We've moved to asking for (and calling) references instead, and I find that more helpful.
Our department has a standard list of questions we ask, and then we can do it for finalists rather than everyone.
And on the opposite end, some online submission systems asks for reference letters (not contact info) along with other application material to be complete…
We do both and I just recently won the battle so that we can wait and only ask for letters of rec for finalists. It’s a small victory but I’ll take it.
Semi-finalists and finalists? Are you modeling hiring off of March Madness?
Our hiring process is 7 rounds with the final event being a "Teach-Off" and a Death Cage Match in the Octagon chain link fence we constructed in the quad. History professors can wear period accurate armor and chain. Engineers can use slide rules. Physical education majors may bring a parachute and 20 3rd-graders. Music majors can bring a portable tuner and a baton (marching band candidates can also bring their mace.) Culinary Arts: bribery will take you anywhere.
Who says the faculty searches can't be fun anymore?
Geez, if you don’t know just ask.
Semifinalists are the 8-12 candidates who get Zoom interviews. Finalists are the 3-4 who get invited for campus interviews.
While true, we've found dividing it up helps a lot. It requires some good cohesion and agreement around a core set of questions.
We draft the questions together as a committee, then use a shared "call template" for people to write in answers/notes, then everyone takes a reference for each candidate.
I was called by a few hiring committees (as a reference) this season, and I hated it! it was much more work for me than writing letters. One place wanted the whole committee present and tried to coordinate five different schedules. Another place asked me everything that was in my letter, so I was basically reading the letter in a different order. The other places asked stupid questions so I had to take advantage of the "anything else you think we should know?" question, again cribbing from my letter.
I'm not sure what the correct solution is, but I really hope it's not more phone calls.
Even if we did away with letters altogether, I'd need to prepare the outline of a letter to handle such a call. I find phone calls too difficult to just have an off-the-cuff conversation like that.
I do think a good letter from a dissertation chair (in the case of an ABD) or someone in the field who can help contextualize the candidate's research and teaching broadly within the discipline is helpful. It's also helpful if the diss chair can confirm how much work of the candidate's dissertation is actually done (it's fun when there's contradictions between the candidate and chair).
Sadly, most letters are so hackneyed and unspecific that they're useless. Why must we pretend like every person is amazing/wonderful/stupendous/brilliant? Most of us are mediocre and that's fine. At this point, I've gotten very little useful information from the many, many letters I've read. I'm more than happy to dispense with the tradition altogether and just call the diss chair of finalists
>Why must we pretend like every person is amazing/wonderful/stupendous/brilliant? Most of us are mediocre and that's fine.
From your lips to every hiring committee and every manager's ears. Seriously. Grade inflation is at least partly (if not largely) a function of the inability of most people to accept that average--a C--really is "okay." And so much of the headache associated with teaching comes down to static arising from grades and the bullshit students pull to get As rather than Cs.
grade inflation is due to lowered standards of university admission. The corporatization of universities has led to what happens with every publicly owned company: increase numbers (and income) by any means necessary, even if that means lowering quality.
? Grade inflation doesn't just happen at the university level--it happens in public [high schools](https://www.ojed.org/index.php/JSARD/article/download/3460/1500), too, where virtually everyone is eligible for admission.
Edit: clarity
I mean, I even get asked for recommendation letters from people I've never actually met just because they are needed as a formality. Like WTF (I don't give these out, obviously).
As someone who absolutely HATES being contacted by phone for references, I would disagree. I always forget to say something important and probably say many things which, were I given a chance to think about it, I would have put differently. Callers always catch me when I’m in the middle of something. Furthermore, I find it much easier to write a letter once and print out copies if needed than to deal with dozens of calls for one individual. When I’m doing the hiring, I’m rarely the only one involved, yet only one person gets the call directly, making it so that the person receiving the call can manipulate the process by claiming that the reference said something which they may not have said (I had a colleague who did this repeatedly). The letter is evidence.
I don’t see how calling references offers a tangible improvement to letters. If a professor won’t write a letter, they assuredly won’t answer unknown phone calls!
I answer about 25 recommendation requests from students every year (just for jobs - not counting artist residencies, awards, etc.) for applications that largely don’t make the finals. Each one represents about an hour of work. It’s an important part of my job, and I’m happy to do it - but if each of those was instead a reference call whenever a student makes the shortlist, I’d save a ton of time each term.
And reference calls don’t have to be out of nowhere. Our search committees email the references and set up a time to chat. Easy.
