The below will appear in the Early Career section of the Notices of the American Mathematical Society.
The editor of the Early Career section of the AMS Notices has asked me to give advice for more senior mathematicians on the theme "How to hire a mathematician". I've told stories about hiring (interspersed with some advice) at https://numberlandadventures.blogspot.com, often of what went wrong, but sometimes of what went right. I recently read some of these stories while asking myself "what can we learn from this?" I've collected below some of what I've learned. I hope it will be useful for those who hire.
1. Write job ads that say what they mean and mean what they say.
I'm frequently contacted by people who ask me for advice about how or whom to hire, or want me to help them spread the word about their job search. They tell me what they're looking for in applicants.
Before responding, I look up the job ad and compare it to what I was told they're looking for. It's surprising how different those two can be.
My first recommendation is that job ads should say what they mean and mean what they say. The ad should give the true criteria on which you'll base your decision.
Make the criteria and hiring procedures public and clear, and stick to them.
It's not good when an "inner circle" of applicants has access to information, or to the "unwritten rules", that the rest of the applicants don’t have. The inner circle knows the real rules, and knows which rules and deadlines they can ignore and get away with. People who know people in your department or on the hiring committee, or whose advisors have friends on the faculty, shouldn't have an unfair advantage.
The "rules of the game" should also be reasonable and make sense. Sometimes, job ads are so specific that it's clear that the people who wrote it already know whom they want to hire. They're just going through the motions, following the letter of the rules but not the spirit. If you have already decided whom you want to hire, don't waste the time of other applicants by posting a job ad.
If a goal is to hire good people, try to write a job ad that gives you maximum flexibility, and doesn't needlessly tie your hands. That helps you avoid a situation where the applicant you want to hire doesn't satisfy the criteria in the job ad.
Here's a story that illustrates some of the above:
2. Advertise widely.
Don't rely on an "old boy network" of people you know (even if that's a diverse group).
3. Put together a diverse hiring committee.
There's a natural tendency (which we should all be fighting) to hire people who remind us of ourselves. We all have blind spots. While we can and should work hard to overcome our own subconscious biases, a diverse hiring committee makes it easier to hire the best people and not overlook them.
Here's a (hopefully amusing) story where a diverse hiring committee might have been helpful:
4. Choose the best applicants for the job.
When you decide to whom to make an offer, choose the best applicants, taking into account what the ad says you're looking for. This might seem obvious. But the below list includes some stories where that didn't happen, with various rationalizations that I didn't think were reasonable. (I do understand that "best" is subjective, and perhaps impossible or unreasonable to pin down. That's why it's helpful to think in advance about what your goals are, and to write an ad that helps you achieve them.) In particular, resist the temptation to base hiring decisions on guesses about the candidates' personal lives, and whether or not a candidate will take a job, or will stay.
5. Follow best practices.
Train faculty and staff in best practices for hiring. Best practices include not asking irrelevant personal questions during job interviews. And being prepared to intervene if others who haven't been trained (such as faculty spouses) ask those questions, or say or do something they shouldn't. Here are some stories that illustrate this:
6. Behave professionally, ethically and legally, and hold people accountable.
Behave professionally, not just to the applicants during their job interviews, but all through the process, to the applicants, to other faculty and staff who are involved in hiring, etc. This isn't your personal life, it's your job. Do your job professionally.
Put in place good practices and policies that make it easy for people to do the right thing, and hold people accountable when they break the rules.
At many times in our professional lives, but especially in hiring, it can be helpful to ask ourselves “Is this professional? Is this ethical? Is this legal?”
Here are some relevant stories, which could just as well have been included in the above section on choosing the best applicants:
7. Be honest.
Be honest, not just in job ads, though that too.
Most importantly, don't mislead job candidates. For example, if they are promised something during the hiring process, they have a right (possibly a legal one) to expect such promises to be honored.
Further, don't bring an applicant to your campus under false pretenses. I know of cases where applicants were told they were being invited for a job interview, and didn't learn until half-way through the visit that it wasn't actually a job interview. To get the job, they would have needed to visit again. This isn't fair to applicants who are traveling a lot for job interviews, and need to decide which trips are worth taking. I know of other cases where candidates were told at the interview that they weren't really being considered for the job they had been told they were interviewing for.
Honesty needs to extend further than just the job candidates. The people doing the hiring also need to be given accurate information, so they can deal honestly with the candidates.
Two stories:
8. Be kind.
Well, obviously we should be kind to job applicants. Early career applicants are at a vulnerable moment in their lives, and we should make them feel welcome and wanted. Going the extra distance to do or say something nice, even if it's small, can make a tremendous difference and be remembered for a long time. Negative interactions will also be remembered for a long time, possibly longer!
Perhaps less obviously, we should also be kind to our colleagues (including staff) who are involved in hiring. Some of the nastiest interactions I've seen have involved hiring. We can disagree, and disagreeing is often necessary in order for us to do our jobs well. But it's easier to do our jobs well, and our communities are better and happier places, when we argue respectfully.
These stories of welcoming and unwelcoming experiences during the hiring process might help to illustrate what I mean:
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To summarize:
1. Write job ads that say what they mean and mean what they say.
2. Advertise widely.
3. Put together a diverse hiring committee.
4. Choose the best applicants for the job.
5. Follow best practices.
6. Behave professionally, ethically and legally, and hold people accountable.
7. Be honest.
8. Be kind.
I hope that keeping these goals in mind will help our community behave professionally, fairly, legally, and kindly.
Acknowledgment: I thank David Pollack for helpful feedback.