3.2 Reviewing the Applicant Pool
Committees should access applications and track applicants’ statuses through the Careers at USC website. As committees begin their assessments, there is the danger of rushing deliberations and resorting to shortcuts. So, as you start this stage of your work:
- Consider taking the Office of Inclusion and Diversity workshop on avoiding implicit bias in faculty hiring.
- Be wary of means of evaluation that have the potential to screen out women and minoritized applicants inadvertently.
- Remember that there are many ways to evaluate skills and try to provide varied ways for applicants to demonstrate their abilities.
- Remind yourselves of the criteria you established in the position description and job advertisement and collaboratively set the weight for each, noting that only some, if any, candidates will rate high in all categories.
Note
Schedule enough time to discuss each candidate and make sure to include breaks. As Eve Fine and Jo Handelsman write, ‘Merit-based judgments don’t fare well under time-pressure, high stress, or at cognitive depletion. Worse, under these conditions, we might break in favor of the familiar, our ingroups, which encourages demographic self-replication.
From the earliest stages of this process, use an evaluation tool or rubric that draws its areas of evaluation directly from the desired competencies described in the position description. Except for an additional category for conflicts of interest, there should be no gap between the evaluative rubric and the position’s core competencies. Using the rubric is the most effective way for search committees to connect their assessments to the criteria they established at the outset of their work.