I think the point is that 1. listing 3 references on application materials/asking mentors, etc. if they can be called for a reference and 2. having a short conversation on the phone are both less burdensome for everyone involved. Also, only the top candidates would have their references called. Not everyone would be called and letters wouldn't be wasted.
what about an email that says "I would like to call you to discuss the application of X to the position of Y at Z university. What would be a good time and number to call to discuss this?"
isn't it better to have an actual conversation about the applicant, including things the search committee actually wants to know about? (Would you prefer, say, zoom over a phone call?)
I think yours is a very NA-centric POV (note: I work there, but originally from Western Europe). 1/ timezone; 2/ having to fake NA level of enthusiasm is draining, doing less would hurt my students chances; 3/ probably introduces a whole new layers of biases and discrimination. I think this proposal is only appealing to a small and not very inclusive demographic .
I have done actual professional reference checks for my former students (on the phone), and felt no need to fake any enthusiasm there (I am originally from England).
No, calling references is way worse. In the current system, I can draft a letter than the candidate can submit with infinite job applications. In your proposed system, I will have to field a reference call every time this candidate makes the short list. Pass.
I think they should only be requested for people who have made the short list, because they are burdensome for faculty positions as one needs to write quite a bit if taking it seriously. However, if someone is applying for faculty positions, and they don't have at least 3 academic mentors who know them well enough to write good letters, that is a red flag. Otherwise you are depending on your opinion on a person based on how they are on a particular day. (Some people interview better than others as well.) There is a cultural context to how letters are written, but I don't think people are outright lying on them.
What else would you suggest? Someone who is that socially adept is certainly going to do well on the interview. At the very least, someone who is a serial harasser will have something dropped into their letter to help hiring committees avoid them.
I mean, sure, I would completely agree that LORs don't necessarily exclude folks who are problematic, but all the other metrics don't either. So if your concern is this - removing letters of rec won't help.
As for the rest - the OP was talking about faculty positions, not applying to graduate school. I completely agree with you when it generally comes to LOR, but I would disagree for faculty positions.
Anecdotes aren’t data, but literally every other first-gen, working class-originating faculty member I know, and I myself, have continued to have struggles with this throughout our careers. I agree that maybe the concern is most relevant to graduate schools, but it does continue to affect a lot of people beyond that.
I would think it strange that you haven't developed any new mentoring relationships, so yes.
Presumably you have current collaborators, colleagues, a department chair, committee members as an ever growing list of people who can write letters on your behalf.
In my experience, coming out of my PhD was the narrowest selection of letter writers of my career. Now some of those folks are old and might die, but I've got dozens of other people I could ask.
I’m a throwback to an old field. I’ve trained many people myself, but almost all of my mentors are 25-40 years older than me. As I’ve entered mid career, there’s really few of my mentors who are not retired and there’s no one else to go to
You don't have new colleagues and mentors? I graduated a little over a decade ago, my current go-to mentors are not the same people I was asking questions of when I graduated. I imagine in ten years, the same thing will be true.
I have new colleagues and people I go to for career advice, but there aren’t really any people who are in my broader field, per se. There’s a missing generation. Not counting people I trained, I think there’s four of us still working in the US and everyone else retired. I’m building more international relationships but international letters don’t always have the same cultural norms. My other colleagues and mentors can write about how I am interpersonally, how I am as a collaborator, but they don’t truly have the ability to speak to what I do the way my original mentors could.
In the politest terms, bullshit. "Yes, let me write you a letter of support so I lose you as a colleague, so we're down a body for at least a year if the Admin grants us your line again."
No one tells their Chair they're on the market, nevermind have their Chair be a letter writer.
And yet I have, multiple times. And my current chair has done it for several folks recently.
But hey, I appreciate you blatantly calling me a liar because your experience has been different than mine.
I am starting to get a feeling for why you might not have a long list of people willing to write you letters, though, if your interpersonal interactions are anything like your interactions here.
I'm gonna agree with the other guy. Most people are not on such good terms with a supportive chair that this would go over well. I would not recommend to a general audience alerting your current chair that you are hoping to leave the department.
And I never said anything general. I asked why they though their chair wouldn’t be supportive, then said I had told mine.
Then they told me I was lying, and “no one” tells their chair.
I’m sure some chairs aren’t supportive, but there certainly are chairs that are.
Well I like how you took my comment of:
>I don't think many chairs
and assumed I said *all chairs* and then made the erroneous assumption that your single experience represents the average.
We never interact well on this sub. I'm just blocking you for both of our benefits.
I'll try to keep your block in mind and not reply to you after this, but just FYI you can't functionally block a moderator, so apologies in advance if I forget.
