Best Practices
Faculty Recruitment, Selection and Retention at
Central Washington University
Effective faculty hiring is essential to ensure that the mission of Central
Washington University is accomplished. In teaching we learn, our motto, is
meaningful only through a faculty that is committed to education in the broadest
sense. Hiring first-rate faculty members is the initial step in obtaining and
maintaining a first-rate faculty. The faculty hiring process must be standard
enough to ensure decisions are non-discriminatory and, at the same time, flexible
and creative enough to meet the needs of individual departments, their faculty
and students.
To this end, the Office for Equal Opportunity suggests the following “best
practices” be examined and, where possible, implemented.
The appointing authority and search committee chair are essential to the search
process. The appointing authority provides a vision for the position in the larger
academic framework while the search committee chair provides leadership and
advocacy for a diversity of candidates. The search committee should:
 Know what the appointing authority expects.
 Discuss and resolve differences of opinion when they arise. Because search
committees reflect all sorts of diversity, healthy discussion of qualifications,
screening components and applicants occurs frequently.
 Keep workings and selection process confidential.
Position description should:
 Reflect the needs of department.
o Review of the department’s academic needs should be conducted and
a review of the department’s current diversity composition and future
needs is made. Take into consideration specific needs for the future
and the broad needs of the university when writing position description.
o Describe position as broadly as possible to attract the largest pool of
potential applicants available.
 Be reasonable and definable rather than:
o Looking for God on a good day, or
o Looking for indefinable qualities, as reflected in the statement, “We’ll
know them when we see them.”
 Include intangible aspects of the position, as appropriate, including
collegiality, communication skills, initiative leadership, stress tolerance, fit with
current department. Discuss how these can be measured and how they can
be compared between candidates.
 Be individually tailored. Boilerplate is bad! Position descriptions should work
to attract individual applicants and reflect the character of individual
departments.



Encourage diverse applicants from the top of the document. Placing such
encouragement in small print at the bottom of the document makes a
statement in itself.
Phrases like those listed below may communicate your interest in recruiting a
diverse applicant pool:
o Experience with a variety of teaching methods ad/or curricular
perspectives
o Academic experiences and interests in working with culturally diverse
groups
o Interest in developing and implementing curricula that address
multicultural issues
o Demonstrated success in working with diverse populations of
students.1
Other suggestions include: “The department is particularly interested in
candidates who have experience working with students from diverse
backgrounds and a demonstrated commitment to improving access to higher
education for disadvantaged students”, or “Candidates should describe
previous activities mentoring women, minorities, students with disabilities, or
other under-represented groups.”
Develop a broad-based recruitment plan:
Recruitment goes on all the time, not just when a vacancy opens up. One-time
outreach efforts do not build sustained networks nor do they build trust.
Networks require a substantial investment of time and energy, but that’s what
establishes an institution’s credibility and sincerity. One must get in the network
and stay in the network.
Minority faculty candidates are only going to deal with you if you become a
voice to them and later a face to them. They have to sense your sincerity.
Remember, you’re recruiting people who, historically, have been either
consciously or unconsciously excluded from higher education faculties.
Honest, repeated expressions of genuine interest, sincerity and
enthusiasm may be the most important factors in the recruitment and
selection process—more important than money and the configuration of
lab space.2



Tap into networks established by current minority faculty. They may know
who’s available and who might be encouraged to apply. 3
The university must sell itself rather than expecting small pools of minority
scholars to find it.4 Be honest. Although we may not be as diverse as
campuses in large, metropolitan areas, we can point with pride to measures
the university has taken to become more inclusive and diverse.
Keep in mind that women and minority faculty do not want to think that your
interest in them is restricted to their ethnicity and gender. They want to know
that you value their teaching and research experience/interests are of primary
importance.
Page 2



