Interviewing to Hire Competent Community College Faculty.

The author focuses on improving the interview process as a critical step in hiring new faculty who will thrive and prove to be effective in the community college environment. Necessary considerations for preplanning, establishing an interview protocol, and developing interview questions are defined based on a review of the literature about effective faculty characteristics and interviewing techniques. The author recommends using critical incident interview techniques such as storytelling to elicit an applicant's responses to key situations.

The first decade of the next century will be an exciting time for community college administrators who lead community colleges as effective learning institutions capable of serving their diverse communities and comprehensive mission. Administrators will have an opportunity to influence their institutions' futures by hiring the largest cohort of faculty employed at one time since the 1960s.

McGuire and Price (1990) predict that a wave of retirements peaking in 1999 combined with a surge in student enrollments will cause a shortage of qualified faculty members throughout higher education. They wrote that "the annual replacement need in the year 2003 is projected to be 37% higher than it was in 1989" (p. 8). Hensel estimated that "colleges and universities must recruit an estimated 335,000 new faculty to meet the needs of the next decade" (1991, p. 1). Moore and Amey (1993) predicted that as much as 40% of the senior professoriate may retire in the next decade.

In community colleges, the turnover is expected to be equally substantial. About 65% of the full-time faculty in community colleges were 45 or older in 1997 (Vandermast, 1998). Using data from the 1992-93 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty, Li (1995) reported the mean age of community college faculty as 47. Moreover, "almost one-fourth (23 percent) of all full-time faculty now teaching at public community colleges are fifty-five or older" (Palmer, 1992, p. 30). California community college leaders anticipate replacing one-half of the 15,000 faculty in the next 10 years (Milliron & Leach, 1998). Parsons (1992) reported that in 1992, nearly 40% of Illinois' community college faculty were eligible to retire; Maryland community colleges will need to replace one-third (660,) and Florida will need to replace 700 community college faculty members by 2000. Palmer's and Parsons's figures include only those who will reach the customary retirement age; if early retirement options are included, the number of replacement faculty needed will undoubtedly increase. A Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching study (Boyer, 1989) found that 42% of the 550 community college faculty members surveyed desired the opportunity to take early retirement.

The large exodus of community college faculty due to retirement does not necessarily mean that they all will be replaced. Higgins, Hawthorne, Cape, and Bell (1994), summarizing the work of several researchers, have noted that community colleges in the early 1990s have been reluctant to replace departing full-time faculty. They note that many community colleges are limiting enrollment by reducing the number of multisection courses or hiring more adjuncts to reduce costs. Nonetheless, the impending possibility of losing nearly 50% of the full-time faculty coupled with the predicted growth in enrollments (Miller, 1997) means that community colleges will be hiring large numbers of new faculty members.

Community Colleges Need Effective Teachers

Inasmuch as community colleges are teaching institutions, they will need to search for effective teachers. To identify the qualities a search committee should seek in a candidate, this section describes the literature on effective teaching practices with special emphasis on applications to community college teaching. Nevertheless, the differences between effective teaching in four-year and two-year institutions are not so much matters of substance as matters of degree of emphasis.

One degree of difference originates in the philosophical foundation of the community college mission. Several researchers have found that community college faculty members who are committed to and accept the community college philosophy have more positive attitudes about their work and are often more effective teachers (DuBois, 1993; Harnish & Creamer, 1985-86; Higgins, Hawthorne, Cape, & Bell, 1994). Moreover, experienced administrators recognize the importance of hiring faculty committed to the open-door mission of the community college (DeBard, 1995; Hawthorne, 1994).

The community colleges' commitment to open access results in a diverse student body requiring multiple teaching strategies. An instructor can have a class composed of teenagers to senior citizens from several ethnic, cultural, and socioeconomic backgrounds with academic abilities ranging from semiliterate to merit scholar. Prospective community college faculty should understand and accept that these differences are a consequence of the philosophical mission of the community college, or they will likely have unrealistic expectations.