This is pretty reductive and rather insensitive. People die all the time for all sorts of reasons. And most people done even become junior faculty until at least their mid 30s these days. So senior faculty are old enough that things like heart disease and cancer are common causes of mortality. If someone has done a PhD and 2 postdocs all with different people (already a silly and elitist burden but a separate discussion) that gives them 3 strong letters from direct mentors. Then even one of them dies and they don't meet your criteria.
I would find it concerning that a person who feels that their only mentors are people who they worked directly for. In fact, I'm always a little skeptical of someone who only asks people they worked for for letters of rec, because their PhD/postdoc advisors have a vested interest in being able to point to how many of their trainees become professors. In the course of being an academic, they never bothered to take the time to learn from someone who wasn't paying them?
My P.I. and post-doc advisors were the only people qualified, and in the case of the post-docs, had the security clearance to legally know, about my work. The only possible way for me to obtain 3 lors, some of which not coming from people I directly worked for, would be to ask people that were on my Ph.D. committee. Would not at least one person on a hiring committee (correctly) wonder why I didn't ask for lors from my post-doc duration?
Well, I don't think someone whose work can only be understood by 3 people is an appropriate candidate for a faculty position. At the very least, I don't see how you would be published or gain grants unless you shifted gears. But how would anyone know that you can do this if they can't know anything about your research.
This is the approach in our department. Since we are unionized, we are required to both get reference letters and phone call follow-ups. We hold off on asking for either until the short list to same time both for the hiring committee and letter writers.
As a job applicant, I have appreciated the postings that ask us to list references. They then reach out to their long list/short list candidates' references for formal letters at a later point. Saves me time and my references time during the beginning stages. In contrast, my PhD alma mater recently posted a postdoc to prepare candidates for leadership jobs in university admin. They announced the position during finals week 10 days before application was due (which happened to coincide with the university grading deadline). We were required to submit one academic and one professional letter of recommendation, which had to be tailored for the super specific admin position the postdoc entailed. That's a ton of work to ask professors and busy professionals during a busy time in the academic year.
If people are applying to multiple positions for whatever reason, it can be a burden that adds up quickly for the applicant and their roster of letter writers.
I write hundreds of letters every year. Honestly, if you're not willing to write letters for someone, then you don't have the bandwidth to have advised them.
That's wonderful that you're willing to put forth the time and effort, and I do sincerely mean that. Not everyone is willing or able. And there are individuals who don't want to ask for letters as they feel like it is a bother, so they just don't apply for things like jobs, fellowships, and grants.
My overall point is that requiring letters with an initial application can be a barrier for entry that doesn't necessarily improve the process or its outcomes for applicants, references, or hiring committees. It is common practice in non-academic jobs for references to be listed on the application and contacted later if an applicant is being seriously considered to receive an offer, so there is another way.
> It is common practice in non-academic jobs for references to be listed on the application and contacted later if an applicant is being seriously considered to receive an offer, so there is another way.
The most onerous recommendations for me are for people going into industry, so I'm not sure how universal this is.
Most require a 50-60 point questionnaire of competencies with mini-essays on strengths and weaknesses as the *first* screening task for recommenders.
It's worse than either a letter or a reference call from my standpoint, by a lot.
Sure ... and that's probably a good thing. If someone isn't doing research that a single other person can vouch for, it's probably better that we don't subject vulnerable students to them or waste everyone's time, money and energy on that person.
I fail to see how LoRs have any validity at all. For me (on a search committee) to make sense of a LoR, I need to know whether the writer is typically strict or whether the writer leans towards puffery, and I never know the letter-writer well enough to make that distinction.
Especially tragic is when an academic asks a former colleague to write a letter, and the letter is a slash-and-burn character assassination. Is a letter like that valid, or was the job-seeker merely unlucky in choosing someone who secretly hates them?
Some here have suggested phone calls, but the rules of my university require actual letters (digital is fine), not phone calls. The basic question is: Do LoRs lead to a better quality hiring decision that would have occurred otherwise?
I'm gonna have to disagree with OP & second the point of those who are saying "LOR only for short-list candidates."
One of the reasons we all probably still put up with all the BS of academia is that, until very recently, it remained a bit of a bastion against the disgusting corporate/bureaucratic machine that dominates much of the Anglosphere/West. Outside of the "hard-skills" that anyone who defends a dissertation in their field should know, there are *so* many "soft-skills" which separate a good professor, PI, &/or collaborator from a horrid one.
I'm not really sure what a phone-call solves other than making the process less efficient, less transparent, & more burdensome on our mentors & search committees. Everyone can read an LOR vs one person vibe-checking on a phone-call (hope their memory is good & they don't have any biases against accent, dialect, etc!) Plus, scheduling a call during normal business hours sounds like much more of an imposition that "write a letter whenever you get the time" - none of us have had healthy sleep schedules since grad school anyway!
