Betteridge’s Law of Headlines applies. For the details, read on.
A “failed” faculty job search is one that doesn’t result in hiring someone who shows up on campus and starts doing the job. In North America, somewhere between 8-25% of tenure-track ecology faculty job searches fail.
Sometimes, a failed search will be re-advertised again the following year. At least some ecology faculty job seekers care whether a search is a re-advertisement of a failed search. As of this writing (Sept. 23, 2024), I count 19 tenure-track faculty jobs on ecoevojobs.net for which someone has speculated, or stated, that it might be, or is, a redo of a failed search.
Which raises two questions. First, as a faculty job applicant, can you tell if a search is a redo of a failed search? Because if you can’t tell, then there’s obviously no point in worrying about it. Second, assuming that you can tell, should you care?
The answer to the first question is no. As an outsider, it’s very difficult to tell if a search is a redo of a failed search. That’s for two reasons. First, it’s pretty common for a department to run a search that’s similar to a recent successful search. Departments do this for all sorts of reasons. They just had multiple retirements from the same subfield. They want to build strength in depth in a specific subfield. Etc. So you can’t assume that just because a department’s search this year is similar to a search they ran last year, that last year’s search must’ve failed and this year’s search must be a redo. Second, it’s pretty common for faculty job applicants to misremember exactly what searches a department has run recently, and to be ignorant of whether those recent searches failed or not. Thereby putting faculty job applicants in a poor position to identify which searches are redoing failed searches. Which is why, when I looked at those 19 ads on ecoevojobs.net that somebody thinks might be, or definitely are, redoing failed searches, I found that at least 7/19 definitely aren’t. You can tell because of comments like (paraphrasing) “Search committee member here. This is not a rerun of a failed search. Last year’s search for an animal physiologist was successful, this year we’re hiring a plant physiologist.” 7/19 is a lower bound on the Type I error rate of ecoevojobs.net commenters, because it’s possible that some of the other 12/19 aren’t reruns of failed searches either. And of course, it’s also possible that there are some searches that are reruns of failed searches, but haven’t been identified as such by ecoevojobs.net commenters. Just because you make a lot of Type I errors doesn’t mean you don’t also make some Type II errors.
The answer to the second question–as an applicant, should you care if a faculty search is a redo of a failed search–also is no. At least, in most cases. Let’s run through all the reasons why you might care, and shoot most of them down:
- Idle curiosity. Honestly, this is the best reason for a faculty job applicant to care whether or not a search is a redo of a failed search from last year. You’re just curious, but not in a way that matters. Learning that the position is, or isn’t, a redo of a failed search won’t affect whether you apply. All it’ll do is satisfy your idle curiosity.
- Detecting a toxic/dysfunctional/undesirable department that’s not worth applying to. As an applicant, you might worry that, if a department is redoing a failed search, that’s a sign that there’s something seriously wrong with the department, so that you should avoid applying. Maybe it’s riven by infighting, and so can’t agree on who to hire. Maybe it’s so toxic that everyone who interviews declines the offers they receive. Maybe the position pays so badly that the department has been struggling for years to get anyone to take it. Etc. This is a bad reason to care about failed searches, because searches fail for many reasons, the most common of which do not indicate anything bad about the hiring department. By far the most common reason for a search to fail is that the position was offered to someone who declined the (perfectly good) offer in favor of one they personally preferred more. The mere fact that somebody turned down an offer from department X in favor of an offer from department Y does not tell you anything about department X.
- Detecting a position that’s not worth applying for, because you applied for the same position last year and didn’t get it. As an applicant, if you apply unsuccessfully for a position, and then the department re-advertises the same position, it’s natural to assume that it’s not worth your while to apply. The department already declined your application last year, why would they do any differently this year? The answer is: for many reasons! In all likelihood, your cv and application packet will be different than they were last year. You probably have more publications, more conference presentations, revised research and teaching statements, etc. Second, the applicant pool will be different than last year. Some of the applicants whom the department preferred over you last year won’t apply again, whether because they took other faculty positions, or their preferences changed, or they assume (incorrectly!) that they shouldn’t bother applying again because they also were turned down last year. (And of course, some people who didn’t apply last year will apply this year.) Third, the search committee’s membership might be different, and even if it’s not they might have altered their “search image” a bit. No department wants a search to fail multiple times, because at that point there’s a serious risk they won’t be allowed to search again. So if they’re redoing a search, they might well adjust what they’re looking for, in order to maximize the odds of a successful search. So as an applicant, do not assume that just because you didn’t get the job last year, that it’s not worth your while to re-apply this year.
- Other reasons that I can imagine, but that I’m not going to list because they seem like obviously bad reasons to me. But if you want to list them in the comments, go ahead. Maybe someone can even identify a good reason to care, that I haven’t thought of.
In summary: as an ecology faculty job applicant, you can’t tell with any reliability which searches are the rare reruns of failed searches, at least not from reading the ad and ecoevojobs.net comments. And even if you could tell, you’d have no reason to care besides idle curiosity. Merely knowing that a search failed last year doesn’t give you any information, because searches fail for many reasons.The fact that a search failed last year doesn’t tell you anything about the hiring department, or about how the hiring department would evaluate an application from you this year.
As a faculty job applicant, I hope you find this post useful. I can’t promise it’ll make you any less stressed or anxious. But hopefully it’ll at least help you avoid misdirected stress or anxiety. You have enough to worry about, without worrying about whether or not search X is a redo of a failed search.