Faculty Hiring Process

During the hiring process, our goal is to attract high quality individuals to Michigan Tech who will be successful and make significant positive contributions to the education of our students and to the University's reputation. For this reason, it is vital to recruit, identify, and select individuals with credentials that support the success and the quality of campus life for all students and all colleagues. In addition, faculty and staff hiring play a key role in ensuring a diverse and inclusive campus community for Michigan Tech both now and into the future. 

Faculty Hiring Process Phases

The following hiring guidelines for tenure-track and instructional-track faculty, provided by Human Resources, ADVANCE, and Equal Opportunity Compliance, outline four phases and 10 steps and requirements, as well as provide tools and resources to assist University personnel in recruiting and hiring exceptional faculty members.

Phase 1: Preparation

• Step 1: Position Authorization and Search Committee Approval
• Step 2: Writing the Job Description

Phase 2: Recruitment

• Step 3: Advertising and Building a Diverse Pool
• Step 4: Review Diversity of the Applicant Pool

Phase 3: Reviewing Applicant Pool and Interviews

• Step 5: Review the Applicant Materials
• Step 6: Narrow the Applicant Pool
• Step 7: Interviews

Phase 4: Candidate Selection

• Step 8: Candidate References
• Step 9: Final Candidate Selection
• Step 10: Offer Accepted and New Employment Paperwork

Michigan Tech is a Federal Contractor and an Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Employer

This means that we are required to comply with equal employment laws that are monitored by the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP). These laws are in place to prohibit contractors from discriminating against applicants and employees. All departments and search committees must assist in the University's compliance efforts so that we can continue to participate in federal contracts.

Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) refers to the legally protected right of all people to be fairly evaluated on their ability and potential to perform a job throughout the entire hiring process.

Placement Goals and Hiring Benchmarks Are Not Quotas

• The goal of Affirmative Action is to ensure all individuals have equal access to employment by requiring contractors to identify placement goals for women, underutilized minorities, and individuals with disabilities, and hiring benchmarks for protected veterans.
• The placement goals within the Affirmative Action Plan cannot influence the hiring process. The goals act to guide the University to actively remove barriers, provide opportunities, and conduct appropriate outreach and positive recruitment of qualified candidates from a diverse population during the recruitment phase.
• The evaluation of all applicants must be based solely on the required and desired qualifications of the job, and never on the basis of a protected characteristic.
• If there is no evidence of good faith efforts to meet these goals, the University could lose federal and state contracts. Good faith efforts include programs, policies, and procedures to correct deficiencies of underutilization and proactively recruit, hire, train, and promote women, minorities, people with disabilities, and protected veterans.

The OFCCP enforces EO11246, the Vietnam Era Veterans Readjustment Act (VEVRAA) for Veterans, and Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act for Individuals with Disabilities. Requirements of these laws include, but are not limited to; outreach, advertising, recordkeeping of employment decisions, and posting requirements.

Talent Acquisition and Bias

While these webpages review the recruitment and selection portion of faculty searches, departments should continually prioritize talent acquisition. Talent acquisition is an ongoing vital effort that must be considered at all times as you are planning for the future and anticipating positions. Also, as you begin thinking about recruiting and hiring it is important to note that biases can enter the hiring processes in multiple ways. Biases are most likely to impact the assessments of applicants when:

1. we are overwhelmed with information (large number of applicants in a pool)
2. we are rushed to make decisions (trying to get interviews completed by a specific date)
3. the criteria utilized for evaluations is poorly defined or unclear
4. the search committee lacks a clear, consistent process to guide group decision-making 

Details can be reviewed in this video Beyond Bias: Fair and Inclusive Hiring Strategies for University Search Committees from Stanford University.

In recognition of this, Michigan Tech’s Diversity Literacy and Legal Aspects in Faculty Hiring workshops are required to be completed prior to serving on a faculty search committee. This online training does an excellent job of introducing implicit bias and placing it in context for search committees as well as Tenure, Promotion, and Reappointment deliberations. In addition we highly recommend completion of LinkedIn Learning’s Unconscious Bias course by Stacey Gordon. Completion of some of the Implicit Association Tests can also help improve self-awareness of unconscious biases. Please note that some of the information provided builds from the literature on this topic and was intentionally crafted to cite a few key resources, but to not be overbearing. If additional literature resources are needed, please ask. 

Resources

1. Michigan Tech ADVANCE
   1. We encourage everyone to contact ADVANCE (advance-mtu@mtu.edu) or to visit their office in Library 102B for more information on any of these topics. ADVANCE has an ever growing library of resources surrounding diversity and inclusion in academia and would be happy to lend you materials.
2. ADVANCE Advocates and Allies
3. We Built A Diverse Academic Department In 5 Years. Here’s How.
4. Video series developed by Jerry Kang at UCLA are widely used
5. WISELI's Searching for Excellence and Diversity workshops and the WISELI guidebook
6. Shelley Correll on;Beyond Bias: Creating Fair and Inclusive Hiring, Strategies for University SearchCommittees”
7. Interactive Theater: An Effective Tool To Reduce Gender Bias In Faculty Searches
8. Federal and State Laws and Regulations