Approved January 10, 2024
The following approach is designed to support the following goals in HCDE faculty searches:
- Provide a clear decision on each candidate’s hireability for the advertised position
- Provide a clear ranking to the Department Chair that reflects faculty opinions
- Provide agility in pursuing strong candidates even before the search process has concluded
- Preserve flexibility to support the Department Chair in pursuing emergent opportunities (e.g., when additional resources might make specific additional hires possible)
General process
Participation in per-candidate and ranking conversations should follow the HCDE Conflict of Interest policy for faculty appointments.
Per candidate conversations and decisions
These steps will occur for each candidate who has visited and remains under consideration (see below). Note that there may be times when faculty choose to engage in a ranking before all candidates have been voted on; see ranking of candidates and “specific situations”, which could lead to concluding the search, and thus votes in remaining individual candidates, if, e.g., a search concludes with a hire before some candidates have had individual votes.
Survey. After each candidate’s visit, the search committee shall survey interested parties, using a survey that corresponds to the rubric for the search, about the candidate’s hireability. When distributing the survey, the search committee should indicate a deadline for that particular survey (e.g., the day before that candidate is discussed in a faculty meeting); After the deadline, results of the survey for each candidate shall be made available to voting faculty and all members of the search committee, but anyone with a COI that requires recusal for that candidate should also not view the report. Results may be updated for subsequent responses.
The goal of this survey is to include perspectives from members of the community who may not be able to participate in faculty conversations (e.g., staff, students, faculty who are out); it may also shape committee recommendations (see “search committee ranking” here and under “ranking”), so all members of the community who have interacted with candidates, or have an informed opinion based on reviewing their materials, are encouraged to complete it.
Search committee recommendation. The search committee may, at its discretion, make a recommendation to faculty on whether a candidate should be voted as hirable. However, for all candidates who visit (and have not withdrawn), a motion automatically comes from the committee to vote on hiring the candidate, even if the committee recommends against hiring the candidate.
Faculty conversation. After a candidate has visited (and, if feasible, the survey results have been compiled and shared), the faculty shall meet and, in an executive session, discuss the strengths, areas for growth, and weaknesses of that candidate. Conversation should be guided by the rubric criteria for the search. This conversation should avoid comparisons among candidates, to the extent possible.
Votes to allow the chair to extend an offer
Faculty vote. When the faculty conversation concludes, faculty shall vote on the hireability of the candidate for the advertised position. This is the official vote (required per faculty code) that is transmitted with any later decision to hire the candidate. After this vote, the Department Chair has discretion to make an offer, and any subsequent ranking is advisory. (A best practice at this point might be for the Department Chair to describe any conditions in which they may make an offer before receiving ranking input.)
Unless constraints require otherwise (e.g., offer timing), the default for this vote shall be for it to remain open for remote voting until 5pm on the day of discussion (for meetings ending before noon Seattle time) or noon the next day (for meetings ending after noon Seattle time).
Faculty shall strive to make this decision as soon as feasible after a candidate’s visit, so as to support the Search Chair / Department Chair in releasing candidates who we will not hire and giving clear guidance to the candidate about their situation in our process. However, this desire for expediency should not preclude deferring a decision to include more perspectives (e.g., of colleagues who are absent) or gathering more information if deemed necessary. Faculty who wish to defer the vote may move to postpone a vote until a future meeting; however, in considering deferring, faculty should consider potential consequences on the Department Chair’s ability to make a timely offer to both the specific candidate or to any candidate.
Ranking of candidates (advisory to the chair)
In an ideal situation, ranking will occur only after all candidates have been voted as hireable or not. There may be exceptions to this; see “specific situations.”
Search committee ranking. The search committee may, at its discretion, recommend a ranking to faculty of candidates who remain in consideration. (note: the search committee may also do so after an initial ranking conversation, below.)
Faculty Conversation. Separate from conversations about individual candidates, faculty shall engage in a conversation ranking candidates who have been voted as hireable for this position (see below for exceptions in which candidates still under consideration may also be included in this ranking). This conversation should be guided by the priorities identified in the search.
