What did you think about 2006 Candidate #1?

[Geoff Schreiber]

Why should the candidates names not be posted? In case their current employers find out they are looking for jobs elsewhere??  I'm pretty sure since SIUE is a state school, the candidates names are already out there, and probably easily found - especially if the school/state paid for their travel to the interview....

[PatelA]

Schreib because a job interview is a private matter.

scenario: If I were the Dean of Engineering and you interviewed for a job as an instructor in Engineering. I really didn't like you.  Do you want me posting all over internet forums and telling everyone I know that I didn't like you and that I'm not going to hire you?  

That's pretty damaging to your reputation and it's crossing the line of libel and slander because that can effect your chances of getting future jobs.  Because our Engineering department is close to companies like Boeing in the area that we get a lot of professors from.  Also we have a good relationship with other universities.  So that could hurt you when you apply for future jobs.  Hence the reason for keeping things fairly quiet.  Now with open interviews it's meant for the faculty to get feedback from students on future professors.  That still doesn't give us the right to openly post etc about applicants.

[William Grim]

Telling the whole world you dislike someone is not libel or slander.

[R. Andrew Lamonica]

I believe that our hiring practices at SIUE are open and so there is typically no secrecy about the candidates.  I am not sure why the teacher wanted the names removed.  He did not explain and everyone else I talked to seemed to think that posting the names was not a problem.  However, the teacher was quite â€Ã...“passionateâ€Ã, (his word) about the removal of the names and I don’t care one way or the other so I took them down.

I think that hiring practices at public universities are quite different from those of private companies.  For example, some companies require that you sign a non-disclosure agreement before your interview so that their interview practices and any other information you learn during the process does not reach competitors.  I have never heard of a school doing this.  I have also never heard of a private company making part of the interview open to the public.  However, the CS Dept. has each prospective teacher present their research to anyone who wants to attend (usually only students, faculty, and staff).  I have been to half a dozen of these presentations and have never been asked to keep their contents secret.  These differences in interview techniques probably reflect a deeper difference in philosophy between academia and commercial industry, but that is probably another five pages of tying so I’ll just skip the speculative analysis.

Anyway, at this point this thread has changed from a discussion of 2006 Candidate #1 to a discussion of the CS Dept’s. hiring/privacy practices.  It might be best to start a new thread if this is what you guys want to talk about.  I am concerned that the teacher who is â€Ã...“passionateâ€Ã, about the names of the candidates might ask me to sanitize this thread.  Since I have no desire to do that, it might be best for this thread to leave the main page where it is less visible.

[Geoff Schreiber]

Good enough.  PatelA, if these were such "private" interviews, students wouldn't be invited to participate and share their opinions with the University either, and the interviews would be in front of a closed panel...  I was just curious why, if the candidates names were already all over campus for the student discussions, they couldn't be posted on CAOS's forums.