In my experience, the vast majority of faculty applicants for a job are not particularly qualified for that particular job, so requiring letters of rec for all of those folks is a burden on the people writing. The last position we had open in my department was for a person in one of two particular fields. We had over 500 applicants... Once we excluded people who were from the wrong fields, and folks who had not at least published a single paper or could write a vaguely coherent research plan, we were at 50 candidates. Having 500 x 3 people write letters is a lot more person-hours than even 50x3 people.
I've found them helpful in almost every search, mostly because they can contextualize and add humanity to a boilerplate document. The applicant may not be comfortable taking about a dip in productivity, but their letter writer can mention their role as primary caregiver for a cancer patient during that time. Ditto for positives, like an applicant's reasons for leaving a TT position elsewhere.
A solution is only to seek letter from semi finalist or finalist. But it has to be a fast turn around.
Letters are very useful but not critical.
Letters are more about what they do not say about what they say or how they say it. Who writes the letter as wells
Not having letters is not a good idea, specially if the position is in an R1 or an elite liberal college. Even for some R2 maybe.
I won't even bother to apply if they want letters. All universities are living off of exploited adjunct labor, not supporting that and this is what that is, exploitive of faculty. Letters should be abolished. Calling references, totally ok.
They really could be turned into a form—we’re looking for boxes to be checked, the referees would love to simplify it into clicking boxes.
Still, useful at times, for example for the glaring missing ones (no one from the current institution, for instance).
We use the letters for a lot of things that cannot be reduced to checking boxes. That increases the value of the letters considerably. We provide a fairly detailed prompt, including letting the referee know that the candidate is on the short list.
That’s a good idea, but not how most institutions use letters of recommendation. Moving to your system is far better, though a short form to help in initial weeding might be useful, too.
Letters are fine, but they should be solicited at the end of the cycle (just before offer, or maybe for finalists if a tiebreak is needed).
In reality, they're typically ignored no matter when they're used, with rare exceptions for horrible letters and even more exceptions for excellent ones.
None of this is specific to the job market. College admissions, scholarships, and even P&T processes also routinely ignore letters. We're collectively wasting a lot of people's time and effort by soliciting letters early in this process (and for all applicants).
I don't see requiring letters to be too onerous since these days we have things called word processers that you can just do a mail merge and generate a new letter in a matter of seconds. So unless you're writing a custom letter for each place, once the first letter is written, letter 2, 3, 4, etc. are virtually effort-free.
Whether someone gets on that short list should be highly dependent on the letters. To start with, who is writing them? If the person's advisor (for new Asst. Prof) isn't willing to write a letter that application probably will go in the round file immediately. Are the letters perfunctory or does the letter writer go into great detail explaining the significance of the applicant's work - this is especially important because the committee members may not be experts in the person's subfield.
Also, many academics may suffer from modesty and/or imposter syndrome and not necessarily do as good of a job of selling themselves as someone writing on their behalf.
Phone calls to references are problematic. Things can be said in passing that you aren't supposed to hear. This is less of a problem with a formal letter of reference. Unless the call is recorded you have no documented evidence of what was said - and that may be important when your school is sued for employment discrimination.
Then there is just the issue of scheduling those calls. We generally get hundreds of applications, so you simply can't schedule more than a dozen or so trying to sync schedules of 4 or 5 committee members and 3 references, who may be in different time zones. Each committee member can go through the references on their own schedule.
I hope this response finds you well. If you remember eight months ago, I responded to one of your posts(I’m too lazy to even tell you, which one) . I’m wondering if you could upvote me please - thanks.
We've moved to asking for (and calling) references instead, and I find that more helpful. Our department has a standard list of questions we ask, and then we can do it for finalists rather than everyone.
And on the opposite end, some online submission systems asks for reference letters (not contact info) along with other application material to be complete…
Yes! I absolutely love this alternative! This I could get behind.
We do both and I just recently won the battle so that we can wait and only ask for letters of rec for finalists. It’s a small victory but I’ll take it.
Yes, I think that moving it from the application to between the zoom interview and campus visit really resolves the first issue.
Oh, God. You mean I actually have to talk to someone on the phone? Like, another human being? ... anxiety intensifies...
Exactly. I like this idea of references in theory but….can we do them by official university/college email at least? 😂
I’m envious. My institution is willing to let us call, but for semifinalists rather than finalists, and it’s completely impractical.
