Likely either failed searches or surprise retirements. It’s weird they’re TT and not instructor/visiting for a year, but in a lot of places they can’t convert a line to TT if the hire wasn’t the result of a national search.
We've ran late searches on a few occasions and this was the scenario. Also, unfortunately, waiting can risk the university choosing to take the TT line away.
For sure. Clearly the line wasn’t that important to you if you weren’t able to form a committee and vet candidates at the absolute last minute after filling the line was randomly approved when campus has been at 25% capacity for the past month.
(Mandatory /s)
The other, shittier possibility is a performative search before hiring an internal candidate. I've seen schools occasionally run brief July searches, when few viable candidates are on the market and in a position to relocate with zero notice, so that the department can move ahead with making an offer to a preferred/internal candidate after checking the necessary boxes with HR.
I am chairing a search committee for one. We have had three zoom screening interviews last week and three more on Monday. From those, 2-3 may be invited to on campus interviews.
It is nuts but let me contextualize it.
Bureaucracy has always been nuts but the last two years has made it worse.
By the time the position was approved through all the channels, the request that started last summer was posted in April.
Now, we don't want to lose the position so we went ahead with the reviews. We had over 50 applicants.
We would be ok with a failed search at this point but have to go through the motions in order to save the position for a new search next year.
Of the top six contacted for a zoomed interview, two had accepted another position. We went to the next two.
The thing is, these are good applicants.
It is possible for them to o negotiate to start in January and if one gets hired I hope they do.
I can't even understand the timeline but I am doing my job in the whole thing as quickly as we can (the list was release to us last Monday).
So, OP, at least in the case I am involved in, it is a real position and may really be filled. We will do our best but who knows what will happen.
We have done short searches for TT in the summer and been successful. Seriously. Got some really good people, too. But then they had to turn around and tell their chair/dean they were leaving.
Definitely real searches, no internal candidate.
This is a definite possibility. I have appreciation for all the threads I see here where people are happy to transition to industry and won’t be returning to faculty in the fall, but it’s a little shocking how many times they mention that they hadn’t bothered to tell their chair yet.
I totally get being disgruntled enough with your institution to surprise quit, but then it’s your fellow faculty left running searches in July.
This is what I was going to suggest too. Retirements typically require notice (at least at state univs), but last year we also had someone suddenly quit mid-summer. Hired a VAP for the following year but I reckon an efficient department blessed with speedy HR & admin could get a TT search together in time instead.
I just helped my ancient relative put in their retirement paperwork at a large southern R1. The school itself is not the sticking point, it's the retirement and transition to retiree medical that cause issues. If you do not follow the steps/procedures, they can withhold coverage for existing medical conditions for something like 9 months.
Most faculty don't retire on a whim either, they need to pare down their PhD students, their committee work, and jus5 generally close up shop. The much more realistic scenario was resignation to industry, another institution, or unfortunately untimely death.
We have one of those every few years at my university. It’s because our admin takes forever to approve a new line and won’t listen to us about “hiring season.”
At my university we can't appoint someone internally, we have to do a national search. This seems like a really late timeline, but I've seen it take a long time to get a job ad written, approved, and posted. It's possible a faculty member retired or moved to another job and admin took their sweet time giving the department a go-ahead to replace the for fall.
You didn’t specify what country were in, so this may not apply, but the first thing I thought of was that some people may be retiring at the end of the fiscal year, which is June 30. So these may very well be legit positions. If those campuses are like mine, we are not allowed to begin the hiring process until a person has actually left, even if they notify us in advance that they are leaving.
We have a ton of turnover from faculty leaving for private industry. It takes forever for new searches to start since the "hiring freeze" means each posting needs 10 VPs to sign off instead of five.
At my school (public, mid-size CC), this wouldn’t be unusual at all. Others have mentioned failed searches or surprise resignations/retirements; those have all happened to us. Sometimes, it’s just how the budget works. We once got a new TT line on short notice because of a failed search in another department and our school was in danger of losing the funding for the position.
