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Can a candidate look ‘too good’ for a job?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

A question I've been having recently is whether you can seem "too good" for a job in a way that raises red flags for the committee. (Of course, we applicants don't think this; we just want a job and would happily work at your institution! So really this is a question about the attitudes of the hiring committee).

To say a bit more, I don't quite mean "too good" in the flight-risk sense, though that certainly is related; I mean more in the "this person is from a different culture of philosophy, and probably won't 'get us' or be happy here" sense. I wonder if this is especially true for those trained at high-to-middle ranked Leiter R1s, but who wind up getting lots of interviews at smaller schools with faculty who are not from that world, but are instead from the world where you could get a job with, shall we say, a CV that looks much different than how it must look today for us on the market to even get an interview.

If this is a real phenomenon, what can candidates do about it? (And, again, let's assume they express genuine interest in the interview, are not intentionally coming off as pretentious, etc.).

Excellent questions. What do readers think?

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17 responses to “Can a candidate look ‘too good’ for a job?”

  1. Nick Byrd

    Candidates were perceived as “too good” (beyond “flight risk”) for search committees I’ve experienced when they signaled expectations of (or else being accustomed to) resources that simply aren’t available at the hiring institution:
    – big startup or other (internal) funds
    – access to lots of student/postdoc. assistants (for teaching and/or research)
    – a student body that would be interested in what they do (e.g., offering only armchair methods at a tech./STEM school)
    – physical space beyond a one-room office
    – efficient bureaucracy (e.g., IRB)
    – reliance on expensive and/or scarce tech. (e.g., classroom VR, high-performance compute, neuroimaging)
    Candidates were perceived as more likely to be happy at the hiring institution insofar as candidates research program and teaching habits were more flexible, lean, self-sustaining, and broadly appealing—all else equal.
    Caveats:
    (a) I’ve relatively little search committee experience.
    (b) Some of my search committee experience is in philosophy and some is in social science.
    (c) Many of the “too good” indicators I listed are less common among armchair philosophers, but as computational and scientific methods overtake armchair approaches (Knobe 2015), such indicators may become commonplace even in philosophy searches.
    Knobe, J. (2015). Philosophers are doing something different now: Quantitative data. Cognition, 135, 36–38. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2014.11.011

    Reply
  2. Lots of interviews, no job

    This is more of a comment on getting one’s foot in the door–that is, getting an interview–and not so much about getting an offer. So, I guess it might not really answer OP’s questions. But, this year has been my first time on the market. I’m coming out of a program in Leiter 20s, with plenty of pubs and strong recommendations from famous philosophers. My guess is that some small schools might see me as ‘too fancy.’ Reflecting on my own (limited) experience, I think you can at least get interviews at schools with a culture different than one’s fancy PhD granting culture. It’s just going to take some sort of connection.
    For instance, my undergrad was at a small, teaching-focused religious institution. I focus on this, and how formative it was for me, in my cover letter. I’ve gotten interviews from similar places, even though I’m confident that these places have never seriously considered an applicant from my PhD granting institution.
    I also think fit will come into play. I work on core areas of philosophy, and have a broad training in the history of philosophy. I think current faculty at smaller schools, especially religious ones, see this as an indication that I am “like them.” At least insofar as I focus on the topics they care about, or approach philosophy in a manner similar to how they do.

    Reply
  3. Top candidate, but still rejected

    I have defended my PhD recently and I have dozens of publications and other merits. I am currently in a postdoc position, but I have applied for other postdoc positions as well and not being shortlisted even. My guess is that many professors hire postdocs who do not have many publications, but who work (only) on the very narrow topic of the project. Thus they might reject an applicant with more publications (even someone with many publications on the exact topic of the project), thinking such a candidates real research interests are elsewhere because they have published on other topics as well…
    Also, having a more impressive CV than the person who is hiring might be a problem for some…
    But these are just just my guesses.

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  4. SLAC SC member

    There have been people who were in some senses too good for our department, and who didn’t get the offer (or an interview), but so far it’s been for some of the following reasons:
    -flight risk
    -no clear interest in the job (e.g., lazy cover letter)
    -poor campus visit (usually in the form of less-than-stellar teaching)
    My department recently brought a very impressive candidate to the campus of our less-than-impressive SLAC. They were second in the final vote, and it was the teaching that made the difference. From the outside, however, one might wonder if they were “too good”. In one sense, yes: they were impressive and could do much better. But it’s not why they didn’t get the job.

