The Search Committees

Uff. I think I read about 60 applications for a professorship today. Around here we don't really "search", we put an ad in the paper and wait for people to respond. Since the school is currently filling 10 positions (!) most of us are on 2 or 3 search committees, as there have to be 5 professors on each.

Sifting through the applications I wonder what goes through people's heads when they prepare an application. One guy writes that he will build up an exciting PhD program. Except we are not a PhD-graning institution....

Two other guys applied to 5 or 6 of the 10 positions currently open. Nothing like just taking all the chances you can, but the chances of one genius being able to teach programming, databases, mobile applications and business applications is quite slim. At least one guy submitted as many copies of his CV as applications. The other guy felt, that if we really wanted to know more about him, we could print out his CV files, which are stuffed in a big .zip file. Well, we can't be bothered, luckily, we can do this voting by email.

People put together the craziest applications in strange structures, forcing you to dig for important information. Spelling checkers sometimes seem to be a high-priced option seldom used. One guy stapled 3-4 pages for each topic together and put it in a file in Postscript format, whaich I couldn't read. We got this sorted out, but it is a pain.

Luckily, we have enough people so that we can decide who we want to invite in just a few weeks. Hope the applicants don't already have lots of job offers, the market seems to be booming.