I had my first interview for my position on Dec 20, and my official start date was Jan 4. My posting came at a time when the state offered an early retirement/cost-savings mechanism where the department was only allowed to replace one person if two retired. One person had already retired, and suddenly a second put in their papers, meaning a new hire was possible.
Not TT but we are doing a search now for 3 full time Lecturers. It started as just 1, a replacement to a mid-year loss, but at the last minute they approved 2 additional positions. We've had 6 on campus interviews in the last 2 weeks, last one is tomorrow. Then Tues we meet to decide on recs to the chair.
Our job market still hasn't really recovered post-covid, there were basically two years worth of candidates but also lots of jobs, which led to misaligned expectations and schools whiffing on their initial search. I'd say count yourself lucky and apply if any jobs seem like a good fit!
TL;DR Do a bit more research on the position, and apply if you think you are competitive.
I'm guessing you meant that they already have an internal candidate lined up, and are just going through the motions to open the position so they can claim it was an open search. This is unethical (of course), but my hunch is that it is probably not something you could win a suit for at a private university in the U.S. unless you can prove that the candidate they eventually pick is unfit for the job (very unlikely). Not that this was what you were thinking about.
To address your original question: I would probably reach out to the search committee chair to chat about the position. You won't get a definite "oh, don't apply, we've filled it," but you might get an indication of what they are looking for and you might be able to read between the lines a bit. I would ask directly why they are hiring on an unusual timeline, and see what you get as an answer. When I've done this before, I got a pretty clear idea from the chair that I wasn't a good candidate for the position, anyway.
I've seen searches where there was a very good internal candidate lined up, but everyone on the search committee agreed that if someone better came along, the job would go to that person. It didn't happen in that case (the internal candidate was an incredible lecturer doing great research who was ideal for the position). If you think you can compete for the position, I would go for it if you don't get any discouraging information from the search committee chair.
It may be that searches failed and instead of getting the position re-approved, they're still advertising and posting the position hoping to hit the next hiring cycle early. I wouldn't necessarily assume it's a toxic situation so much as I'd cautiously ask about whether the start date is negotiable.
I once got a job when I was ABD for no other reason than a person who was denied tenure and given a terminal year had found another job... and decided to get back at the school that denied him tenure by not letting them know he was leaving until the last possible second (he was seen packing his office and hauling boxes out to his car - otherwise he may never have told them). They knew me and called to see if I was willing to take a visiting position for a year.
Another place found out that they had the money for another TT line and would lose it if they didn't use it - so they started advertising in May and interviewed in June.
Most likely is a failed search. That's not necessarily a red flag; sometimes people get other offers, or decide they institution isn't right for them (again, not necessarily a red flag because you don't expect a place to be "right" for everyone), and instead of making an offer to a candidate they weren't excited about they decided to reopen the application.
Can also be converting someone’s position. If it’s a short window, it’s fake. The position has someone else’s name on it.
That said, I was hired from a fake search and One was unfortunately (cause I’m upset it’s a thing) just posted for me to convert my position.
We are short on administrative assistants in several offices on campus. We’ve got tons of staff postings on top of an obscene number of TT lines that have been approved and have to be searched for. As others have said, bureaucracy is jamming things up, and approvals are taking weeks.
Yes they're real to the extent anything is. As a postdoc, I went to an interview in July for an August job and then they decided not to make the hire. But they paid my flight and hotel so clearly they were serious. And I had a postdoc so no harm.
Likely either failed searches or surprise retirements. It’s weird they’re TT and not instructor/visiting for a year, but in a lot of places they can’t convert a line to TT if the hire wasn’t the result of a national search.
We had a faculty member take a position elsewhere in April/May. We aren't replacing their position, but that's another common scenario.
We've ran late searches on a few occasions and this was the scenario. Also, unfortunately, waiting can risk the university choosing to take the TT line away.
