Guidelines for Controlling Recruiting Costs

As the hiring season approaches, please adhere to the following guidelines for controlling the costs of recruitment of new and visiting faculty. For additional questions, please contact Gerrit Blauvelt ([email protected]).

The Dean of Faculty’s Office will automatically cover the costs of:

  • Advertising the position in the standard publications for academic jobs.
  • Travel expenses for no more than two members of the search committee to conduct screening interviews (now often replaced by online interviews) or to disseminate information at a professional conference or other recruiting venue.
  • Economy travel and lodging (no more than 2 nights) for the finalists to interview in Williamstown.
  • Meals during the finalist interview process:
    • 1 dinner for 4 people, including the candidate
    • 1 lunch with up to 6 students, for each candidate
    • 1 breakfast with 1-2 people, for each candidate, if not otherwise provided by the Office of Institutional Diversity and Equity
    • Other meals taken by the candidate alone while in transit or in Williamstown

All other expenses, such as receptions, must be paid for by the department or program unless approved by the dean’s office.  In all cases, while we should be gracious hosts, please avoid lavish expenditures. See more detailed guidelines below.

i. Advertising

Advertising is important and very expensive.  The office of the Vice President for Institutional Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion will take responsibility for including a listing of your position in several national publications, including the Chronicle of Higher Education, higheredjobs.com, Diverse Issues in Higher Education, and Latinos in Higher Education, so you need not duplicate that effort. We will also post all faculty job announcements on the college’s employment website.

Departments and programs often also want to publish their job announcements in field specific newsletters or journals. Sometimes this is free and sometimes not. If there is a fee, please time the appearance of ads carefully to minimize the cost, and use online listings rather than print whenever possible. It is not always necessary to run an ad for more than several weeks, nor to use special graphics or other add-ons in order to reach the best candidates . Nor must the ad appear in every possible journal.  Please keep economy in mind when deciding when, where, and whether to post the job announcement beyond the standard publications used by the college. Extra advertising fees totaling more than $500 should be cleared by the dean’s office ahead of time.

ii. Recruiting Visits to Other Campuses

If you wish to make such visits, please discuss your plans with the dean’s office and submit a budget request in advance of the visit.

iii. Interviewing at Professional Meetings

Screening interviews at professional meetings have been replaced in many fields by phone or videoconference interviews. Nevertheless, if necessary, the Dean of the Faculty’s office will cover the cost of one or two search committee members to attend one professional meeting for the purpose of conducting screening interviews, provided they’ll be devoting at least one full day to the task. Alternatively or additionally, funding for travel to conferences targeting underrepresented groups can be requested from the Office of Institutional Diversity and Equity.

iv. Campus visits for finalists

Most national searches for tenure-track positions will result in 3-4 campus interviews. Please clear any additional candidates through the dean’s office before scheduling their visits.

Those who come to the campus to interview for visiting positions cost almost as much, in terms of time and money, as others.  It is therefore advisable to interview these candidates in series, i.e., invite visiting candidate #1 before inviting visiting candidate #2, etc., unless there are good reasons for doing otherwise.

On rare occasions candidates ask whether they can bring their spouses or partners along for a campus interview. They are welcome to do so, but only at their own expense.

v. Airfares

The cost of flying candidates to/from Albany is significant. We ask you to do your best to find low fares. If someone can get a considerably reduced airfare by staying an extra night, it may be less expensive even if it means another night at a hotel and another day of meals.

vi. Accommodations

The Williams Inn offers discounted rates for a single room.  To get the discount rates, be sure to let the reservation clerk know that it is for a Williams faculty job candidate. We would urge you to take advantage of these rates unless you have a preferred place where the rates are lower. Please try to limit overnight stays to one night whenever possible.

vii. Dining

For each candidate we will cover the cost of a breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  The upper-end budget for all meals combined is about $400, although you should not feel obligated to spend that much.  For the dinner, please hold the number of attendees down to four unless you want to pick up the tab for the others using department or program funds. The lunch (or a dinner) is often used for having students meet with the candidates.  The breakfast is a courtesy (and not required) and should not include more than 1-2 hosts from the department or program. Please remember that for all finalists, the Office of Institutional Diversity and Equity will arrange and pay for one non-evaluative breakfast/luncheon.

viii. Second campus visits for tenure-track offerees or hires

Sometimes those who have been offered (or have accepted) a tenure-track position request a return trip to campus, often with family members.  Please do not offer this as an automatic part of the hiring process, but do let us know if you feel that this would help with the recruitment, in which case we can usually offer some support for such visits.

ix. Billing

If the bills from the hotels or restaurants, etc. are sent directly to the dean of the faculty’s office, please be sure they include the name of your department or program on the invoice as well as the name of the candidate.