Perlman, B., & McCann, L. I. (1997, Summer). Departmental Planning: The First Step
In Recruitinga. The Department Chair8(1), 2-3.
Recruitment is an opportunity to hire someone who will serve your students,
colleagues, department and institution well. It also provides an unexpected and often
unappreciated opportunity to assess the present, evaluate your needs, and plan any
necessary changes to your programs, before you structure the new position. In other
words, you must do some planning in order to recruit the best person to meet your
department's current and future needs. One does this by reviewing departmental history
to gain some perspective, evaluating the current situation, and considering probable
future directions. Planning is an especially valuable first step in the recruitment process
that provides information which will increase the chances that all of your decisions will
be good ones.
Recruiting is not the only reason to plan. The processes and principles we
suggest are useful in preparation for program reviews, departmental requests for
additional positions, downsizing, and resource reallocation. In the present case,
planning facilitates the process of determining the nature and structure of the position to
be filled and the candidate characteristics necessary to do the job.
Department chairpersons are well positioned to initiate planning. We suggest
conducting a general evaluation of your current situation prior to, and as part of,
recruiting, to help create a plan for moving forward from wherever you find yourself.
Questions Planning Will Help Answer
There are several general questions you might ask as part of a planning process to help
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you decide on the optimal structure for your job description, and create an environment in which
a new hire can thrive.
• What are the department's general strengths and
weaknesses?
• Can we identify our goals and values, and use them to plan
future curricular
offerings?
• How much do we really value and support good teaching,
scholarship, and
service?
• What should the department guard against changing, and
what is it doing well?
• What needs to be changed?
• How should the department allocate faculty, resources,
and commitment to its various programs?
• Where is our college or university heading and what is
receiving special
attention and/or funding?
• What is the future likely to be, or at least the two or
three most likely and desirable alternatives?
Gathering Information
There are several ways to gather the information needed to answer these and other
questions.
1. Review Your Literature
It is amazing how much you can learn, and how easily, if you merely read what is already
written about your department, its curriculum, and its programs. We suggest reading the
following:
• University catalog.
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• Department handouts to students describing programs and
faculty.
• Department budgets for the past two or three years.
• Brief vitae for each of your faculty, including specialty
areas of teaching and scholarly interests. Note the ages
of your colleagues as well, since this will be important
in anticipating future needs.
• Recent Program Reviews.
• Other materials relevant to your department, its
curriculum, and past history.
2. Use A Consultant
You may wish to find someone external to the department and/or institution to assist in a
major planning effort, should you wish to really do the job right. Such a person may be used for:
• Discussing planning in general, and the type best suited
to your needs.
• Helping with a wide variety of departmental issues, such
as defining your
department and its programs.
• Providing an objective evaluation.
• Identifying current or anticipated problems such as
curricular structure or supporting and encouraging good
teaching.
• Identifying decisions to be made in order to move forward.
• Sampling opinion and leading discussions.
• Providing input from a neutral source.
If you choose to use a consultant, you need someone familiar with both academia and
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teaching, and departmental planning. This consultant will help the department consider and
understand its:
• History.
• Current situation, issues and problems.
• Areas of agreement and disagreement.
• Need for curricular revisions.
• Options based on what similar departments are doing.
• Sequence of future hires reflecting probable retirements
and current and future needs.
3. Structured Techniques for Planning - The SWOT (Strengths,
Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) Analysis
There are a number of structured techniques for planning that can be used with or
without a consultant, and any one of them may suit your purposes. A SWOT (Strengths,
Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis (Stoner & Fry, 1987) is a common approach.
It can be used as a forum for brainstorming and discussion, and a means to help your
department address any of the questions posed above, including what type of person you
should hire and what type and level of performance you should expect from this person..