Use multiple recruitment strategies simultaneously.5
o Use national publications, personal contacts, listservs, mailing lists,
professional and academic conferences, and websites.
Utilize personal and professional networks to seek leads, and follow up on
them. Remember, the best person for the job may not be looking for one.
o Word of mouth is still the best way to get people to apply. Search
committee members may make phone calls or send e-mails to their
colleagues to ask about promising candidates. They may specifically
inquire about promising women and minority candidates. Contact
academic and professional organizations within specific disciplines.
Identify candidates outside of academe.
Non-traditional places to look and begin developing networks:
o CWU alumnae
o CWU minority administrators as well as part-time/adjunct faculty
o PhD researchers in the public and private sector
o Historically Black Colleges and Universities
(http://www.edonline.com/cq/hbcu/)
o Hispanics Serving Institutions
(http://www.chci.org/chciyouth/resources/hispanicserving.htm)
o Tribal Colleges
(http://www.ed.gov/about/inits/list/whtc/edlite-tclist.html)
o Published minority writers and artists
o Speakers at academic forums and professional meetings
o Directories such as the Minority and Women’s Doctoral Directory
o Minority/Women’s Caucuses within professional associations and
organizations.6
After recruitment:
 Respond to candidates in a timely manner. If they are interviewed, make
sure that you contact them in the timeframe that you stipulated. Inform
people either way. Successful and unsuccessful candidates should be
notified immediately.
 Identify one particular person to be the personal contact for all candidates.
(This is often the search committee chair.) The contact person serves as a
recruiter and answers candidates’ questions. For these reasons the contact
person must have an understanding of the position and the specific
requirements and be able to frame the position, department and university in
a positive way.
 Search committee members and hiring authorities should put themselves in
the applicant’s shoes. Be aware of how communications such as informal
email, phone calls, luncheon conversations and letters of rejection may be
viewed by candidates. “You never get a second chance to make a first
impression.”
Page 3
Selection:
 Selection criteria should be as broad as possible for as long as possible in the
review process.
 Time and effort is invested in order to evaluate each applicant on his or her
individual strengths rather than finding the most expedient means to narrow
the pool.
 Allot enough time to discuss fully all the candidates. Fatigue and time
constraints are sometimes conducive to simply “adding up the scores” and
moving on. Good candidates can be missed. Search committee members
are encouraged to modify their scores in the light of insights gained through
committee discussion, and at that point the scores might be given a major
role in the final decisions.
Interview Question Techniques:
 Ask candidates of color (and women when appropriate) if they’d like to meet
with other colleagues of color while they are on campus. The Office for Equal
Opportunity can organize such gatherings on request.7
 Present the campus realistically. This includes admitting problems and
weaknesses as well as highlighting areas of strength and support.8
 Be aware of your own biases and attuned to cultural differences in
interviewee responses. For more information visit
http://www.cwu.edu/~hr/search/tips.html.
 Use structured interview but don’t be too rigid.
 Use effective questioning techniques:
o Open-ended questions: use who, what, when, tell me more, describe.
o Situational questions: the candidate is asked to put him/herself into
some hypothetical situation and asked how he or she would handle it:
“What would you do if…”
o Behavioral questions: Making predictions about a potential employee’s
future success based on actual past behaviors, instead of based on
responses to hypothetical questions. In behavior-based interview, you
are asked to give specific examples of when you demonstrated
particular behaviors or skills.
 Provide candidates with free time so that they may explore an area of interest
to them (e.g., housing, schools, recreation opportunities, spousal/partner
employment).
Reference Checks:
 The employer who doesn’t check reference gets the employee s/he deserves.
 Avoid prohibited pre-employment inquiries. For more information visit
http://www.cwu.edu/~hr/search/inquiries.html.
 Put intangibles into objective perspectives. Ask the person. Be brave!
Page 4
Final Selection and Hiring:
 Avoid overvaluing the interview.
 Think about incentives that can be negotiated. For example, grant money to
support a candidate’s scholarly agenda such as equipment and/or
professional development. Cover the cost of additional campus visits. Offer
alternate workload assignment.
 Be honest about the university culture, the department and the position.
When candid about the realities of working at CWU and living in Ellensburg,
candidates can make informed decisions and will be happier when they get
here. Being realistic yet positive about the challenges and rewards of working
here helps to build a lasting impression about CWU for candidates.
Documentation:
 Be judicious in note taking. Notes should spare but complete enough to jog
your memory in case you are called upon to justify your selection.
retention:
DO- Demonstrate collegiality and provide a comfortable, supportive climate.
 Recognize and value diverse faculty for their academic expertise.
Academic expertise, for women and minority faculty members, is often
overlooked in favor of capitalizing on their perceived knowledge of
“diversity issues.”
 Include women and minorities in informal networks and social gatherings.
 Provide mentors who can help diverse faculty navigate the academic
culture of their department and the university.
 Provide release time or otherwise appropriately acknowledge the
additional responsibilities that accrue to certain faculty by virtue of their
gender, race or ethnicity (e.g., service on search committees and student
advising).
DON’T- Expect women and minorities to be the diversity expert/spokesperson for
your department.
 Expect faculty members of a particular group to advise all members of that
group because they are the same gender, race or ethnicity.
Page 5
endnotes
1
Diversifying the Faculty: A Guidebook for Search Committees, Caroline Sotello and Viernes
Turner, Association of American Colleges and Universities, 2002.
2
Achieving Faculty Diversity: A Sourcebook of Ideas and Success Stories, Jeri Spann, The
University of Wisconsin System, 1988.
3
Ibid.
4
Ibid.
5
Sotello and Turner.
6
Ibid.
7
Ibid.
8
Ibid.
Page 6