Besides a commitment to the philosophical foundation of the community college movement, what knowledge, abilities, and attitudes contribute to effective teaching? In what has become a seminal work on effective teaching, Chickering and Gamson (1994) proposed seven characteristics of effective undergraduate teaching derived from research:

   Encourages contacts between students and faculty. Develops reciprocity and
   cooperation among students. Uses active learning techniques. Gives prompt
   feedback. Emphasizes time on task. Communicates high expectations Respects
   diverse talents and ways of learning. (p. 255)

Gillett-Karam (1994) provides a similar list based on her research on excellence in community college teaching:

   Engaging the desire to learn. Increasing opportunities for success.
   Eliminating obstacles to learning. Empowering through high expectations.
   Offering positive guidance and direction. Motivating toward independence.
   (1994, p. 412)

A most interesting point about both these lists is what is missing; they do not mention either knowledge of content or organizational skills. Baker, Roueche, and Gillett-Karam's study of effective community college teachers may explain why. Writing about the effective community college teacher, they say that "The teacher does not convey or impart content. Rather, the teacher instructs, motivates, influences and enables the student to acquire content from the teacher, the text or any other source; and as students become skilled at acquiring content, they learn" (1990, p. 11).

These researchers are not implying that disciplinary knowledge or organizational skills are unimportant. Rather they are saying that although disciplinary knowledge and organizational skills are necessary conditions for effective teaching, they are not sufficient conditions.

   For those who teach undergraduates, knowledge alone is not sufficient. It
   is also important to formulate appropriate goals, to use effective
   instructional methods, to foster student involvement and commitment, to be
   able to construct valid evaluation measures, to recognize the level of
   development of the student, and to have the ability to bring together the
   language of a discipline with the learner. (Simpson, 1991, p. 106)

Because of the community colleges' philosophical commitment to serving all segments of society, the effective community college teacher will need to be cognizant that "students not only have different needs but also require innovative approaches to learning and development" (Gillett-Karam, 1994, p. 414). Future community college faculty will need to be knowledgeable of the differences in learners, and be willing to experiment and continuously study and evaluate their teaching. Above all else, the future faculty member needs to be committed to working with and empowering students with widely diverse backgrounds, motivations, work habits, and goals. Many new faculty members will not arrive on campus with the knowledge required to be effective at working with a diverse student body. Consequently, hiring committees would be wise to look for these attitudes and a willingness to continue to learn and grow as teachers.

Recruiting the Best Teachers

How can community college administrators in what may be a tight marketplace recruit the best faculty who are capable of adapting to and growing with the job? The answer rests in improving the "process and dynamics of selecting and appointing one person from among several candidates; [and the] factors which can maximize the efficacy of interviews" (Kaplowitz, 1986, p. 86). Critical steps toward matching the best qualified candidate to the position include appointing the hiring committee, doing a complete analysis of staffing needs, developing the job descriptions and requirements, identifying qualifications, announcing the vacancy, reducing the candidate pool, prescreening the semifinalists, interviewing the finalists, and completing reference checks.

The Interview Process

Although all these processes can be improved upon, this article will concentrate on the steps an administrator can take to improve the interview process. For the purposes of this article, the interview process includes the entire set of events that should occur when a finalist visits campus. The interview process should be one that helps both the institution and the candidate make a wise and profitable decision, and it needs to include more than the simple interview with the committee and a few administrators. Marchese and Lawerence (1988) have noted that an interview is vulnerable to both manipulative candidates and ill-prepared search committee members:

   Candidates are very aware that they confront a test and are on stage;
   people good at the process know how to present themselves, parry questions,
   hold the initiative, and even fool you. Some people show well in
   interviews, others don't, and there's often little correlation between that
   performance and job performance. Interviewers, meanwhile, tend toward three
   errors: they make up their minds about the candidate within the first five
   minutes, then spend the remaining 55 confirming that judgment, come what
   may; they systematically overrate any response or piece of information they
   construe as "negative" (the psychology is to find reasons to reject, not
   select); and they generalize from particulars to make global judgments
   about the overall qualifications of the candidate. (p. 42)

Volkman noted that "university consultant Arthur Ciervo once said, `The basic difficulty of the interview, as usually conducted, is that it involves making extensive inferences from limited data obtained in artificial situations by unqualified observers.'" He goes on to note that "too much is expected from an interview, and too much attention is, therefore, given to a single clue or to an insufficient number of clues" (1993, p. 73).

Arvey and Campion (1982) conducted a comprehensive review of the research literature dating back to 1915 and found that researchers have consistently concluded that the job interview is an invalid measure for predicting job success. They added that "Perhaps the glaring `black hole' in all previous reviews and the current literature concerns the issue of why use of the interview persists in view of evidence of its low validity, reliability, and its susceptibility to bias and distortion" (p. 314).

