Faculty Search Committee Best Practices

Search Committee Briefings

To promote fairness in faculty recruitment and hiring decisions 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: "The University of California is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, age, protected veteran status, or other protected status under state or federal law."
• Faculty Affairs developed a dynamic presentation with audience engagement to understand how perspectives influence decision making.
• 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. 

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

Helpful Links for Faculty Search Committees

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

Think your letters are objective? Think again.

Explore the following references on minimizing personal inclinations and tendencies:

• Pictogram on reference writing (U of AZ)
• Article on salary differences in early-career faculty (Jagsi et al.)
• Article on stereotypes in scientific careers (Reuben et al.)