Hiring for Inclusion, Retention, and Engagement

Search committees usually rely on advertising to spread the word about faculty positions. Networking, however, is a more effective method to reach a broader spectrum of candidates. Research tells us that whether we are white, Black, male, female, Asian, Latine, LGBTQ+, etc., most of us tend to have personal and professional networks that look like us. In fact, research tells us that people tend to recommend jobs to folks much like themselves. So, if we want to reach a more diverse pool of applicants, our methods of recruitment must also be diverse.

While networking is technically a recruitment technique, Lee (2019a)^ defines it as a sourcing methodology. For the purpose of inclusive recruitment, networking is an umbrella term that covers strategies such as social media, outreach, advertising, and active and targeted recruitment. To be successful in your inclusive recruitment strategy, you must use a multi-pronged approach. For example, you can use social media to expand and maintain your professional network through LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter/X. If you have a social or professional network and it’s not as diverse as you would like it to be, you can enhance its diversity through outreach. Outreach helps us build bridges with diverse communities so they know who we are. Through outreach, you can develop a relationship with a broad range of people and when a job opportunity comes up, you can reach out and let them know about it, whether it involves inviting some of them to apply for jobs or ask them to spread the word about a position you have available. As a recruitment technique, networking helps you build a web of relationships with people who have similar interests and backgrounds, but with whom you may not usually connect because they are in cultural groups different from yours. Attending sessions focusing on inclusion or diversity in your academic organization is an easy way to expand your professional network with diverse folks in your discipline. Advertising—one of the most commonly used recruitment strategies in higher education—involves posting the job announcement in job boards or newspapers, hoping that some members from diverse groups will apply. This is a passive process and does not always attract the most diverse pool of applicants. Recruitment, on the other hand, is an active process and involves finding candidates who may or may not be looking for a job and letting them know there may be some jobs at your institution now or down the line.  The benefit of using outreach and recruitment is that if you identify an outstanding candidate and they apply for your position, you won’t be competing with other institutions since it is likely they were not actively seeking a new job. 

A comprehensive recruitment strategy should include all these methods—outreach, networking, advertising, and recruitment. It’s important to note that advertising and recruitment take place during the search for a candidate while networking and outreach will happen throughout an extended period of time and seeks to develop relationships with colleagues and share information about our university, department, etc.  

Another important advantage of networking is that it can involve a lot of people. If everyone in your department is willing to take an active role in cultivating relationships with people from diverse groups at conferences, for instance, over time your department could develop a strong network of colleagues that can either be invited to apply for positions or be asked to share advertisements with their respective diverse networks. This approach can be quite powerful and effective.   

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^ Lee, C. (2019a). 2nd edition. Search Committee. Virginia: Stylus. 

Building an inclusive relationship network requires that you be always on the lookout for exceptional talent, not just when you have a position available. Essentially, it means viewing recruitment as a long-term strategy.

Here are a few more tips to identify outstanding diverse candidates:  

• Explore your journals and conference proceedings and identify diverse scholars who may contribute to the mission/vision of your LAU  

• Identify scholars who are asking new/innovative questions in your discipline or at the intersection of more than one discipline  

• Invite a faculty member from another university to give a brown-bag talk or be a part of a symposium or panel you are organizing 

• Write a faculty member a note praising their research and asking to chat about their work  

• It is illegal to recruit/hire candidates only based on their race or gender.  
   
• It is legal to use recruitment strategies to increase the diversity and inclusivity of your candidate pool. 
   
• The strategies shared here are meant to identify diverse qualified candidates.

• As a part of George Mason's central Human Resources, Talent Acquisition can do a certification of your applicant pool and help you ascertain how diverse your applicants are before the position closes.
   
• Ideal: Include this step in your timeline. It only takes about 24-48 hours to get the results.
   
• If needed, you can conduct additional outreach to attract a more diverse pool of candidates before the position closes. 

At George Mason, we engage in inclusive hiring because a diverse faculty can provide positive role models and mentors for our diverse student body. Moreover, hiring a diverse faculty provides access to talent we currently lack, and these diverse faculty may ask up-to-now unasked research questions that can attract external funding and meaningfully contribute to our R1 status. 

