will come along through Versatile PhD because the attitude I got from Grad U Placement Doofus was totally condescending and full-of-shit contradictory. The gist of our conversation was:

Me : There's this job one of your ABDs or recent PhDs might like to have.

Placement Doofus: But it's not an Tenure Track ACAMADEMICAL job. Waaaaaaaaaaaa!

Me: No, but it pays better than being a fucken adjunct. Pays better even than what newly hired assistant profs in your department get.

Placement Doofus: Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! A lot of our adjuncts have been trying for tenure track placements for several years now. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!! Why are our placement rates so low? They never used to be this bad. They used to be pretty good. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!! Why are our adjuncts so unhappy?? They just need to ride this out for another year or two, and things will improve.

Me: No, things aren't going to improve. Even if they do, somebody could take THIS job for the intervening time and get the fuck off food stamps for a little while. Your adjuncts have no money and feel like they have no future. Why do you think they're so unhappy? Why do you begrudge them the chance to move in another direction? To a place where they would be actually appreciated and compensated accordingly??

Placement Doofus: Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!! Our adjuncts are wonderful. They are too good for a crappy admin job. You yourself betrayed THE GREATEST PROFESSION EVER by leaving. Clearly, it was not your true calling. I must protect our graduate students and adjuncts from heretics like you.

Me: You are so full of shit the fumes are carrying across the internet.

Placement Doofus: By the way, your new job sounds really great. Can Grad U take credit for your success? It's so great to know our graduates are moving on to have such interesting careers. Our graduate students need to hear about this. They need role models. We should have you come back and talk to them one of these days after you start New Job.

Me: I don't have time for this. Can you just please circulate the job ad so that somebody else can move on to have, as you say, "such an interesting career"?

Placement Doofus: Waaaaaaaaaaaa! I'll ask around. There's Desperate and Pathetic Adjunct. Do you remember hir? Ze finished the year before you did and has been teaching for the department and going on the market every year since. Ze might be getting tired of that.

Me: Yes, I think I remember Desperate and Pathetic. But why don't you circulate to everybody? That way, everybody knows the job is available and they can make their own decisions about whether they're interested or not.

Placement Doofus: Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!! You're a heretic. You're trying to get people to leave the department. We can't afford to discourage our cheapass limitless supply of permatemps precious graduate students. I might circulate it. I'll see what I can do. I'll have to warn them about you first ... But can Grad U still take credit for your success in getting New Job?

Me: Fuck you.

*     *     *     *     *

Maybe my attitude didn't help as far as getting word around. I was more polite, but I couldn't totally disguise that I thought Placement Doofus was full of shit. At least at New Think Tank (same as at Think Tank) you can tell people they're full of shit when they wax poetic about such free-market pipedreams as privatizing the sidewalks (dudes, that's actually in the job description, the "full of shit" part and everything!!). They appreciate knowing when they cross the line over to KrazyKrackpotKookville. Can't quite say as much about academe.

I think I'm gonna do another post when I get a little more time about what it's like being on the other end of the hiring process. Quite fascinating, actually.

Any post-academics out there who want my think tank operations director job?

I'm dead serious. We've started circulating the job posting on nonacademic sites. Surprisingly quickly, we've already received several responses. They're all crap on a stick so far.

I also circulated an invitation to some people at Grad U and among some other academic/post-academic types but no word from any of them yet. I think the politics might be an issue for some such people, although, really, it should not be ... Just look at what adventures you may have!

We want to get this taken care of quickly, and I do feel some sense of obligation to get someone good. New Think Tank President is biased towards hiring another post-academic looking to get off the adjunct track. (Apparently, we don't totally suck at stuff!)

So, long story short, if you're a post-academic in the DC area, you've been following my blog long enough to know a little about what this job might be like, and think you might be interested, send me an email at recentphd@gmail.com, and I'll fill you in on some details. We'd like to have some interviews lined up for the week of 6/18 and make a decision by 6/25. (Isn't this soooooooooo much better than the timeline for academic jobs?)