Sorry - I wanted to expand on this a slight bit. I've done more than my
share of participating in search committees (besides the Nomcom). In
pretty much every case, the committee eliminated some proposed
candidates prior to the interview process. And in fact, at least a few
of these kept candidates through that on the written record should have
been rejected, and that became immediately obvious once the interview
started.
I also wanted to ask - who was the person or persons you're referring
when you say "we were told"? Ideally, if this were the case, it would
make it into the nomcom process document rather than being anecdotal.
/msj/
On 3/21/2025 5:25 PM, Michael StJohns wrote:
On 3/21/2025 7:45 AM, Eliot Lear wrote:
I agree with you that the NOMCOM is not required by the RFC to
interview every candidate. However, we were told that one reason to
do so was that doing the cut of who we interview might actually take
more time off the calendar than actually doing every interview
because one needs a an agreed process for the cut, and it would
contract the timelines for both questionnaire responses and community
feedback.
Hi Eliot -
I find the above... sorry - a specious argument. The criteria for
"fail fast" in selecting people is something that can and should be
done before you ever send out the "please volunteer" notices. Then the
only argument is whether or not some candidate meets those criteria,
and the obvious answer if there's enough of a push back on someone not
qualifying (by one or members of the nomcom voting group) is to move
them to the "we're going to interview you" queue.
But - YMMV....
Best, Mike
