In Search of New Models, Part IX: New faculty searches

Just as the act of observing an event changes the event, so does a job ad restrict the job and its applicants. Academic job searches think they are designed to find the best person, but their side hustle is really the main event, which is to protect the search from litigation. The amounts of bureaucracy and bias control are staggering, and the things you can and cannot say or do with a candidate are a veritable catechism with dire consequences if something gets overlooked. I have no solution to this, but it may take a complete implosion to fix it. And of course I might stop there but am going to write hundreds more words about it, anyway:
As of this writing, I am into my 22nd year at my teaching post. I am tenured, fully 'professored,' fully vested, 'teaching awarded,' and everything else. And I recognize that 22 years is the kind of longevity that is somewhat unheard of these days [which could be a broken model of its own – do people leave a job because they find a better offer, or are they being forced out by any number of influences? Either way, I have been fortunate.].
Let the record show that I am not seeking another teaching position. I like the one I have, current political and societal barriers in all directions notwithstanding. But even if I wanted to – and certainly far less so if my life depended on it – I could never get another teaching job at this point.
Not that an academic search committee is allowed to discuss it, but I’m too old. And the average job ad proves it: The application process involves submitting names and contact information of at least three references. In my case, that would be the most cursory definition of ‘reference’ ever. My list would contain zero actual mentors, because at my age, all my mentors are dead. Even one of my favorite collaborators at a previous position is dead. And so my lack of primary references anymore means I’m not young enough to have living mentors who can rave about my greatness. In other words, I’m too old.
Furthermore, one application process I once engaged in wanted videos of me playing for church and conducting choirs. But would I be playing for church and conducting choirs as part of the position? (Spoiler: No.) I'm not a member of the conducting faculty where I am now, so I have no choir to conduct. And I divide my time between two U.S. states, so I don't serve churches regularly and still have no choir to conduct nor an organ on which I serve weekly. [Although it doesn't apply to me, the tired cliché 'Those who can't do, teach' might actually come in handy here, just to get past the application!] And who sets up a camera when they play for church, anyway? The young do. The old are just well-known in the field, and believe me, I have put in my time. But the search committee doesn’t know that – after all, there are likely to be no organists or church musicians on the committee [which is already a fundamental flaw of most searches like mine].
There are many things one can’t do in an academic interview that if they could, they might alter the course of time. I have been changing students’ lives for years, but how do you prove that in a short-list visit? (Spoiler: You don’t.) Until such time as I could connect them with a real counselor, I have counseled innumerable students having mother problems or time management issues. To the extent that I could encourage them through it, I counseled one student whose ex freakishly died in their sleep. How do you demonstrate that in an interview visit? (Spoiler: You don’t.) The committee can’t watch me bring a sense of levity to the office staff every time I walk in the door. The committee has no idea that I am well liked by housekeeping staff, stage crew, building managers, colleagues, and students alike. The committee can watch me play from memory during the interview, but then they can’t go to the Waffle House with me afterwards and watch me let my disappeared hair down and just enjoy being with any people who showed up to eat, too. They can’t see how well I interact with a presenter and how refreshingly non-demanding I am on the road. They can’t see how stage crews breathe a sigh of relief when they discover that I’m low-maintenance and actually enjoy talking to them. In other words, the committee, in their search for the bright and shiny (the young), have no idea that the candidate in front of them would be the very best person for the position, and they have no way of finding that out.
There was recently an organ teacher position open. It was at a major private university, and it was one of those interesting ‘warmup’ teacher positions, where the underclassmen and secondary students would have lessons with this person before making their way up the ladder to the ‘real’ professor. I thought, Wow, that would be fun. For over two decades I have been preparing students for the next school or the next venture. But in this prospective position, I would be preparing them for the professor just next door. Very interesting! I began to assemble an application and then noticed that the position was non-tenure-track. I thought twice, and I wondered if this search committee might be delighted that a full-tenured professor out in the world would be perfectly willing to take this position. Would they be impressed enough to look at me? Would I be deemed over-qualified? Or perhaps 'extra-qualified?' But then I saw the ad in a slightly different light and noticed that it was describing the very person -- an alum of that institution -- who was already doing that job on a visiting basis. Ah, mystery solved – they’re going through the motions, but they already have their guy picked out. So never mind.
But move one track over with me for a moment, to a church search. I have never had any problem landing the church jobs I wanted. It might be because I was invited and able to do in the interview exactly what I do, without having to play a different game under the hood. There might be something to that. Poor academia is getting pressed on all sides, at about the pressure currently being exerted on Titanic. That’s an implosion in the making, and I am already sympathetic for when that time comes. Fortunately, I won't be among the candidates.

