As someone who was on the job-market for seven years, I really appreciate the concerns expressed by some commenters at this Daily Nous thread about how much of a gauntlet the academic job market has become, especially as first-round APA interviews have increasingly been replaced by telephone and Skype interviews.
In the old days (the days of APA interviews), things were bad enough. It cost a ton of money to fly to the Eastern APA for interviews, and once there, it was an absolute pressure-cooker, with hundreds of job-marketeers crammed into hotels (and elevators!), running from interview to interview, and jockeying for position at the infamous APA "Smoker" (i.e. reception). It was pretty terrible. Now, however, APA interviews are mostly a thing of the past. Only a few dozen schools interviewed at the Eastern last year, and it was frankly kind of a ghost town.
Is this a good thing? In one sense, it seems so: it doesn't require candidates to shell out thousands of dollars anymore (per year on the market, mind you!) to attend a conference for an interview or two. At the same time, as Justin C and others at the Daily Nous thread point out, the move to telephone and Skype interviews has arguably made things far worse for job-candidates in other respects. In particular, it dramatically extends the time and stressfulness of the market. Instead of enabling candidate to shove all of their interviewing stresses into a few weeks in December (leading up to the APA), the "new job-market" consists in a more or less unending gauntlet of applications, first-round interviews, and so on. Now, one can have first-round interviews in September all the way through early Spring of the next year. It can be frankly exhausting and nerve-wracking, and constantly interfere with one's ability to do other things (research, teach, etc.).
I know, I know, "first-world problems." But, as many people have pointed out, academic job-marketeers are already in very vulnerable (and in some cases exploitative) conditions. Which, to me at least, raises the question: is the gauntlet of first-round interviews necessary? Indeed, as Justin C suggests, why don't more programs just do away with first-round Skype or telephone interviews and go straight to on-campus interviews? I've not only heard that a few programs already do this successfully. Given the abundance of empirical data indicating that interviews are generally worse than useless–being worse predictors of job-success than purely algorithmic processes, in large part by introducing all kinds of performance-irrelevant forms of bias into the hiring process–wouldn't it be better for everyone (for hiring committees and job-candidates) to simply go straight to fly-outs?
First, it would likely be better for hiring-committees. It's not only the empirical literature which calls into question the predictive validity of 30-60 minute interviews. Anyone who has actually done interviews knows just how artificial and arbitrary they tend to be. One can prepare identically for a dozen interviews, ace six of them, and bomb the other six. We're trained to be researchers and teachers, not interviewers. At least on-campus visits, with research and teaching demos, approximate real-world job-performance (something which empirical literature suggests is useful in hiring).
Second, such a system would probably be far better for job-candidates. The first-round-interview gauntlet is, in my own experience, the worst part of the job-market. It's a seemingly never-ending process of preparing for interviews, having some of them go well, others of them humiliating badly, waiting to hear the results of the interview (whether you receive an on-campus), and so on.
I expect there are those out there–committee members (and candidates?)–who might want to defend first-round interviews. Indeed, the empirical literature on candidate selection (see here) shows that people consistently think human interviewers are better at selecting candidates than algorithmic processes, even though studies consistently show the opposite ("everyone thinks they have the magic eye for candidates", as it were, even though empirical studies suggest no one has a magic eye!).
In any case, I would be curious to hear from any search-committee members or candidates that have participated in a straight-to-on-campus approach. If there are any of you out there, did you find it a better alternative? Did it streamline the process? Did it result in a successful hire? I hope there are some readers out there with experience who can chime in, as it would be great to hear the advantages and/or drawbacks from those who have actually tried it!
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