To allow faculty to vote on hireability electronically, after a meeting, it is possible that the faculty conversations about ranking will follow conversations about individual candidates, but before individual votes have been completed. In this event, all candidates still in consideration should be included in the ranking conversation.
Advisory vote. The faculty shall then take an advisory vote to rank all candidates who have been voted as hirable. This vote will use the Schulze method1 to create a ranked list of candidates with a single winner. The search committee, or their delegate, shall be responsible for administering this vote. When time allows, it should run after the individual hiring votes are complete.
The outcome of this vote is advisory to the Department Chair, who may or may not follow it at their discretion. This is intended to preserve flexibility for the Department Chair to follow an offer strategy that maximizes resources and opportunities. No information should be communicated to any candidates about the outcome of votes. The Department Chair or their delegate will be the one to make contact with candidates after the discussion and vote take place.
1 See Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method) or the 2011 paper (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00355-010-0475-4). This method has been selected as it will never select a candidate who would lose a pairwise election to another candidate and it motivates expression of honest preferences. It also allows voters to not rank some candidates (e.g., if they feel they do not have sufficient information).
Specific situations that may require deviation from the general process
A candidate has a time-sensitive offer from another institution
If a candidate advises the department that they have a competing, time sensitive offer, this may require deviating from the process. The Department Chair (or their delegate) should first work with the candidate to see if the offer’s timeline can be extended to align with the search timeline and should also provide guidance to the candidate about constraints on our timeline (e.g., related to open meeting notice timelines).
If the candidate has not yet visited, the Department Chair will work with the search committee to see if we can accelerate their visit timeline (if necessary). The search committee’s enthusiasm/confidence about the candidate will be used to guide how much burden will be accepted in accelerating a visit.
If the candidate’s offer will expire before we can conclude our search process (i.e., vote on the hireability and ranking of all candidates), we may need to deviate from our preferred process. This will be achieved by:
- The Department Chair will notify faculty that at least one candidate has a competing, expiring offer. To the extent possible, they will not disclose which candidate, though there may be situations in which this is inevitable (e.g., if only one candidate has visited or the visit schedule has changed to accelerate a visit).
- Faculty conversation about each candidate who has completed their visits. In these conversations, faculty will discuss each candidate and have the opportunity to bring each to a vote (this motion is assumed to come from the committee at the time an offer for a visit was extended). As in the standard process, faculty may move to postpone the vote on a candidate for future consideration.
- Faculty ranking of all candidates still under consideration. This will follow the process for the ranking conversation and advisory vote described above, except it will include all candidates still in consideration (i.e., candidates voted as hirable, candidates who have visited and whose hireability is still in consideration, candidates who have yet to visit). This will additionally include an advisory question, for each candidate who has visited, about whether the faculty would support moving forward with an offer before others have visited.
The results of this poll will be transmitted to the Department Chair as non-binding advice. In general, faculty might expect that if a candidate who has not visited (or for whom the hireability vote has not occurred) is ranked higher than the candidate with the time-sensitive offer, the Department Chair will not pursue an offer until other candidates have visited, unless there are strong resource reasons to do so (e.g., potential to access additional resources) or overall concern about a failed search. Similarly, faculty can anticipate that the Department Chair will consider their enthusiasm for moving forward with offers before the conclusion of the search process when planning an offer strategy.
Note that this modified process does not allow extending an offer to any candidate who has not completed their visit. An explicit faculty vote to deviate from this policy is required if we are to do so.
HCDE is hiring for multiple distinct positions within the same search.
If HCDE is concurrently hiring for multiple positions with the same ad (e.g., multiple different topical areas), then:
- Hiring vote shall be distinct for each position
- Ranking conversations and advisory votes shall be distinct for each position
To keep things simpler, it may be preferable, when hiring concurrently for multiple distinct areas (rather than an open search), to use multiple distinct ads and searches.