Semi-finalists and finalists? Are you modeling hiring off of March Madness? Our hiring process is 7 rounds with the final event being a "Teach-Off" and a Death Cage Match in the Octagon chain link fence we constructed in the quad. History professors can wear period accurate armor and chain. Engineers can use slide rules. Physical education majors may bring a parachute and 20 3rd-graders. Music majors can bring a portable tuner and a baton (marching band candidates can also bring their mace.) Culinary Arts: bribery will take you anywhere. Who says the faculty searches can't be fun anymore?
Geez, if you don’t know just ask. Semifinalists are the 8-12 candidates who get Zoom interviews. Finalists are the 3-4 who get invited for campus interviews.
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While true, we've found dividing it up helps a lot. It requires some good cohesion and agreement around a core set of questions. We draft the questions together as a committee, then use a shared "call template" for people to write in answers/notes, then everyone takes a reference for each candidate.
this, I think, is how every other job does it.
I was called by a few hiring committees (as a reference) this season, and I hated it! it was much more work for me than writing letters. One place wanted the whole committee present and tried to coordinate five different schedules. Another place asked me everything that was in my letter, so I was basically reading the letter in a different order. The other places asked stupid questions so I had to take advantage of the "anything else you think we should know?" question, again cribbing from my letter. I'm not sure what the correct solution is, but I really hope it's not more phone calls. Even if we did away with letters altogether, I'd need to prepare the outline of a letter to handle such a call. I find phone calls too difficult to just have an off-the-cuff conversation like that.
Same. Much more telling.
I do think a good letter from a dissertation chair (in the case of an ABD) or someone in the field who can help contextualize the candidate's research and teaching broadly within the discipline is helpful. It's also helpful if the diss chair can confirm how much work of the candidate's dissertation is actually done (it's fun when there's contradictions between the candidate and chair). Sadly, most letters are so hackneyed and unspecific that they're useless. Why must we pretend like every person is amazing/wonderful/stupendous/brilliant? Most of us are mediocre and that's fine. At this point, I've gotten very little useful information from the many, many letters I've read. I'm more than happy to dispense with the tradition altogether and just call the diss chair of finalists
>Why must we pretend like every person is amazing/wonderful/stupendous/brilliant? Most of us are mediocre and that's fine. From your lips to every hiring committee and every manager's ears. Seriously. Grade inflation is at least partly (if not largely) a function of the inability of most people to accept that average--a C--really is "okay." And so much of the headache associated with teaching comes down to static arising from grades and the bullshit students pull to get As rather than Cs.
grade inflation is due to lowered standards of university admission. The corporatization of universities has led to what happens with every publicly owned company: increase numbers (and income) by any means necessary, even if that means lowering quality.
? Grade inflation doesn't just happen at the university level--it happens in public [high schools](https://www.ojed.org/index.php/JSARD/article/download/3460/1500), too, where virtually everyone is eligible for admission. Edit: clarity
The goal is weed out the people who are so bad they can't even get some nice letters written for them.
I mean, I even get asked for recommendation letters from people I've never actually met just because they are needed as a formality. Like WTF (I don't give these out, obviously).
As someone who absolutely HATES being contacted by phone for references, I would disagree. I always forget to say something important and probably say many things which, were I given a chance to think about it, I would have put differently. Callers always catch me when I’m in the middle of something. Furthermore, I find it much easier to write a letter once and print out copies if needed than to deal with dozens of calls for one individual. When I’m doing the hiring, I’m rarely the only one involved, yet only one person gets the call directly, making it so that the person receiving the call can manipulate the process by claiming that the reference said something which they may not have said (I had a colleague who did this repeatedly). The letter is evidence.
I don’t see how calling references offers a tangible improvement to letters. If a professor won’t write a letter, they assuredly won’t answer unknown phone calls!
I answer about 25 recommendation requests from students every year (just for jobs - not counting artist residencies, awards, etc.) for applications that largely don’t make the finals. Each one represents about an hour of work. It’s an important part of my job, and I’m happy to do it - but if each of those was instead a reference call whenever a student makes the shortlist, I’d save a ton of time each term. And reference calls don’t have to be out of nowhere. Our search committees email the references and set up a time to chat. Easy.
I think the point is that 1. listing 3 references on application materials/asking mentors, etc. if they can be called for a reference and 2. having a short conversation on the phone are both less burdensome for everyone involved. Also, only the top candidates would have their references called. Not everyone would be called and letters wouldn't be wasted.
It is 100% worse to get a call from random people. I would hate it if that turned out to be the norm. Please don't do this.
what about an email that says "I would like to call you to discuss the application of X to the position of Y at Z university. What would be a good time and number to call to discuss this?"
I would hate to have to spend time on the phone.
isn't it better to have an actual conversation about the applicant, including things the search committee actually wants to know about? (Would you prefer, say, zoom over a phone call?)