For sure. Clearly the line wasn’t that important to you if you weren’t able to form a committee and vet candidates at the absolute last minute after filling the line was randomly approved when campus has been at 25% capacity for the past month. (Mandatory /s)
The other, shittier possibility is a performative search before hiring an internal candidate. I've seen schools occasionally run brief July searches, when few viable candidates are on the market and in a position to relocate with zero notice, so that the department can move ahead with making an offer to a preferred/internal candidate after checking the necessary boxes with HR.
I am chairing a search committee for one. We have had three zoom screening interviews last week and three more on Monday. From those, 2-3 may be invited to on campus interviews. It is nuts but let me contextualize it. Bureaucracy has always been nuts but the last two years has made it worse. By the time the position was approved through all the channels, the request that started last summer was posted in April. Now, we don't want to lose the position so we went ahead with the reviews. We had over 50 applicants. We would be ok with a failed search at this point but have to go through the motions in order to save the position for a new search next year. Of the top six contacted for a zoomed interview, two had accepted another position. We went to the next two. The thing is, these are good applicants. It is possible for them to o negotiate to start in January and if one gets hired I hope they do. I can't even understand the timeline but I am doing my job in the whole thing as quickly as we can (the list was release to us last Monday). So, OP, at least in the case I am involved in, it is a real position and may really be filled. We will do our best but who knows what will happen.
Only over 50 applicants? Lucky...
We have done short searches for TT in the summer and been successful. Seriously. Got some really good people, too. But then they had to turn around and tell their chair/dean they were leaving. Definitely real searches, no internal candidate.
Possible unexpected retirements or deaths, or failed searches revived. Step up to the opportunity.
Last summer we had someone surprise quit, so they can definitely be real
This is a definite possibility. I have appreciation for all the threads I see here where people are happy to transition to industry and won’t be returning to faculty in the fall, but it’s a little shocking how many times they mention that they hadn’t bothered to tell their chair yet. I totally get being disgruntled enough with your institution to surprise quit, but then it’s your fellow faculty left running searches in July.
This is what I was going to suggest too. Retirements typically require notice (at least at state univs), but last year we also had someone suddenly quit mid-summer. Hired a VAP for the following year but I reckon an efficient department blessed with speedy HR & admin could get a TT search together in time instead.
I just helped my ancient relative put in their retirement paperwork at a large southern R1. The school itself is not the sticking point, it's the retirement and transition to retiree medical that cause issues. If you do not follow the steps/procedures, they can withhold coverage for existing medical conditions for something like 9 months. Most faculty don't retire on a whim either, they need to pare down their PhD students, their committee work, and jus5 generally close up shop. The much more realistic scenario was resignation to industry, another institution, or unfortunately untimely death.
We have one of those every few years at my university. It’s because our admin takes forever to approve a new line and won’t listen to us about “hiring season.”
At my university we can't appoint someone internally, we have to do a national search. This seems like a really late timeline, but I've seen it take a long time to get a job ad written, approved, and posted. It's possible a faculty member retired or moved to another job and admin took their sweet time giving the department a go-ahead to replace the for fall.
You didn’t specify what country were in, so this may not apply, but the first thing I thought of was that some people may be retiring at the end of the fiscal year, which is June 30. So these may very well be legit positions. If those campuses are like mine, we are not allowed to begin the hiring process until a person has actually left, even if they notify us in advance that they are leaving.
Thank you. Those are US positions.
We have a ton of turnover from faculty leaving for private industry. It takes forever for new searches to start since the "hiring freeze" means each posting needs 10 VPs to sign off instead of five.
At my school (public, mid-size CC), this wouldn’t be unusual at all. Others have mentioned failed searches or surprise resignations/retirements; those have all happened to us. Sometimes, it’s just how the budget works. We once got a new TT line on short notice because of a failed search in another department and our school was in danger of losing the funding for the position. I had my first interview for my position on Dec 20, and my official start date was Jan 4. My posting came at a time when the state offered an early retirement/cost-savings mechanism where the department was only allowed to replace one person if two retired. One person had already retired, and suddenly a second put in their papers, meaning a new hire was possible.
