At least a lot of people do.
I think there’s near-universal agreement among philosophers (!?) that the online job postings could be much, much better, e.g. easily searched by areas of specialization and competence. As Geoff Pynn snarks in comments: “But how ever could it be done? What great Secrets must Nature yield before we can harness her Powers to such wondrous ends?”
Does anyone have a lot of experience with teleconference-style interviews? Phone interviews are terrible, I think, but we’ve never done video interviews, and if it’s even close to as good, and if we do them uniformly (i.e., all candidates do their interviews this way, rather than only some), it could save everyone an undesired hassle. It really would be a great thing, especially for candidates, if the trip were no longer necessary.
23 comments
November 17, 2010 at 11:54 am
Matt
A lot of people in this discussion seem to think that if the Eastern APA were gone, we’d get an optimal replacement. There’s no reason to think that. Many other fields do not have central hiring conventions. Most I’ve talked to in such fields think this is bad, and a central convention is better. W/o the central convention, you don’t get everyone doing video interviews in a small time period, but rather job interviewing strung out over several months, making coordination even harder, stress lasting longer, etc. There would be more early exploding offers. As for video interviews themselves, I’ve done only one, and even though it was set up by people w/ expensive equipment and skill (If I would have had to do it myself it wouldn’t have been possible) it was still a lot less good than real life. Maybe that’s worth it, but it should be considered. Someone over there also suggested that the APA process be more like the law school process, but that really wouldn’t work in philosophy. And, it costs $400 to do the law school process, so given that people already complain about the APA being too expensive, that doesn’t seem promising, either. Finally, people complain about the date of the Eastern APA, but when it’s been put to a poll (a few times at least), no other time beats out the current time by a clear plurality.
November 17, 2010 at 12:12 pm
NM
All interesting points, Matt. For all its faults, the Eastern serves as a calender-anchoring device, which is probably a good thing. It does suck, though.
November 17, 2010 at 12:27 pm
matt w
it costs $400 to do the law school process, so given that people already complain about the APA being too expensive, that doesn’t seem promising, either.
I don’t know anything else about the law school process, but I think this is significantly less than the APA usually costs. Flight + three nights in a hotel adds up, even if you split the hotel and/or get a cheap one.
November 17, 2010 at 12:37 pm
dana
That’s the admissions fee for the conference, matt w, not the total cost of attending.
November 17, 2010 at 12:38 pm
Matt
Matt W- the law school process also involves staying in hotel for a minimum of 2 nights (often 3, depending on where you’re coming from), and is always in an expensive hotel (the same one every year) in Washington DC. The $400 fee is for the AALS to process and distribute a form (one page long only) to all the schools. You have to pay hotel and travel on your own, too. My point was that people often want the APA to do more than it does, but don’t want to pay any more for it to be done. That’s magical thinking.
November 17, 2010 at 12:43 pm
dana
I don’t want the APA taking over dossier submissions, but there’s no reason that the webpage has to look like it was designed by high schooler on GeoCities in 1997.
November 17, 2010 at 2:42 pm
ben
The website doesn’t look that bad. It’s fine, IMO; not modern but fine.
I’ve never been involved with or even heard tell of video interviews, but I have seen multiple dissertation defenses which featured only the telepresence rather than physical presence of one or more members of the committee, and it seems to work out fine. I’d be curious to know in what respect Matt felt the remote interview fell short. Less good how?
November 17, 2010 at 3:03 pm
matt w
Ah, thanks for the correction. I think it would be nice to uniformize the application process in some way (I don’t even know if I’d call it the “APA process,” because the APA really plays no role at all) — it was always a big pain when departments that asked for some sort of specialized thing, as if I weren’t applying to fifty other schools — but it wouldn’t be free. I’m not sure it would be so awful for someone to centralize the process — mailing out all those dossiers was always a huge pain and a pretty big expense, too.
November 17, 2010 at 3:20 pm
NM
It’s also worth separating two issues with in-person/skype interviews: (a) the difference in information conveyed in the two formats, and (b) the possibility of comparing interviews of different types. If everyone interviewed by skype, I’d be happy to give up a little information, but I think it’s harder than people realize to compare across different formats, because of differences in psychological impact.
November 17, 2010 at 3:23 pm
RS
I don’t understand why the APA can’t adopt the same system that the folks in Math and Econ departments use:
https://econjobmarket.org/index.php
http://www.mathjobs.org/jobs
Moreover, these are FREE to candidates, so the comparison to the AALS isn’t necessary. Institutions foot the cost of keeping the service running, as is only just. I’ve talked to colleagues in both fields and they rave about them.
Now this wouldn’t solve the conference issue, but I do think that teleconference interviews are going to become more and more common. One institution, U. of Oregon, used them last year (called them “Green Interviews”) and the friends I know who interviewed with them said it was great.
It would be nice to have the national conferences be about scholarly exchange, and not reek with the fear and anxiety of hundreds of candidates, and the exhaustion of interviewing colleagues.
November 17, 2010 at 3:24 pm
ben
I would think that the application process could be rendered more uniform by imposing restrictions on the composition of ads for JFP.
For instance, one person at Leiter’s wanted indications of AOS and AOC to come in some standard place (like at the beginning) of the ad, rather than being potentially anywhere. At the moment the ad submission form asks for some metadata (name of school, city of school, etc.), but the ad itself is just a free text area. If the ad submission form also had fields wherein one could indicate AOS and AOC, and those fields were required, then AOS and AOC could automatically be placed in a standard location in the ad. Likewise for, say, rank.