A SWOT analysis considers both the department's internal and external environment and
identifies what needs to be done. It can be used to analyze any specific issue or component
of the department. When your colleagues meet, focus on an issue and brainstorm a list of Ss,
Ws, Os, and Ts, then group the resulting ideas into categories under specific headings. Prior to
recruiting, our department assessed its curriculum using a SWOT analysis. After analyzing the
resulting lists and categorizing them by ideas/subjects we ended up focusing on the following
components of our curricular environment (1) Curriculum (e.g., courses, prerequisites), (2)
Resources (e.g., students, faculty, facilities), (3) Out of Classroom Learning (e.g., honorary
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society, collaborative scholarship, advising), and (4) Data (e.g., do we have accurate
information on numbers of majors, minors, service students; the job success of graduates?).
This SWOT analysis identified out of classroom undergraduate learning as a particular
weakness and we recruited a new hire with strengths and interests in this area, in addition to
the specialization and other skills we needed.
Using Planning to Identify The Unique Nature of Your Position
Each faculty position has unique characteristics better suited to the skills and abilities of
only some of the candidates who apply. You must create the job description and ad copy that
will attract applicants with the abilities you require. Begin planning early so that you will be
finished in time to allow successful completion of start-up recruitment tasks, to make any other
necessary decisions prior to writing position and job descriptions and soliciting applications, and
to cope with the inevitable delays you can expect at various stages of the process.
The following activities must be completed to achieve the best possible agreement
between the requirements of the position and the characteristics of the person selected to fill it.
The recruitment committee must integrate the material gathered in planning into its
development of the unique position to be filled, and translate this gestalt into a job description
that is appropriate and realistic given your situation. Review the teaching, scholarly productivity,
and service activity of each of your colleagues. If there is a significant difference between the
ideal behavior of the new faculty you are recruiting and the performance of the productive
faculty now working in your department, you must consider whether your expectations for the
new hire are realistic. If the new person will be expected to do more than current faculty are
managing to accomplish, assess the environmental supports for such activity and consider
lowering your expectations.
You also can compare departmental and institutional expectations for faculty
performance. Any gap between your department and others suggests a divergence between
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institutional and departmental expectations, and both candidate and department need to
understand the practical consequences of this situation so that it may be addressed, or at least
accommodated.
After you have looked at your curricular needs, the needs of your students, and the
rough structuring of your department and institution, realistically define the type of person your
program needs and can attract. Integrate the results of this exercise into your position
description and into a workable set of selection criteria.
Conclusion
Bowen and Schuster (1986) have said that new appointees "commonly find themselves
at institutions about which they know little or nothing and which they would have studiously
avoided in a more favorable academic market" (p. 218). This is hardly an ideal situation.
Maximizing the fit between position responsibilities and a candidate's interests and abilities
requires that the recruitment committee have a clear perception of the nature of the job they
offer and the environment in which it exists, and that this information be communicated to the
candidate. The committee must choose from the pool of candidates the person most able to do
this particular job well over the long term.
It is easier to adjust the position before you hire someone than after you have
failed to find a candidate well suited to fill it. You may decide that good agreement between
your position requirements and the skills and experiences of available candidates will be easier
to achieve by modifying the nature of the position than by searching for the rare individual who
could fit the demands of an unnecessarily difficult job. This modification may involve adjusting
the responsibilities you expect the candidate to meet, the working environment, or the general
context in which the job exists.
Once you have recruited a new colleague, it is easier to help your new hire succeed
than to recruit again. As you plan, keep a list of things which will assist in the retention of your
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new colleagues. In a future article in The Department Chair we will discuss mentoring and
retention in more detail.
a
Based on Perlman, B., & McCann, L.I. (1996). Recruiting Good
College Faculty: Practical Advice For A Successful Search.
Bolton, MA: Anker Publishing.
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Reference
Bowen, H. R., & Schuster, J. H. (1986). American professors: A
national resource imperiled. New York: Oxford University Press.
Stoner, C. R., & Fry, F. L. (1987). Strategic planning in the
small business. Cincinnati, OH: South-Western.