Faculty Search Committee Best Practices

Search Committee Briefings

To reduce the effects of unconscious bias hiring in faculty recruitment by search committees, UC San Diego Health Sciences has implemented the following changes to the faculty recruitment process:

• Added language to all faculty recruitment ads that includes: "UCSD is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer with a strong institutional commitment to excellence through diversity."
• Faculty Affairs developed a dynamic presentation with audience engagement to reduce unconscious bias - Project Implicit
• Faculty Affairs implemented monthly faculty search committee trainings.  Current schedule can be found here.

Candidate Evaluation Tools

Candidate Evaluation forms adapted from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and WISELI are used to help search committees clearly articulate the reasons that they select candidates. They have been shown to markedly decrease unconscious bias in the faculty recruitment and hiring process.

• Recruitment for Leadership Positions
• Recruitment for Senior Faculty
• Recruitment for Junior Faculty

Helpful Links for Faculty Search Committees

Below are articles and resources.

Review the Research on Bias and Assumptions developed by WISELI at the University of Wisconsin Madison for best practices to reduce bias.

Think your letters are not biased? Think again.

• Explore this great pictogram from U of AZ on how to avoid bias in reference writing
• Gender Differences in Salary in a Recent Cohort of Early-Career Physician-Researchers
• How stereotypes impair women's careers in science