Numerous studies suggest that implicit biases can impact many areas of the hiring process. For example, studies show that there is bias when we evaluate CVs, job credentials, and letters of recommendation, and when we make decisions about hiring and pay levels. Despite our aspiration that we, as scholars, can be objective, extensive research shows that our experiences and cultural history impact and shape our evaluation and judgment of others.  

When it comes to recruitment and decision-making, experts are especially subject to fallacies. For instance, we all know that selecting a new colleague is difficult. How do we predict, on the basis of limited evidence, who will contribute most meaningfully over the span of a 20+ year career? And how do we compare candidates in very different specialties, or at different stages of their careers? In the book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, the author explains the two systems that drive the way we think and make choices. One system is fast, intuitive, and emotional; the other is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. Thinking fast often leads us to make snap judgments, jump to conclusions, and make erroneous decisions based on biases and heuristics. An example of a cognitive bias is the anchoring effect. This is a bias that describes the common human tendency to rely too heavily on the first piece of information offered. Once an anchor is set, there is a bias toward interpreting other information around the anchor. In the evaluation of faculty by a search committee, an anchor may be graduating from a prestigious university or program.

Another way to think fast involves schemas. Schemas are cognitive frameworks or concepts that help us organize and interpret information. They allow rapid, but sometimes inaccurate, processing of information and often conflict with consciously held or “explicit” attitudes. Research tells us that many of the elements that lead us to rely on schemas—such as stress from competing tasks, time pressure, and ambiguity/incomplete information—are present in search committee work. The most compelling reason to understand schemas and reflect on our unconscious bias is that they can and do influence decision-making. Fortunately, we can change the way we think and interpret information by becoming more aware of how our brains work, which can help us improve the way we interpret information. 

Other areas where researchers have found implicit bias include names of applicants, parental status, gender, race, and sexual orientation. For instance, applicants with white-sounding names receive more calls for interviews than Black-sounding names; and when it comes to experience, Black applicants need eight more years of experience to reach parity with white candidates. In the case of gender, mothers are usually rated as less competent and less committed to their work than fathers, while fathers are rated as more committed to their work than non-fathers. Fathers are also offered higher salaries than non-fathers.  

Why does this matter? Bias can affect how job and grant applicants are evaluated. Some scholars also argue that bias extends to citation patterns based on gender, although the reasons for the bias cannot be explained away in a simple manner. It’s heartening, however, that some universities are testing masking the identity of applicants as a way to reduce the biases associated with names, race, gender, etc.

In terms of search committees, a recent study found that the composition of a search committee matters a great deal. Women search committee chairs and greater percentages of women on search committees resulted in 23% more women applicants. Search committee chairs from underrepresented minority (URM) groups and a greater percentage of URM members on search committees resulted in 100% more URM applicants. The reason behind these numbers is that women and URMs actively reach out to a more diverse set of potential applicants, whereas men and non-URMs’ behavior tends to maintain the status quo. 

Department chairs could share the resources and research listed on this website, encourage the search committee to have a discussion about implicit bias prior to start evaluating the applications, and actively encourage committee members to discuss potential evaluation biases in a candid manner. Other best practices include: (1) Discussing and defining evaluation categories and criteria in advance and using a matrix throughout the process; (2) Reading candidate dossiers carefully, making sure committee members avoid the rushed review of final files; (3) Making evidence of job-relevant qualifications central to candidate deliberations; (4) Being willing to review applicants that received mixed reviews from committee members and candidly discuss why they were assessed that way; and (5) Commit to intervening if the committee strays from this process. 

Consider carefully how letters of recommendation influence your decisions and acknowledge that there are pros and cons to letters of recommendation.  

Pros of letters of recommendation: (1) Can point out the strengths of candidates; (2) Can identify the candidate’s role in shaping the direction of a project and working with collaborators, etc.; (3) Can highlight candidate’s accomplishments that do not easily fit on a CV (e.g., wrote a key part of a successful proposal that the advisor submitted); (4) Can be a useful measure of a candidate’s abilities and potential when written by people who know them best.  

