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Faculty Recruitment

The Campus Visit

Search committees are only limited by the amount of time they have to conduct interviews. You have reviewed a great deal of information and spent a great deal of time going through the resumes/vitas. You have narrowed the list of candidates to a "reasonable number" to bring in for interview. There is no magic number. Money for travel should not be the prime motivator for how many candidates to bring to campus. There are ways to reduce the amount of money expended in the search process. Contact the OEDS for more information about this.

You have now reached the stage where you want to bring some, viable candidates to campus. You may have even done some reference checking in order to tailor the general questions that were developed by the search committee to more specifically address the strengths and weaknesses of the candidate.

What should you keep in mind about the campus visit?

• Treat the entire time you are with a candidate as part of the interview process, not just the "formal" interview with search committee. This includes any lunch meetings, taking the candidates to the airport or hotel and back, even rest room breaks.



• The search committee and anyone else that will be interviewing the candidates, including "other" members of the department or any auxiliary individuals or groups, must be aware of the questions that you can and cannot ask the candidates. If the candidate is to meet with any auxiliary groups, a member of the search committee should be present to run interference in case a question is asked which might prove to be problematic for the university or the process.



• If the search committee distributes copies of the candidate's vita or resume, then these copies should be collected after the candidate is interviewed by the individual/group for which these copies were made. Extra copies of a candidate's qualifications should not be floating around the campus but should be collected and destroyed to protect the candidate and the integrity of the search process (see "documentation section" below).

Remember as you are interviewing the candidate, the candidate is also interviewing you. When participating in the interview process in whatever role or function, bear in mind that you are an ambassador for GMU. You want to make a good impression regardless of whether or not the candidate is the one selected for the position. Most of our fields of study or professions are small and word spreads easily. When you make a good impression, you make the recruitment process easier for the university the next time.