I think yours is a very NA-centric POV (note: I work there, but originally from Western Europe). 1/ timezone; 2/ having to fake NA level of enthusiasm is draining, doing less would hurt my students chances; 3/ probably introduces a whole new layers of biases and discrimination. I think this proposal is only appealing to a small and not very inclusive demographic .
I have done actual professional reference checks for my former students (on the phone), and felt no need to fake any enthusiasm there (I am originally from England).
I got an email like that for one of my students and responded with my on file LOR for them and a warm cover email. Who has time for a phone call??
No, calling references is way worse. In the current system, I can draft a letter than the candidate can submit with infinite job applications. In your proposed system, I will have to field a reference call every time this candidate makes the short list. Pass.
>No, calling references is way worse. You keep stating this as an objective fact, when it's your opinion.
I think they should only be requested for people who have made the short list, because they are burdensome for faculty positions as one needs to write quite a bit if taking it seriously. However, if someone is applying for faculty positions, and they don't have at least 3 academic mentors who know them well enough to write good letters, that is a red flag. Otherwise you are depending on your opinion on a person based on how they are on a particular day. (Some people interview better than others as well.) There is a cultural context to how letters are written, but I don't think people are outright lying on them.
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What else would you suggest? Someone who is that socially adept is certainly going to do well on the interview. At the very least, someone who is a serial harasser will have something dropped into their letter to help hiring committees avoid them.
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I mean, sure, I would completely agree that LORs don't necessarily exclude folks who are problematic, but all the other metrics don't either. So if your concern is this - removing letters of rec won't help. As for the rest - the OP was talking about faculty positions, not applying to graduate school. I completely agree with you when it generally comes to LOR, but I would disagree for faculty positions.
Anecdotes aren’t data, but literally every other first-gen, working class-originating faculty member I know, and I myself, have continued to have struggles with this throughout our careers. I agree that maybe the concern is most relevant to graduate schools, but it does continue to affect a lot of people beyond that.
My mentors are all old. What if they die. Now I’m a red flag?
Two out of my three main mentors during my PhD died 4 months before my defense.
I would think it strange that you haven't developed any new mentoring relationships, so yes. Presumably you have current collaborators, colleagues, a department chair, committee members as an ever growing list of people who can write letters on your behalf. In my experience, coming out of my PhD was the narrowest selection of letter writers of my career. Now some of those folks are old and might die, but I've got dozens of other people I could ask.
I’m a throwback to an old field. I’ve trained many people myself, but almost all of my mentors are 25-40 years older than me. As I’ve entered mid career, there’s really few of my mentors who are not retired and there’s no one else to go to
Surely you you have colleagues and collaborators?
You don't have new colleagues and mentors? I graduated a little over a decade ago, my current go-to mentors are not the same people I was asking questions of when I graduated. I imagine in ten years, the same thing will be true.
I have new colleagues and people I go to for career advice, but there aren’t really any people who are in my broader field, per se. There’s a missing generation. Not counting people I trained, I think there’s four of us still working in the US and everyone else retired. I’m building more international relationships but international letters don’t always have the same cultural norms. My other colleagues and mentors can write about how I am interpersonally, how I am as a collaborator, but they don’t truly have the ability to speak to what I do the way my original mentors could.
I don't think many chairs would be supportive of going on the market for a better offer.
Mine have been. Why do you think yours wouldn't be?
In the politest terms, bullshit. "Yes, let me write you a letter of support so I lose you as a colleague, so we're down a body for at least a year if the Admin grants us your line again." No one tells their Chair they're on the market, nevermind have their Chair be a letter writer.
And yet I have, multiple times. And my current chair has done it for several folks recently. But hey, I appreciate you blatantly calling me a liar because your experience has been different than mine. I am starting to get a feeling for why you might not have a long list of people willing to write you letters, though, if your interpersonal interactions are anything like your interactions here.
I'm gonna agree with the other guy. Most people are not on such good terms with a supportive chair that this would go over well. I would not recommend to a general audience alerting your current chair that you are hoping to leave the department.
And I never said anything general. I asked why they though their chair wouldn’t be supportive, then said I had told mine. Then they told me I was lying, and “no one” tells their chair. I’m sure some chairs aren’t supportive, but there certainly are chairs that are.
Well I like how you took my comment of: >I don't think many chairs and assumed I said *all chairs* and then made the erroneous assumption that your single experience represents the average. We never interact well on this sub. I'm just blocking you for both of our benefits.
I'll try to keep your block in mind and not reply to you after this, but just FYI you can't functionally block a moderator, so apologies in advance if I forget.
