In Search of New Models, Part V: Doctorate required. Or not.

Here’s a frightening question: How many organists will there be on the committee that interviews you? Indeed, at your interview, you will probably be the only true expert in the room. The process is already flawed, but is the model?

In most cases, a search is an Episcopal, not a Presbyterian, process. Most search committees are doing the legwork on behalf of the one person who will ultimately make the hiring decision. Broken model? Who knows?

Job announcements are always off the mark. That’s no one’s fault, really. It’s just that a committee can’t expect to know exactly what they’ll get, but they need to have done the best they can to advertise for what they want. Think about what it might take to replace you as a complete human being, and not just as a professional. Can a committee really put in the job description that they’re looking for someone compassionate to a fault, who will take walks with the students to discuss pressing matters, who knows as much about fixing an organ as playing it, who has seen the writing on the wall regarding travel funds and will take the students to conferences, anyway? The models seldom match between the job ad and the person who gets it. A committee is always blown away by something they didn’t expect or weren’t even searching for.

Broken model: Search committees put out an ad and then wait for the applications to come in. Applicants send in their materials and wait for an answer. Applicants even close their cover letters with the subtle signal that they have made their play in the waiting game: “I look forward to hearing from you,” which means, “I’ll be waiting over here.” Everyone is waiting for the phone to ring, the email to chime, or to see a letter lying behind the glass in his PO box. Professors waiting for the state legislature to come around will die disappointed. Students waiting for the urge to study or to practice will just end up playing poorly. Organists waiting for their churches to stop treating them like the hired help may never find joy in the music again. Waiting will be the death of us all.

Rather, search committees might be better served to seek nominations from all sectors and actively recruit specific people to apply, right up until they make an offer. No harm in expanding the pool at all times. For upper-level administration searches, colleges even pay big bucks to a search firm to seek out applicants and invite them to apply. A new model says that an applicant who is content in their current position is the perfect candidate to consider taking another step somewhere else. And their being actively asked to apply says a lot about them and about the asker. Better to land a person like that than landing the one who is desperate to get out of their current situation.

Ever-changing models: During high school at the North Carolina School of the Arts, I noticed a recurring title on virtually all professors’ doors: “Artist-Teacher.” There were only 2-3 doctored faculty members in that school in those days. Now they’re all doctored. My generation that scrambled to get doctorates was chasing the model that said we had to have one to get a job. But now, non-doctored professors are gaining tenure-track positions, which is an aggregate of the previously separate models of artist-teacher vs. professor. The fine print in NASM standards says that the boss may hire whom s/he likes, if that person has equivalent experience and has demonstrated the desired SuperManliness.

We all seem to serve on only the most nobly-intentioned search committees, but searches we observe from the outside often appear “flawed” and “scandalous” and should be declared “failed” from the beginning. Although I’ve never served on an organ professor search, I’d say that some of them I have observed from the outside look a little, um, interesting, to say the least. One school hired a friend of the incumbent. Another hired the person who taught during an incumbent’s sabbatical. Another hired the biggest name they could find, but only after their even bigger first choice kept turning them down. Another hired an alumnus who had already been teaching there on visiting status for two years. Another hired a local boy from the nearest big city. Another hired an early music scholar to teach on the electric-action organ. It’s not that none of those searches turned out well or even for the best. It’s just that they looked sort of … misaligned … from where I was sitting. And yet, one of those scenarios above describes how I myself was hired! (I’m not telling you which one.)

Who is to say that those committees were not completely honest? The favorite model today appears to be one of familiarity – committees hire names they already know, even if the name is too big for them or is from several degrees of separation away. The point is that all those new hires mentioned above were known somehow to the committee. Getting your foot in the door is still the way to go, apparently. The trick lies in figuring out which foot and which door to use. Perhaps hand-picking was always the best way. That may work better for the hiring body, but it’s hell on an applicant trying to figure out an entrance strategy from an incomplete job description. On top of that, some committees behave in the other direction, refusing to hire any former student of the outgoing professor. There’s no way the applicant can know what the committee really wants. This is all part of the reason why a committee’s recruiting is so important. It helps reduce the beauty contest factor in the search.

I stopped job hunting a while back. The waiting games, sham searches, doctored vs. non-doctored, and big-game name chasing are not part of what feeds my passions or makes me happy. And so I began to question the model that says my current position is but a stepping stone to a final destination. Rather, I should turn my stepping stone into a destination. And I have done just that. Moving on is no longer on my mind. I have grown to know myself, and I’m doing just fine where I am. Having said that, I am not opposed to being actively recruited. (Who wouldn’t welcome a new pursuer? A healthier form of the waiting game.) But I don’t have much time to think about that – I’m too busy teaching.