Improving the Interview Process

Despite the disappointing results of numerous empirical studies, the candidate interview remains the most important hurdle for the successful candidate to jump and often the key component in the hiring decision for administrators because there appears to be no viable alternative selection process. Therefore, it becomes essential that college administrators find ways to improve the reliability of the candidate interview process. A starting point is noting what the job interview can do and what it cannot do. Kaplowitz (1986) reported that researchers have concluded the following:

1. Interviews are valid as a work sample of such behavior as sociability and verbal fluency;

2. Interviews are not valid in the selection process as predictors of job performance, despite the great faith that interviewers have in their judgment;

3. Interviews do give the interviewer an opportunity to sell the job to the candidate. (p. 73)

Fear (1984) has postulated that the reason researchers have been unable to validate the interview as a selection tool is that "most interviews, in the hands of untrained interviewers, are little more than surface discussions--discussions that seldom reveal what a person is like deep down inside" (p. 107). The good news is that there "appears to be general agreement that good interviewing can and should be taught" (Kaplowitz, 1986, p. 74).

Preplanning

"The success of the interview will depend largely on the degree of preplanning. Without it, questions are liable to be superficial, repetitive and illogical, and the final decision may be taken on a vague general impression of the candidate rather than in relation to specific responses to penetrating questions" (Palmer, 1993, p. 36). Providing an orientation or training session for the search committee members makes a good starting point. Search committee members need to be taught how to evaluate potential candidates' materials, select finalists, interview, and assess the candidate's potential fit with the institution.

Members of the selection committee need a common understanding of what an ideal candidate would look like; otherwise individual committee members may individually form impressions about the ideal candidate--while reviewing the applications. Numerous research studies of interviewing reliability have shown that both interrater reliability and subsequent supervisor performance ratings can be significantly increased when the interviewers have reviewed detailed job descriptions (Langdale & Weitz, 1973; Latham, Saari, Purcell, & Campion, 1980; Leonard, 1974; Weiner & Schneiderman, 1974.). Therefore, it is an important first step for the committee to discuss and form a tentative description of the ideal candidate.

Candidate Fit

Accordingly, search committees need to approach their task with the goal of matching the candidate to the position and the institution. This matching is sometimes called "fit" or "person-environmental fit." Although many articles and monographs on hiring in higher education mention the importance of fit (Kaplowitz, 1986; Marchese & Lawrence, 1988: Pyles, 1989), few provide a clear definition of this fuzzy concept. Search committees need more than an intuitive understanding of this concept if they are to rely on more than their impressions of what type of candidate would be the best fit.

According to Beatty (1986), fit consists of two aspects--needs-supplies and demands-abilities fit. Demands-abilities fit represents what abilities a prospective candidate must bring to be successful in meeting the position's demands. Most higher education screening committees give the demands-abilities fit at least some consideration. The consideration is incomplete if a committee looks only at a candidate's past academic record. When hiring a teaching professor, a committee may want to consider whether the candidate possesses pedagogical skills and attitudes to teach the type of student attracted to this particular college. For example, a community college hiring an English instructor may want to probe the candidate's ability and willingness to teach students with extremely varying levels of high school preparation. At a research university, the committee might make a better fit if they probed the candidate's ability to complete research and publish in journals deemed suitable by this particular university.

Rarely do committees attempt to assess the needs-supplies fit, which "represents those benefits/satisfiers which the applicant will derive from the work-role, as well as what attributes the employer provides in order to satisfy and retain the employee" (Pyles, 1989, p. 519).

   The needs-supplies fit includes a sense of the candidates' specific views
   on substantive issues relevant to the post ... factors of candidate
   institution "chemistry," ... the candidates' personal traits, matters of
   style, acceptability to your colleagues, in short, whether the "match" or
   "fit" is such that the person will be effective in your institution.
   (Marchese & Lawrence, 1988, p. 40-41)

Needs-supplies fit considerations affect the successful candidate's happiness on the job and include "his or her professional motivations, preferred work style, emotional predispositions, and so on--all of which very much bears on the question, will this job prompt best effort from this candidate along lines we want?" (Marchese & Lawrence, 1988, p. 43) Failure to consider needs-supplies fit can result in a dissatisfied employee. Researchers find that among the reasons faculty voluntarily leave a college, incompatibility with colleagues and other intangible quality of life issues rank high (Amey, 1996; Burke, 1987; Luce & Murray, in press; Matier, 1990).

Job Description

Specifying the qualities of the ideal candidate begins with writing a job description. Good job descriptions identify two types of requirements--those that are essential and those that are critical. Essential requirements correspond to the needs-supplies fit considerations and include basic skills, credentials, and experience that are needed to be minimally qualified for the position. Critical requirements, on the other hand, are those that are necessary to be successful in the particular position you are filling and involve a combination of needs-supplies and demands-abilities fit considerations. Critical requirements need to account for not only the duties of the position, but also the culture of an institution and department. Haefele (1981) points out that to determine the critical requirements, the chair needs to ask "Can a person lacking quality A or B be effective in this teaching situation?" (p. 42). For example, many community colleges attract students who have parental responsibilities that sometimes conflict with their student roles. Therefore, a search committee might conclude that flexibility is a critical requirement for a faculty member in this culture.

