As you know, many of us could get better paying jobs outside of the academy…so why to we stay in the ivory tower?

1) we love what we do (be it teaching or pursuing OUR OWN [as opposed to a corporate] research agenda or both)
2) quality of life. As one of my colleagues says…we get paid in “time” and the control thereof. Another aspect of quality of life, however, is, “Will this person make my world a more unpleasant place if I bring her/him into it?” If the answer is yes: no job offer.

This became an issue in each of our last two searches.

Personally, I am OK with this “nebulous” criterion. Someone that makes everyone around them miserable is impeding on everyone’s ability to do their job, and serve their students and institution, to the utmost.

…my $.02 on “fit”...

I’d agree that fit tends to be important and that no one wants an annoying or prima donna co-worker. But the problem can be that some faculty are made ‘uncomfortable’ by anyone not like them…which could mean that some faculty members are ‘uncomfortable’ around certain types of women, people of color, or other minority groups. So when our colleagues talk about ‘fit’ we have to be careful that they don’t really mean they want to hire ‘someone like me.’

I’m a little bit wary of the finding that conference papers and presentations don’t mean anything. I’d like to see a poli sci professor who got a job who had NO papers or presentations on the vita. While I’m sure it’s not the be all and end all, the absence of such would probably be a disqualifying factor except in the smallest of departments.

bryan: They said that basically conference papers/presentations are necessary to get publications and develop fodder for recommendations, as well as the all-important networking. It’s not a non-factor, just a really low-ranking one.

And, since everybody has them (the rejection rate for paper proposals in political science at conferences other than APSA is asymptotically close to zero, unless you’ve done something to piss someone off), it’s just not a differentiating factor except in the limiting case.

chris,
i’ll comment more when i see it, but conference presentations demonstrate professional engagement with the discipline.

where i teach right now, there is a lot of concern that people want to come here simply to think great thoughts and teach their courses, doing little else.

i’m not interested in you if that is the only reason you’re interested in us. i need a colleague, not someone who checks out every winter break and summer. and conference involvement is one signal of that.

the other thing you have to consider is how helpful the information in the folder is. teaching? how can we define that elusive quantity? Even some of the lower ranked criteria may actually matter more because they are identifiable and countable.

See, this is what I get for talking about something that’s not freely available online! (APSA members can read it online via MyAPSA, though; I doubt any link I posted would work for anyone but me.)

I think there are some worthwhile caveats: first, it was a survey of department chairs, who may or may not be “hands on” in searches on a regular basis; second, the typical mail survey issues are here (low response rate, relatively small “n”); and third, chairs may have been saying what they thought search committees ought to value versus what they value in practice—for example, I don’t buy at all that program reputation matters less at national universities than liberal arts colleges, even if chairs at those departments swear otherwise.