    Reply
  5. Small State Assoc. Prof.

    Yes, this can happen. It happened in my department. We’re a small state school with many students that struggle academically. We ran a search (not for philosophy, but another discipline in our multi-discipline department). One finalist was from BIG NAME STATE and will be a solid researcher. Another was from NONAME STATE, has a minimal research profile, but is much more relatable to our students. We hired the latter. The former was too good.

    Reply
  6. you do have to really want it tho

    Yeah it happens. In our recent search we discussed people who were “clearly out of our league” specifically in those terms — not that they were flight risk per se, but we thought they’d surely get better offers and so it might be a waste of money to fly them out. We ultimately decided not to take this aspect into consideration because we figured we were able to fly out a handful of candidates, and so we can afford to be turned down. I imagine that if we had a tighter budget, the scale could’ve easily tipped the other way.
    In terms of what you can do: mentioning in your cover letter why you specifically want to be there helps. Also, we don’t usually ask “why us?” in the interview, but you can still find an opportunity to say your answer.

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  7. sisyphus

    I’m probably just shouting into the void, but… as a job seeker who might look “too good” for certain jobs (I come from a Leiter unranked program, but I have a lot of good publications) please let me say: If someone every offered me a TT job, I would take it and never look back!!!! I have a family, we need health insurance and an income. I’m not sure how many other job seekers are out there who feel this way, but I’m one. I’ve been cobbling together a living, moving from one tenuous temporary position to another, while also doing adjunct work and construction gigs on the side. I sometimes wonder if search committees forget what it’s like being on the market right now.

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  8. Bill Vanderburgh

    We are a teaching institution, but a research-interested department, in a major state university system. I would not use the phrase “too good” or (lol) “too fancy”–we are looking for the best philosophers we can get. But there are some candidates from the Leiterific schools whose materials (cover letter, teaching dossier, diversity statement, etc.) make it clear that they don’t understand our kind of institution and aren’t likely to succeed here.
    Like SLAC SC said, some folks from “strong” PhD programs fail to make the cut for us because they lack teaching experience. In other cases, they lack experience with or connection to students like ours. In other cases, they simply haven’t done the work to show that they would fit in our department (or their efforts to do so are unconvincing). This isn’t necessarily about having too much interest in publishing–our department welcomes that, even if our university doesn’t really reward it much.
    We have considered many candidates from Leiterific schools, some of whom advanced to later rounds and some of whom didn’t. It is unfair to generalize, but perhaps I’d say it is typical that such candidates have good credentials, a few pubs, and good letters–but so does everyone else in the pool who is competitive. It is the rest of the file that usually makes the difference. That comes down to matching the details of the job ad, teaching experience (breadth and extent), teaching evaluations, teaching materials, areas in which they can teach (fit without excessive overlap with what we cover already), experience with diversity and students like ours, some evidence of being a good departmental citizen (service), and the ellusive “fit” (usually demonstrated in the cover letter and preliminary interview).
    To “Top Candidate” above: If you aren’t getting interviews, then are you really a top candidate? I have to admit that I would be suspicious of a recent grad with dozens of publications, especially across a number of different fields. It isn’t, as TC seems to guess, because of jealousy or not wanting to hire someone with a better cv than me (I’d be happy to do that). Rather, given how difficult it is to place papers in good journals, and how long the process typically takes for each paper, it is hard to imagine how someone could be doing high quality work at that volume so early in their career. I suppose it is possible, but I’d be looking very closely at the journals, page lengths, topics, and the quality of the writing. And in hiring, so much depends on factors besides the publication record. It might be that TC has a more than good enough publication record and now needs to start working on the other things that would improve their hire-ability.

    Reply
  9. Top candidate, but still rejected

    Bill: fair points. I work in an interdisciplinary subfield and publish mostly in specialized journals with reasonable review times (although I have published in decent general philosophy journals as well). Doing publishable philosophy is relatively easy, doing ground-breaking philosophy is super difficult. Maybe I get rejected because of the quality of my work, I don’t know, but I prefer my way (and the postdoc I got was because of my publications).
    I guess my point is that research projects nowadays have such a narrow focus and the principal investigator can use their own judgment regarding who to hire, that as a result “better” candidates might get rejected in favor of a more “suitable” candidate.