Cons of letters of recommendation: (1) Letter writer’s biases color what is (or not) written; (2) May focus on information irrelevant to the job and can be potentially harmful to the candidate; (3) Sometimes they may be written by candidates themselves. 

Schemas and letters of recommendation: When serving in a search committee or writing letters of recommendation for students, consider using a gender bias calculator and keep in mind that letters for men tend to be longer with repetition of standout adjectives (outstanding, excellent, brilliant, etc.). They also make more references to CVs, publications, and patents. Letters for women, on the other hand, tend to be shorter and use “grindstone” adjectives (conscientious, meticulous, hard-working). Some letters make inappropriate references to personal life and raise doubts about the candidates (hedges, faint praise, and irrelevancies). Finally, letters for Black candidates tend to highlight their mere competence and are shorter than letters for white candidates.  

Don't just skim! Track trajectories, evidence of reflection about pedagogy, curricular innovation, and commitment to engage students of diverse backgrounds at a variety of levels, and ask how the candidate can broaden and reinforce your unit’s teaching mission. While we know from research that class evaluations are not the most accurate way to assess teaching effectiveness, some faculty and administrators still focus on class teaching scores at the exclusion of other important measures of teaching effectiveness. This is especially important if you are dealing with candidates from underrepresented groups, who tend to be more harshly evaluated by students.

When you invite candidates to visit the campus, (1) Provide a welcoming environment and (2) Ensure that all candidates get information about family-friendly policies from HR or some other appropriate source—e.g., deans/department chairs or HR—not from the search committee. In fact, schedule a meeting between candidates and HR or an HR liaison, so they can ask questions without concern for privacy violations. 

Provide a welcoming environment: (1) Provide information well ahead of the visit regarding schedule, expectations, audience, Q&A culture, etc.; (2) Anticipate that the candidate may have particular needs around the visit (accessibility, diet, etc.); (3) Identify a host who can set the proper tone for each activity or event; (4) Treat all applicants as valuable scholars and educators, not as representatives of a social group; and (5) Avoid or mitigate the effects of solo status, where the candidate is the only person from a specific identity group. 

Encourage circumstances that will allow everyone to see the candidate at their best: (1) Ask the candidate whom they would like to meet; (2) Ensure that all candidates meet a diverse set of people, including graduate and undergraduate students; (3) Provide a thoughtful introduction at the research presentation/seminar, stressing the candidate’s expertise and work to maximize attendance; and (4) Give candidates enough time to discuss past accomplishments and future vision.  

• Talks and interviews provide important evidence for making your decision, but details can fade very fast. It is a good practice to fill out candidate evaluation tools immediately after each interview with the candidate.
   
• Consider having a short meeting immediately after each interview and use a shareable document where all the committee members can enter their comments. This will help the committee gather and digest feedback throughout the process and can be used to enrich and inform deliberations.

• Do not request ranked lists. Aim first for an unranked list of candidates.
   
• Don’t focus on the person’s ‘fit.’ Rather, focus on the criteria you identified at the start of the search. Fit is usually code for “are they like us?” 
   
• Consider seeking a certification of the diversity of the applicant pool. The HR Talent Acquisition team offers this service and it only takes 24 to 36 hours. Ideally, you can build this time into your search’s timeline and request it before the position closes. This will give you time to do additional outreach to catch the attention of excellent applicants you may have missed.

When it comes to the tenure and promotion (T&P) process, research tells us that faculty from historically underrepresented minoritized groups (URMs) experience 7% higher negative vote and are 44% less likely to receive a unanimous vote at the college. In fact, URMs often experience shifting standards in how they are judged during T&P relative to majority group members. Moreover, women faculty experience intersectional challenges—e.g., gender and racial bias.+ 

The Office of Faculty Affairs and Development has developed a workshop that reviews research related to the ways implicit bias and institutional practices can impact the T&P process. 

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+ This material was presented at a workshop titled “How do we Advance Sustainable and Equitable Practices in University Promotion and Tenure?” Lessons from seven Years of Data Within a 10-Institution Consortium,” 2024 ADVANCE Equity in STEM Community Convening, June 2-5, Baltimore, Maryland. Explore the Consortium's website for more information.