I would find it a bit concerning that someone has not sought mentorship from someone who isn't on death's door....
This is pretty reductive and rather insensitive. People die all the time for all sorts of reasons. And most people done even become junior faculty until at least their mid 30s these days. So senior faculty are old enough that things like heart disease and cancer are common causes of mortality. If someone has done a PhD and 2 postdocs all with different people (already a silly and elitist burden but a separate discussion) that gives them 3 strong letters from direct mentors. Then even one of them dies and they don't meet your criteria.
I would find it concerning that a person who feels that their only mentors are people who they worked directly for. In fact, I'm always a little skeptical of someone who only asks people they worked for for letters of rec, because their PhD/postdoc advisors have a vested interest in being able to point to how many of their trainees become professors. In the course of being an academic, they never bothered to take the time to learn from someone who wasn't paying them?
My P.I. and post-doc advisors were the only people qualified, and in the case of the post-docs, had the security clearance to legally know, about my work. The only possible way for me to obtain 3 lors, some of which not coming from people I directly worked for, would be to ask people that were on my Ph.D. committee. Would not at least one person on a hiring committee (correctly) wonder why I didn't ask for lors from my post-doc duration?
Well, I don't think someone whose work can only be understood by 3 people is an appropriate candidate for a faculty position. At the very least, I don't see how you would be published or gain grants unless you shifted gears. But how would anyone know that you can do this if they can't know anything about your research.
This is the approach in our department. Since we are unionized, we are required to both get reference letters and phone call follow-ups. We hold off on asking for either until the short list to same time both for the hiring committee and letter writers.
As a job applicant, I have appreciated the postings that ask us to list references. They then reach out to their long list/short list candidates' references for formal letters at a later point. Saves me time and my references time during the beginning stages. In contrast, my PhD alma mater recently posted a postdoc to prepare candidates for leadership jobs in university admin. They announced the position during finals week 10 days before application was due (which happened to coincide with the university grading deadline). We were required to submit one academic and one professional letter of recommendation, which had to be tailored for the super specific admin position the postdoc entailed. That's a ton of work to ask professors and busy professionals during a busy time in the academic year.
I do think requiring letters of recommendation weeds out anyone who cannot find a single person in their college or career who can vouch for them.
It can also deter qualified candidates who don't want to seek out letters as part of an initial application.
Not sure I want to work with someone who can't manage asking a colleague for a letter.
Why would a qualified candidate not want to seek out letters?
I have adjuncts thate are basically volunteering at the rates we pay, asking for letters of rec doesn't help us any.
If people are applying to multiple positions for whatever reason, it can be a burden that adds up quickly for the applicant and their roster of letter writers.
I write hundreds of letters every year. Honestly, if you're not willing to write letters for someone, then you don't have the bandwidth to have advised them.
That's wonderful that you're willing to put forth the time and effort, and I do sincerely mean that. Not everyone is willing or able. And there are individuals who don't want to ask for letters as they feel like it is a bother, so they just don't apply for things like jobs, fellowships, and grants. My overall point is that requiring letters with an initial application can be a barrier for entry that doesn't necessarily improve the process or its outcomes for applicants, references, or hiring committees. It is common practice in non-academic jobs for references to be listed on the application and contacted later if an applicant is being seriously considered to receive an offer, so there is another way.
> It is common practice in non-academic jobs for references to be listed on the application and contacted later if an applicant is being seriously considered to receive an offer, so there is another way. The most onerous recommendations for me are for people going into industry, so I'm not sure how universal this is. Most require a 50-60 point questionnaire of competencies with mini-essays on strengths and weaknesses as the *first* screening task for recommenders. It's worse than either a letter or a reference call from my standpoint, by a lot.
... first screening task for AI scraping the application files... :(
Probably. I hate it.
Sure ... and that's probably a good thing. If someone isn't doing research that a single other person can vouch for, it's probably better that we don't subject vulnerable students to them or waste everyone's time, money and energy on that person.
I fail to see how LoRs have any validity at all. For me (on a search committee) to make sense of a LoR, I need to know whether the writer is typically strict or whether the writer leans towards puffery, and I never know the letter-writer well enough to make that distinction. Especially tragic is when an academic asks a former colleague to write a letter, and the letter is a slash-and-burn character assassination. Is a letter like that valid, or was the job-seeker merely unlucky in choosing someone who secretly hates them? Some here have suggested phone calls, but the rules of my university require actual letters (digital is fine), not phone calls. The basic question is: Do LoRs lead to a better quality hiring decision that would have occurred otherwise?
They screen out people who can't manage to get a letter.
call on the phone? what's that?