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  10. curiouss

    Bill – Could you say a little more about how a candidate can demonstrate an understanding of the kind of institution they are applying for?
    My worry here is that when I’ve tried to do this in the past, I come off vague or superficial. I’m a state school person through and through, though currently teaching at a small, private, very expensive religious SLAC. So when I apply to state school jobs I try to flag my background and also that I taught at a big state school for my Ph.D. But often I don’t know what else to say to demonstrate my fit in this regard other than something to the effect of:’I’ve been educated at places like yours and taught at places like yours, so I know the vibe and the students; I’m also first gen; yadda yadda.’ But do I really understand these students? I mean, every class is different; it just seems weird to me to say: ‘Oh, I fully know the typical big state school student; you can count on that!’
    So, yeah, how can one convince you (and others) that they understand your institution? Can the mere stating of the relevant biographical information do?

    Reply
  11. you do have to really want it tho

    Re curiouss: I’m (obviously) not Bill, but here are some thoughts. I don’t think your educational background matters all that much, to be honest. Maybe some people care about that, but not everyone does. It’s more about stuff along the lines that Nick Byrd mentioned. For example, I’ve heard of people proposing first year classes where students conduct multiple paper revisions, receiving 1-on-1 oral feedback from the instructor each round, and spend most of class time in discussion. Our first year classes have 200 people in them. While it’s okay to not have taught a 200-people class before, coming into the teaching discussion with a seminar-style syllabus just tells me that they hadn’t even bothered to read our website.
    Similarly, conversations around engaging non-majors and teaching transferable skills are always welcome, whereas starting with the assumption that most students would immediately enjoy high-level, abstract philosophical debates would make me worry about this person’s classroom.

    Reply
  12. Bill Vanderburgh

    In response to curiouss: It is tough if you are applying to dozens of jobs, but if you can dive into the details of the demographics of the institution and then say something about how you have experience with or some connection to students of those types, that helps. Our students for example, are almost all from the local region (though that can mean an hour commute for some of them), over 70% are first generation, many speak a language other than English at home, the region’s high schools are notoriously bad so our new students are often underprepared for college, a big proportion of them work and/or are caring for children or elders, only 1k or so of our 20k live on campus, large percentage on Pell grants, etc.
    If someone only has experience at highly selective institutions, they aren’t likely to have a clear idea of what our students are like, or what they need. There’s a difference between different “big state schools” too–flagships and regionals are different kettles of fish.
    Having been a student at a place that is similar in some respects does count, especially if you can say something thoughtful about how it affects your pedagogy. The approach you outlined sounds about right. Part of what this all means though, is that not every potential applicant is going to be able to come across as having equally good fit, independent of other factors.

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  13. G

    I agree with Bill. Different departments have different needs. I think “being too good” is a misleading way to think about this phenomenon. In most cases, a candidate with good records of research and teaching was not hired not because they are too good to fit but because they simply did not fit. For some departments, an excellent record of publication and an okay record are equally good–they care more about other things.
    Re curious: we only have an undergraduate program, and most of our majors work part-time to support themselves. In the past, a candidate gave them unrealistic suggestions on studying philosophy, which made the students not comfortable.

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  14. too bad

    This idea of candidates looking too good seems a bit rich to me. I was at a typical 4 year state college and we NEVER thought anyone was “too good” for us. What we found was that (i) female candidates sometimes pulled out of searches after they were lon-listed because they had too many interviews at “better” places, and (ii) some candidates from highly ranked programs either had no teaching, no publications, or no degree in hand. The latter sort were not competitive. These considerations affected our pool of candidates to be shortlisted.

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  15. A different curiosity

    @too bad: how would y’all have known that female candidates were interviewing at “better” places? Did they say where they interviewed during the first round? That seems like odd info to volunteer.

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  16. Snob Sniffer

    Yes, it’s a real phenomenon and it isn’t just about departmental needs. On some, perhaps semi-conscious, level they will worry that you take very seriously the difference between the kind of rigorous philosophy you do, and have slaved for years to make sure to do, and the less careful or clever kind they do, and will consequently regard them as unserious mediocrities. What can be done about it, I think, is be genuinely excited and impressed with them and their work, when you meet them, and show it. I say “be” impressed and lot “look” impressed because you can’t fake it with these kinds of people, for much the same reason you can’t pass off fake “Cubans” to a cigar afficionado.

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  17. too bad

    A different …
    after being long listed, and invited for a first round “remote” interview (along with approx. 9 others), they were inform us that they have other options, and will not bother with the interview with us.

    Reply

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