Several weeks ago, Daily Nous hosted a discussion on the distribution of graduate student service work and whether such work should receive compensation. This led to some further online discussion about whether and to what extent service plays a role in how job-candidates for academic jobs are evaluated. Does a candidate's service experience and overall service record (to their department, university, community, or the profession) play a role in hiring? Do individual search committee members take service into account when evaluating job-candidates (viz. who to interview or extend an offer to)? Do search committees take service into account in their collective deliberations?
Because I think job-candidates might benefit from getting clearer answers to this question, I decided to put together this informal five question survey for people who have served on search-committees to fill out. To be clear, this isn't a formal study, but rather just an informal poll to hopefully gather some helpful information. I am well aware of methodological issues with open polls like these, but am optimistic that some information here might be better than the status quo. Please fill out the poll only if you have served on at least one search committee–and please do not fill out the poll more than once. Although I may report results of the survey here, all individual responses will be kept confidential. The poll also ends with an optional item requesting respondents' email addresses (in order to give me at least some indication that the poll is being filled out by people in the discipline who have plausibly served on the search committees), but this item is entirely optional. Hopefully, I'll have some data to report back on next week!
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