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Departments not advertising jobs on PhilJobs?

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

Can current & past search committee members weigh-in to explain why, on occasion, a department only advertises a job on HigherEd Jobs and Chronicle and leaves it off PhilJobs? (Assuming there's reasonable guesses)

There's a job that is currently only posted on Chronicle, and has been that way for about a week. Usually at some point jobs at HigherEd Jobs & Chronicle end up on PhilJobs. So this has me wondering if they are intentionally not advertising widely…

I seem to recall noticing this in the past on occasion too. 

Do any readers have helpful insights?

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14 responses to “Departments not advertising jobs on PhilJobs?”

  1. anon

    My usual inference is that they are aiming to keep the pool smaller. Seems like a way of complying with requirements to advertise nationally, if the institution has those, while still doing it kind of badly.
    But if it’s a place that hasn’t hired in a million years, sometimes I infer that they just don’t know job posting norms.
    Also, if I recall correctly, there are some schools that can’t advertise on PhilJobs due to the nondiscrimination policy. I think some of the “faith pledge” type schools fall under this, and that it’s been discussed before in one of the philosophy blog spaces, but it’s been a while.
    (https://philjobs.org/job/nondiscrimination)

    Reply
  2. AnAnon

    I don’t know the job being referred to, so perhaps this isn’t a plausible explanation given the institution in question, but in some places the advertising is done by HR with no input from the department and they tend to ignore discipline-specific publications.

    Reply
  3. Old Dept Chair

    Budget. I chair an interdisciplinary department at a small state school. When we hire, the university will place an ad for the position on higheredjobs. If we want to also advertise it in a forum appropriate to a specific discipline (e.g. PhilJobs, APSA job board), that has to come out of our ever-dwindling department budget. We’ve always managed to do so, but it is a significant cost for us.

    Reply
  4. Anony

    It is worth noting that community college jobs are often not listed on PhilJobs, instead appearing only on these more general sites.
    Along with AnAnon above, I assume that this is because that the people running that aspect of the search are more likely to be administrators than philosophy faculty.

    Reply
  5. sc member

    Similar to AnAnon, at our SLAC the posting is not being done by our department but by some other administrative arm of the university, which seems to be much less capable of getting something through to PhilJobs than to the non-discipline-specific sites.

    Reply
  6. op

    These are helpful, thanks!

    Reply
  7. Religious SLAC Assoc. Prof.

    anon is correct wrt the PhilJobs discrimination policy, but aside from that there are other reasons that small, mission-driven institutions might choose to advertise in other venues. Posting on PhilJobs all but guarantees that depts will be flooded with all sorts of applicants, including those that have no real interest in the mission of the university (obviously can’t blame them for applying, given our market). My uni would be perfectly compliant with the discrimination policy, for example, but for our most recent hire we didn’t post on PhilJobs for the abovementioned reason or something like it.

    Reply
  8. Title VII

    Anon is correct that if the school has any policy on the books that permits discrimination, they will be prevented from advertising on philjobs (title VII schools in the US may do this, sadly). It can be worth asking people on the ground at the school if that discrimination provision is de facto ever used.

    Reply
  9. John

    How are Canadian universities permitted to advertise on PhilJobs given that national origin is explicitly a factor in their hiring practices? For example, two currently running ads for the University of Toronto note the following:
    All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply; however, Canadians and permanent residents will be given priority.
    While there’s an explicit carve-out in the APA’s Nondiscrimination policy for religious institutions, there’s no such carve-out for national origin…

    Reply
  10. Canadian

    John
    This comes up every year. The US laws are exactly the same … preference is given to America citizens. I know … I had a job in the US as a Canadian.

    Reply
  11. John

    Canadian,
    If that’s true, then it appears that both Canadian and US universities are violating the APA Nondiscrimination policy as it’s currently written, no?

    Reply
  12. Welp in European

    US laws are not the same now, given the announcement about the H1-B visa changes today (100k per year is the new visa fee).

    Reply
  13. southerner

    I don’t think the APA’s policy is meant to encourage institutions to flout the hiring laws in their countries.

    Reply
  14. Anon

    @ Welp in European. I’m TT faculty in the US on an H1B visa. So don’t get me wrong: I’m worried about this proclamation. But it seems likely that the 100k fee for H1B visas won’t include “cap exempt” categories, which includes academics. (The details haven’t come through yet, though, so we’ll have to wait and see.)

    Reply

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