[lancewiggs]

Many of the letters started with an apology for being slow, which is a very bad sign. All of them were form letters.

Once an interview occurs then I would hope a far more personal approach gets used. The benchmark for this was McKinsey (I was there 10 years ago). I went through the recruitment process there from both sides, and we had a simple policy to call the person back within 24 hours, letting let them know immediately whether they were in the next step or not. We would also offer to give constructive feedback (and have it to give) to both successful and unsuccessful candidates.

[blahedo]

The reason for the "slow" apology (which I have now been on both sides of) is that when you're running a faculty search, you don't want to close the applicant pool until your chosen candidate has accepted the offer, signed the contract, picked their textbooks, rented an apartment, and moved to town. Well, I exaggerate slightly. But there's always this lurking worry that if you send the rejections too early, you may have to re-open the pile if your hire backs out.

That said, June is still ridiculously late. The search should be done by March or so at the latest, with maybe some contract details lingering until April if there's a hard negotiation.

I've often thought that it would be nice to keep candidates a little more apprised of where they stand, but another problem that faculty search committees run into here is that in our litigious culture (in the US at least), we have to be very, very, very careful what we say for fear of a lawsuit. Sigh.