Interview Protocol

Once committee members have determined the essential and critical requirements for the job, the search committee should discuss and agree on what questions will be asked of all candidates, how the questioning will proceed, and the criteria for a good, an acceptable, and a poor answer. In other words, the committee should develop an interview guide or protocol. An interview guide or protocol "assures that important, core matters are covered with all respondents, and provides for a more consistent, easy-to-use recording of respondent information" (Marchese & Lawrence, 1988, p. 40). An interview guide provides for what researchers have called the patterned interview. Empirical studies dating back 50 years have demonstrated that a patterned interview can dramatically increase the interrater reliability among interviewers (Janz, Hellervick, & Gilmore, 1986; Mayfield, Brown, & Hamstra, 1980; McMurray, 1947; Schmitt, 1976; Younge, 1956). Although room needs to be made for spontaneity, a set of previously agreed upon questions or an outline of areas to be probed will provide a more valid and reliable outcome (Arvey & Campion, 1982; Fear, 1984).

Interview Questions

The development of an interview protocol starts with writing the questions that all candidates will have the opportunity to answer. One process for developing questions that probe the candidate's abilities is based on a critical incident technique first developed by Flanagan (1954). Flanagan reviewed transcripts from interviews of successful tank and bomber crews conducted by psychologists toward the end of World War II. In reviewing the transcripts, he noticed that when crewmembers were asked what qualities were needed to succeed, they typically gave vague answers, often citing abstract qualities such as "bravery" or "decisiveness." On the other hand, he noticed that when asked to provide examples of critical incidents that occurred during missions, the crews were able to identify specific actions (behaviors) that they or others had taken that led directly to success or failure. He postulated that if industrial psychologists gathered and analyzed the stories of individuals employed in a particular position, the psychologists would be able to identify the necessary and sufficient requirements for success in that field. The critical incident technique can be successfully adapted to hiring community college faculty.

The first step is to gather a number of stories that those with a stake in the search, the storytellers, believe describe a critical incident. A critical incident is defined as one where a particular action or set of actions attributable to an individual clearly leads to an identifiably successful or unsuccessful outcome. The incidents should be gathered from many sources--faculty members, administrators, students, and employers. The storytellers are asked to describe in detail what happened without judging the participants. The incidents are grouped into sets, each with a similar theme:

   The final step in job analysis is to check the work done so far with
   supervisors and incumbents to make sure (1) that the incidents are clear
   and specific, (2) that the incidents belong in the subgroups that were
   formed, and (3) that no major performance topics were overlooked. The
   incidents that have been sorted into dimensions and subgroups should be
   shown to two or three supervisors and two or three incumbents for a final
   edit and review. (Janz, Hellervick, & Gilmore, 1986, p. 51)

The sets can be scrutinized to develop questions that will probe how the candidate would act in similar circumstances. Using this inventory, the committee might want to consider developing questions in the areas of knowledge (of discipline and teaching), skills, and attitudes. Determining the honest attitudes of the candidate can be difficult, but is essential for judging needs-supplies fit.

Attitudes, as well as knowledge and skills can best be probed using behavioral descriptive interviewing. "The behavior description interview proceeds by a structured pattern of questions designed to probe the applicant's past behavior in specific situations, selected for their relevance to critical job events" (Janz, Hellervick, & Gilmore, 1986, p. 3). Higgins and Hollander note that behavioral descriptive interviewing is based on the premise "that past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior" (1987, p. 69). Watts (1993) notes "two corollaries to this simple principle: the more recent the previous behavior, the greater its ability to predict future behavior; and the longer the individual practiced the behavior, the greater its ability to predict future behavior" (p. 32). Fear (1984) adds that "although it is possible for individuals to grow and develop, and ... modify their behavior, few people are likely to overcome completely the effect of long years of behaving in a certain manner" (p. 87).

The point is that past behavior, especially either long-term patterns or recent past behavior, can provide the best picture of what the successful candidate will likely do on the job. Typical questions that probe such things as candidates' three greatest strengths or weaknesses, their choice of three adjectives to describe themselves, their views on pedagogical issues, or their most significant accomplishment tends to tell the committee members very little about what they most need to know--each candidate's likely patterns of behavior. "Experienced interviewers know that why an individual took some course of action is frequently more revealing than what she or he did.... why people do things tells us a great deal about their judgment, their motivation, and other factors of their personality structure (Fear, 1984, p. 118).

