The Office of Affirmative Action administers the policies and procedures related to equal employment opportunity, affirmative action, and the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Affirmative Action (AA) Position Paper on Selection
Evaluating Candidates for Faculty Positions:
Qualified vs. Most Qualified
Jerome Frieman and Dawn Peters
Affirmative Action Office
May 10, 1994
We all agree that our goal is to recruit and hire the very best people to the faculty. Our search and selection process for hiring faculty is supposed to lead to that outcome, and most of us believe we can identify the most qualified applicants from a pool of candidates. However, our belief that it is obvious who is the most qualified candidate ignores the subjective aspects of human judgment and decision making.
When we evaluate candidates, we give various weights to the different attributes these candidates possess. It is not obvious what these weights should be, and it is common for people to be inconsistent in the application of these weights across different searches and even within a search. Furthermore, it is not obvious how to scale the various aspects of a candidate's resume. For example, the simple matter of evaluating someone's scholarly productivity is not as easy as it looks: How can we ascertain the relative contributions of the authors to a publication, particularly when the candidate is beginning his or her career and one or more of the authors is a senior person? It is true that some journals and publishing houses have better reputations than others, but can we scale the differences in any meaningful way? When one candidate has more expedience, how shall we factor in experience when we assess scholarship? The fact that the answers to these questions are not obvious suggests that the determination of who is most qualified is based less on solid objective criteria than on individual judgment.
The real question we are trying to answer when we screen candidates for a faculty position is whether that person has the potential to earn tenure. Because potential is not directly observable, we attempt to gauge that potential by looking at candidates' backgrounds, experiences, and productivity: Where did they get their training? What do we know about their major professor? How much of their scholarship is theirs and how much is their major professor's? Can they articulate a program for the future? Do they have any teaching experience? If it were obvious what weights and scale values to place on these factors, we could put that information into a regression formula and predict the most qualified candidate. But we cannot do this because we do not know the appropriate weights and scale values.
Although we try to be objective in our appraisals of candidates, we can be influenced by subtle factors. For example, it is common to favor people who are like us, and to let group stereotypes influence our judgment, even when we are not aware of them. Given the potential long-term commitment inherent in an offer of a tenure-track appointment, it is understandable why these factors influence us. Unfortunately, this can lead us to favor candidates who belong to "over-represented" groups on the faculty at the expense of those from "under-represented" groups.
A factor that is frequently overlooked when discussing who is most qualified is that person's expected contribution to the overall goals of the program and the university. An overall goal for Kansas State University is to increase diversity of our student body, faculty, staff, and administration; that goal should also have some weight in the hiring process, but again, it is not obvious what that weight should be. If we are to make progress toward that goal, we have to give some weight to diversity in hiring.
In order to further our twin goals of hiring the best people and making progress toward increasing diversity among our faculty, we propose the following strategy:
- We will continue to recruit as many qualified candidates as we can
with special effort given to identifying qualified members of under-represented
groups.
- Despite the subjective aspects of human judgment, we will strive to
make our criteria for selection as objective as we can; this includes
the expected contribution to the program and the university. When screening
candidates, we will continue to ask the question, "Does this person
have the potential to earn tenure?" Members of under-represented groups
who meet this criterion will be put on the "short lists"; however, no
one makes the "short list" unless he or she is qualified (that is, more
than just "marginally qualified.") A qualified candidate is defined
as someone for whom the answer to the question about potential to earn
tenure is "yes."
- We will make a conscious decision to give some weight to diversity in our final selection, but this will not exclude our considering any qualified candidates no matter what their race or gender. We will make a good faith effort to evaluate all candidates dates fairly. When candidates have similar qualifications, the weight given to diversity should make the candidate from the under-represented group the preferred candidate. However, there will be times when one candidate clearly outshines everyone else; that person should be the preferred candidate. The case for that candidate should be so compelling that it is obvious to the disinterested observer.