Letting candidates know about poor materials?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader 'empathy') writes:

I was on a search committee this year and I read a lot of cover letters.
One not successful applications [sic] stood out to me.

This applicant in many ways was strong: they had a strong post doc, a pretty good publication record and good letters. Their area of specialization was not what we were looking for, so it was why they were eliminated.

But if they did have our AOS, they might have been eliminated anyway because of their cover letter.

The cover letter consisted of, first, the author listing their publications and providing links to them. The applicant did not explain what the publications were about, or say anything about teaching, nor said anything about being a fit for us. They said very little about their future research plans other than a vague proclamation about a book. And then they had a self-deprecating paragraph about their publication record, where they said something along the lines of" I have a poor publication record so don't hire me if you want someone with a great record, instead, hire me if you want a researcher who will be great in the future."

For what was an otherwise a strong application, this cover letter could be very damaging. First, expecting a search committee to read your publications when we have 200 plus applications,( instead of giving us an overview of what you do and why it fits the job description,) comes off as arrogant and out of touch. But also, we are just busy and many SC members won't bother. We already have a list of publications on your CV. Second, the line about a poor publication record (when you have a decent one) does not make you look good. And vague proclamations about future productivity are even worse.

I felt bad for this applicant, as no one apparently has pointed this out to them. I wanted to write them or a mentor and give some kind advice, but because of privacy rules I couldn't. I've heard stories about professors writing to letter writers and saying that their letter is inapt. But does anyone know if there is any legal way to let someone know about something like this? I am mainly asking out of curiosity, as I would have to look up all details of my own school's policies before I could risk it, and I don't think it is worth risking my job. But I'm just wondering if finding major problems in applications is something that happens, and if persons ever inform others about aspects that might be killing a hopeful person's chances.

This is a very good question, one I suspect more than a few search-committee members have wondered about. I also think it draws attention to an important issue for job-candidates to think about as well. As someone who has served on four search-committees, I too have read cover letters and other materials that came across very poorly--either out of touch with the nature of job being applied for or seemingly arrogant, or both. Whenever I've read these kinds of materials, I couldn't help but wonder whether the candidate ever received outside feedback on their materials before applying (a real must, I think). Sadly, one year I even met a first-time job-candidate at a conference in September, where I learned the applicant had received no job-market mentoring in their PhD program, didn't have their research or teaching portfolios drafted, or have any real idea of what these things involved--despite job-market ads already appearing on philjobs for at least a month! That case is one of the inspirations behind our Job-Market Boot Camp, though I still think nothing is quite as helpful as good personal mentoring.

In any case, does anyone have any insightful answers to empathy's question?

Comments

[elisa freschi]

When something comparable happens to me (e.g., an article I have to peer-review with some key formal mistakes), I write a general post on my blog and try to advertise it via social media, in the hope to help not only the single person it was prompted by, but also many more.

[First Time Committee Member]

This something I thought about this year, because I noticed something I viewed as a weakness in a number of applications I evaluated this year. The situation was something like this: A graduate student had published a good paper in a good journal (great!), and submitted this as their writing sample. But several times, this published paper was completed before much of anything was done on the dissertation. The file therefore included nothing substantive from the dissertation itself. If we wanted to get a sense of the dissertation (and we often did), we had to rely to an outsize degree on the letters. In an ideal world, we could reach out to candidates to get an additional writing sample from the dissertation, but that just doesn't happen for many candidates given the number of applications we receive.

I thought about reaching out to candidates, but it's not so obvious a case as a confusion about a cover letter, and also something that might be a bit of an idiosyncratic preference. So I decided not to say anything in the end.

[anonymous placement director]

Hi First Time Committee Member,

As a placement director let me suggest two things that might help with this:

--If your committee and/or department would prefer to have a writing sample that is an excerpt from a dissertation, you could put that in your advertisement. This is non-standard and so should really be flagged by you rather than be something that job market candidates can intuit. (Though: you would need to think about what to say to people who are one plus year out of graduate school.)

--All of my students have both one-to-two-page dissertation summaries and research statements at the ready. If you're not already asking for this, you could ask specifically for a dissertation summary (either in addition to or instead of (for current graduate students only) a research statement. Then, you could rely on a candidate's own description of their research instead of letters.

[more empathy]

This year we had an applicant who must have submitted an old CV, because they were missing 1/2 of their publications. We only realized this because one of the search committee members had happened to evaluate the applicant a year earlier for a post-doc. This was definitely a situation where I felt moral pressure to let the candidate know. It seems almost tragic that a promising candidate's chances are shattered because they accidentally upload the wrong CV, especially because it is plausible they did this for *all* their applications. I can see how it might happen, too. I know that I have saved CVs with not the most descriptive names, and I could see myself accidentally uploading the wrong one.

[Missing something]

Maybe I am missing something, but doesn't a search committee have every right to give reasons to the applicants they reject? Do they really have to give the same form letter to each applicant? I would think clearly not, since the people who make it to further stages get personal rejection notes, or even personal rejection phone calls. Why is it a privacy violation to say to the applicant something like "your application was strong but your AOS was not in the area adverstised, and we felt your cover letter did not show enthausasim for the job...etc"

You aren't showing the cover letter to people outside of the search committee. You aren't discussing the application with anyone outisde the committee. You are only discussing the job application directly with the job applicant. I don't see how that is a privacy violation.