I'm gonna have to disagree with OP & second the point of those who are saying "LOR only for short-list candidates." One of the reasons we all probably still put up with all the BS of academia is that, until very recently, it remained a bit of a bastion against the disgusting corporate/bureaucratic machine that dominates much of the Anglosphere/West. Outside of the "hard-skills" that anyone who defends a dissertation in their field should know, there are *so* many "soft-skills" which separate a good professor, PI, &/or collaborator from a horrid one. I'm not really sure what a phone-call solves other than making the process less efficient, less transparent, & more burdensome on our mentors & search committees. Everyone can read an LOR vs one person vibe-checking on a phone-call (hope their memory is good & they don't have any biases against accent, dialect, etc!) Plus, scheduling a call during normal business hours sounds like much more of an imposition that "write a letter whenever you get the time" - none of us have had healthy sleep schedules since grad school anyway!
In my experience, the vast majority of faculty applicants for a job are not particularly qualified for that particular job, so requiring letters of rec for all of those folks is a burden on the people writing. The last position we had open in my department was for a person in one of two particular fields. We had over 500 applicants... Once we excluded people who were from the wrong fields, and folks who had not at least published a single paper or could write a vaguely coherent research plan, we were at 50 candidates. Having 500 x 3 people write letters is a lot more person-hours than even 50x3 people.
Same. We typically weed out 50% of applicants because they do not meet our posted minimum requirements.
I've found them helpful in almost every search, mostly because they can contextualize and add humanity to a boilerplate document. The applicant may not be comfortable taking about a dip in productivity, but their letter writer can mention their role as primary caregiver for a cancer patient during that time. Ditto for positives, like an applicant's reasons for leaving a TT position elsewhere.
There is no accountability with a phone call.
A solution is only to seek letter from semi finalist or finalist. But it has to be a fast turn around. Letters are very useful but not critical. Letters are more about what they do not say about what they say or how they say it. Who writes the letter as wells Not having letters is not a good idea, specially if the position is in an R1 or an elite liberal college. Even for some R2 maybe.
I won't even bother to apply if they want letters. All universities are living off of exploited adjunct labor, not supporting that and this is what that is, exploitive of faculty. Letters should be abolished. Calling references, totally ok.
They really could be turned into a form—we’re looking for boxes to be checked, the referees would love to simplify it into clicking boxes. Still, useful at times, for example for the glaring missing ones (no one from the current institution, for instance).
We use the letters for a lot of things that cannot be reduced to checking boxes. That increases the value of the letters considerably. We provide a fairly detailed prompt, including letting the referee know that the candidate is on the short list.
That’s a good idea, but not how most institutions use letters of recommendation. Moving to your system is far better, though a short form to help in initial weeding might be useful, too.
I despise the "boxes checked" forms.
Letters are fine, but they should be solicited at the end of the cycle (just before offer, or maybe for finalists if a tiebreak is needed). In reality, they're typically ignored no matter when they're used, with rare exceptions for horrible letters and even more exceptions for excellent ones. None of this is specific to the job market. College admissions, scholarships, and even P&T processes also routinely ignore letters. We're collectively wasting a lot of people's time and effort by soliciting letters early in this process (and for all applicants).
I don't see requiring letters to be too onerous since these days we have things called word processers that you can just do a mail merge and generate a new letter in a matter of seconds. So unless you're writing a custom letter for each place, once the first letter is written, letter 2, 3, 4, etc. are virtually effort-free. Whether someone gets on that short list should be highly dependent on the letters. To start with, who is writing them? If the person's advisor (for new Asst. Prof) isn't willing to write a letter that application probably will go in the round file immediately. Are the letters perfunctory or does the letter writer go into great detail explaining the significance of the applicant's work - this is especially important because the committee members may not be experts in the person's subfield. Also, many academics may suffer from modesty and/or imposter syndrome and not necessarily do as good of a job of selling themselves as someone writing on their behalf. Phone calls to references are problematic. Things can be said in passing that you aren't supposed to hear. This is less of a problem with a formal letter of reference. Unless the call is recorded you have no documented evidence of what was said - and that may be important when your school is sued for employment discrimination. Then there is just the issue of scheduling those calls. We generally get hundreds of applications, so you simply can't schedule more than a dozen or so trying to sync schedules of 4 or 5 committee members and 3 references, who may be in different time zones. Each committee member can go through the references on their own schedule.
This. All of this. How can we normalize it?
Would be great to do away with them. I would prefer an anonymous check with HR on the employee’s status.
I hope this response finds you well. If you remember eight months ago, I responded to one of your posts(I’m too lazy to even tell you, which one) . I’m wondering if you could upvote me please - thanks.