Faculty Hiring Manual 2023–24 Section 2: Getting Started

2.3 Search Committee Charges and Duties

The decision to hire a candidate is one of the most important decisions undertaken at the university. It represents a significant commitment of resources to teaching and scholarship over many years and entails the collective responsibility of fostering a new colleague’s ongoing success. Search committee members who have been entrusted with this responsibility should be prepared to devote substantial time and effort to a service that they perform not only for their Hiring Unit but for the entire university community.

The primary responsibilities of a search committee are to identify, select, and help recruit outstanding candidates and to ensure that the process used to do so is ethical, inclusive, transparent, and effective. Many factors determine whether a candidate ultimately accepts a position at Rutgers, and even searches that do not result in a new hire can be successful if they establish equitable, thorough, and replicable procedures. The insights and data yielded by an effective search are often invaluable in shaping future hiring, and the professional networks that support an effective search can help communicate the strengths of the department and the university widely among potential future colleagues.

In consultation with UHR, search committee duties may include:

• Finalizing the ROCS position posting/job advertisement, in consultation with the
  Department Chair and with other colleagues as needed. Some position postings will
  have been drafted by the department in advance.
• Determining which materials will be required and how those materials will be
  received, shared, and reviewed;
• Designing criteria and/or formal rubrics to use for evaluating candidates;
• Establishing practices for preserving the confidentiality of information and
  maintaining consistent communication with candidates;
• Establishing how decisions will be made, when voting will be necessary, and
  (especially in the case of interdisciplinary or joint hires) which members will have a
  deliberative voice and which will have a vote;
• Overseeing the communication plan to ensure that the position is widely posted in venues
  that will develop the largest and most diverse pool of qualified applicants possible;
• Completing implicit-bias training;
• Selecting qualified applicants to interview;
• Creating interview pools, designing questions for interviews, where appropriate, and
  creating rubrics for evaluating candidates during the interview;
• Attending the interviews and participating actively;
• Updating colleagues on the broad progress of the search; and
• Checking references and/or soliciting letters of reference.

Search committee members must retain all interview materials, notes, and rating documents
and should provide all materials to the Chair of the Search committee.