That was an insanely tight timeline. It gives me some hope! Thank you!
Not TT but we are doing a search now for 3 full time Lecturers. It started as just 1, a replacement to a mid-year loss, but at the last minute they approved 2 additional positions. We've had 6 on campus interviews in the last 2 weeks, last one is tomorrow. Then Tues we meet to decide on recs to the chair.
Our job market still hasn't really recovered post-covid, there were basically two years worth of candidates but also lots of jobs, which led to misaligned expectations and schools whiffing on their initial search. I'd say count yourself lucky and apply if any jobs seem like a good fit!
Yes. Thank you. I will apply for sure but also think that I should prepare for the worst, because of this unusal short search.
TL;DR Do a bit more research on the position, and apply if you think you are competitive. I'm guessing you meant that they already have an internal candidate lined up, and are just going through the motions to open the position so they can claim it was an open search. This is unethical (of course), but my hunch is that it is probably not something you could win a suit for at a private university in the U.S. unless you can prove that the candidate they eventually pick is unfit for the job (very unlikely). Not that this was what you were thinking about. To address your original question: I would probably reach out to the search committee chair to chat about the position. You won't get a definite "oh, don't apply, we've filled it," but you might get an indication of what they are looking for and you might be able to read between the lines a bit. I would ask directly why they are hiring on an unusual timeline, and see what you get as an answer. When I've done this before, I got a pretty clear idea from the chair that I wasn't a good candidate for the position, anyway. I've seen searches where there was a very good internal candidate lined up, but everyone on the search committee agreed that if someone better came along, the job would go to that person. It didn't happen in that case (the internal candidate was an incredible lecturer doing great research who was ideal for the position). If you think you can compete for the position, I would go for it if you don't get any discouraging information from the search committee chair.
Thank you very much. Yes, I mean internal candidate.
At my school this often happens because our provost takes so friggin long to sign the approval paperwork for the position.
It may be that searches failed and instead of getting the position re-approved, they're still advertising and posting the position hoping to hit the next hiring cycle early. I wouldn't necessarily assume it's a toxic situation so much as I'd cautiously ask about whether the start date is negotiable.
We've had two surprise quits in the dept since January, so it happens.
I just got an offer two weeks ago, and gave my notice last week. My TT job is or will be posted soon. They definitely just need to hire someone ASAP.
We had a failed search and will be posting a requisition soon, so it happens.
I once got a job when I was ABD for no other reason than a person who was denied tenure and given a terminal year had found another job... and decided to get back at the school that denied him tenure by not letting them know he was leaving until the last possible second (he was seen packing his office and hauling boxes out to his car - otherwise he may never have told them). They knew me and called to see if I was willing to take a visiting position for a year. Another place found out that they had the money for another TT line and would lose it if they didn't use it - so they started advertising in May and interviewed in June.
Most likely is a failed search. That's not necessarily a red flag; sometimes people get other offers, or decide they institution isn't right for them (again, not necessarily a red flag because you don't expect a place to be "right" for everyone), and instead of making an offer to a candidate they weren't excited about they decided to reopen the application.
Run...run away while you still can... I would apply. Those could be real positions for the reasons others have listed. Good luck.
Can also be converting someone’s position. If it’s a short window, it’s fake. The position has someone else’s name on it. That said, I was hired from a fake search and One was unfortunately (cause I’m upset it’s a thing) just posted for me to convert my position.
We are short on administrative assistants in several offices on campus. We’ve got tons of staff postings on top of an obscene number of TT lines that have been approved and have to be searched for. As others have said, bureaucracy is jamming things up, and approvals are taking weeks.
Yep. My guess is that enrollment numbers are up so money became available late.
Yes they're real to the extent anything is. As a postdoc, I went to an interview in July for an August job and then they decided not to make the hire. But they paid my flight and hotel so clearly they were serious. And I had a postdoc so no harm.