That doesn’t address such things as what the applicant is to send, but one can imagine a list of items that might potentially be submitted being presented to the advertiser as a series of checkboxes. (Immediate obstacle: open rank searches often have different requirements depending on the rank applied to. I’m sure there are other, deeper obstacles as well. But one could introduce a lot of standardization just by fiddling with the interface.)
November 17, 2010 at 5:12 pm
Matt Lister
I’d be curious to know in what respect Matt felt the remote interview fell short. Less good how?
It’s possible that some of it was just due to not being very used to the format, but even on professional equipment there were often brief pauses where the connection was slow, making the same sort of pause you get when watching a youtube video on a slower connection. The sound was a lot less good (of course)than real life, and it was much harder to gauge reactions, at least for me, even on a fairly large (maybe 48″?) screen. I had a hard time knowing if they could hear me well or not, and I had to stare directly ahead into a camera in a way that was artificial and uncomfortable, making a stressful situation even more so. So, many of these things are the sort of things you’d probably get used to if you did a lot of video conferencing, but they were not like talking to people in real life, and to my mind were hardly an improvement over phone interviews. (I’ve done phone interviews with people, on the hiring side. The only advantage with a video interview, I think, is that you’re more sure that the person isn’t looking at the internet while you’re talking to them, but otherwise I found this to be no better and in some ways worse, and both worse than a real-life interview. But I can see how others might disagree.)
November 17, 2010 at 7:00 pm
Jeff Urdan
I stumbled across this discussion and it seems like an ideal application for software-based video-conferencing from companies like mine…VeaMea.
Here is how I envision it:
* APA puts the infrastructure in place
* Rather than a convention, potential interview prospects receive an email invitation. They click a link and it pulls them into a video conference with the interviewer.
* Interviews can be scheduled long in advance
* Multiple parties can be in the interview at the same time
* The video conference is in high definition audio and video (allaying Matt’s concerns), and all the interviewee needs is a PC, a webcam and a decent internet connection
* Interviews can be recorded and saved in case a participant is not able to make the scheduled time
It is hard to substitute for an in-person meeting, but the economics, and scheduling benefits of not having to coordinate travel are pretty exceptional.
Something to think about. I would be happy to talk more with anyone who is interested in investigating further.
November 18, 2010 at 10:25 am
Texas in Africa
We have a great jobs posting system in political science, but you do have to pay for membership in the APSA in order to access it, which is cruel to startving grad student job candidates.
Several of my friends have done Skype interviews recently and have seemed to have had good experiences with it. They still had campus interviews; most schools seem to be using the teleconference/Skype option as a first round tactic.
November 18, 2010 at 11:05 pm
nick
teleconferencing is great for showing off kittens to friends.
November 19, 2010 at 9:07 am
Vance Maverick
And more seriously, it works for remote collaboration. The funny distorted picture and tinny sound, though, together with the slight slowness it imposes on the conversational pace, are not ideal for making a first impression.
November 19, 2010 at 9:41 am
Jeff Urdan
I am guessing that nick and Vance have not used a “business grade” video conferencing system.
Skype, MSN, and other home/free options really are not good for making a first impression, they are better for looking at kittens or talking to friends and family.
However, companies like VSee, VeaMea and others are bringing high quality audio and video to the desktop; the kind of quality that most people associate with extremely complicated, extremely expensive corporate boardroom systems is now available on a good PC, with a good webcam and a broadband internet connection.
It still may not be the best answer for APA, but corporate HR departments are using it as a replacement for 1st round interviews: its better than the phone and much less expensive than flying someone in.
November 19, 2010 at 11:56 am
Neddy Merrill
If video interviewing were a few notches better than the home version, that would be pretty groovy, though of course there are revenge effects on the calendar from dismantling the apa. You could spend a lot on video set-up and still save a bundle vs. sending a couple of whiny academics to Boston.
November 19, 2010 at 2:15 pm
Vance Maverick
I’ve used the in-house video system at work (a household-name tech company). The links for large meetings, so someone in New York can address a thousand people in California, are pretty good — but the ones for small meetings are not radically better than iChat video.
November 20, 2010 at 9:47 am
jim
Does the screening interview actually help? If there were no screening interviews at APA (or MLA or AHA or AAR or …) would the same candidates, the ones who did best in the screening interview, be the ones invited for the on-campus
interviewhazing? Not all disciplines do the conference interview. In some, you’re either invited to visit the campus or not.November 21, 2010 at 7:35 am
Neddy Merrill
Jim: in my experience, yes it helps/ no the same candidates would not advance without it. Every time I’ve done a set of interviews, I’m always surprised by at least a few candidates. On the other hand, it could be that the interview is the misleading thing.
November 22, 2010 at 8:51 pm
matt w
“the on-campus
interviewhazing?”I wouldn’t usually characterize it as hazing; in my experience the campus visits were about a billion times more pleasant than the APA interviews. YMMV, of course.
November 23, 2010 at 8:47 pm
Jim A
Not a philosopher, but, unhappy with one of my professional associations and rather happy with the (much smaller) other one. Is *anyone* happy with any of the big ones? AHA? ASA? MLA (LOL!)