Janz, Hellervick, and Gilmore (1986) provide the following advice for developing behavioral questions based on critical incident reports:

1. Behavioral questions delve into past experiences of the interviewee. They ask how the person actually acted in a specific situation that was similar to a critical incident from which the question was drawn. Behavioral questions do not query about hypothetical situations. They ask, "what did you do," not "what would you do".

2. Behavioral questions use superlative adjectives for several reasons.

   First, the question tends to stimulate specific events in the minds of the
   interviewee, and it is then easier for the interviewee to respond. Second,
   the interviewer knows something about where the incident fits on the scale
   of all similar incidents. That is, if it is the "most" of a particular
   quality, it is the most that can be expected if the interviewer believes in
   the principle that the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior
   in similar circumstances. The same is true if it is the "least" of a
   quality. This gives a more accurate reading of the event than simply
   asking: "Give me an example." (Janz, Hellervick, & Gilmore, 1986, p 41).

Janz, Hellervick, and Gilmore also note that behavioral questions inquire about positive experiences; that is, they seek out success, not failure. Even when a respondent's answer hints at a negative experience, follow-up questions should be phrased to make the interviewee feel freer to reveal instances she or he could have handled better. By avoiding negative questions, the interview committee is in a better position to judge how the candidate learns from mistakes, resolves conflicts, and solves problems. The frank admission of a mistake is not a sign of incompetence. Fear (1984) reminds us that "the interview that results in no unfavorable information is inescapably a poor interview" (p. 89).

Questioning intended to elicit information about behavior should prompt specific responses about the candidate's actual past experiences. "Do not be content with statements about what an interviewee would `usually', `typically', or `generally' do" (Kanter, 1995, p. 60). Kanter also reminds us that the trick "is to keep the interviewee talking in the past tense about a specific experience or situation" (p. 61). One wants to learn what the candidate actually did, not what she or he thinks should have been done. It is also critical to determine if the interviewee was in control of the described situation or was simply following up on someone else's decision or strategy. What one wants to know is not how well the candidate can take direction, but rather how well the candidate accepts responsibilities for making decisions and acting on them.

Behavioral questions contain a stem and a probe. "Question stems locate a particular instance from the applicant's past and focus the applicant on that type of event or environment. Probes seek out exactly how the applicant behaved and what the consequences of that behavior were" (Janz, Hellervick, & Gilmore, 1986, p. 64). Both stems and probes can be written by reviewing the critical incidents. Stems can be formed by describing the actual incident and asking the candidate to think of a similar occurrence from her or his past, with the probe inquiring how the candidate acted in a similar situation.

For example, suppose that the critical incident analysis reveals that an important area of concern for community college faculty is the ability and willingness of the candidate to work with a diverse student body. Further, suppose that the committee's analysis of the critical incidents revealed several incidents related by faculty of either success or failure in dealing with students who are single parents. The stem of the question for someone with teaching experience might be as follows: Tell us about a time when you had scheduled an in-class exam and a student missed it because of a crisis with the student's child. The probe might be as follows: Tell us what you said to the student and what you did about the missed exam.

If the candidate lacks teaching experience the committee will need to be creative in developing the stem and the probe. For example, the stem for the diversity question might be either of the following:

   Tell us about a work situation where you were supervising a co-worker who
   had to miss work because of a crisis with a child. Tell us about a
   situation when a college professor assigned an out-of-class group project
   and one of your group members had difficulty doing his or her part because
   of a crisis with a child.

Conclusion

Because of an anticipated wave of retirements, the next decade will present community college leaders with the opportunity to hire faculty who will affect institutional climate for years to come. To accomplish this, leaders will have to hire and retain faculty members dedicated to the unique mission of the community college. The future faculty of community colleges must be drawn from individuals who have a realistic understanding of the role and mission of the community college, who are adaptable to change, and who are committed to teaching and learning in a multi-cultured setting. The new faculty will not only need to be knowledgeable of their discipline and community college philosophy, they will also need to be dedicated facilitators of learning and eager learners themselves. For this to occur, community college leaders will need consciously to design recruiting and hiring procedures that will increase the chances of hiring individuals who will "fit" and thrive in the unique higher educational setting of the community college.

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John P. Murray is an associate professor in the Department of Higher Education at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas. ([e-mail])