Core Best Practices for Academic Interviews

Abstract

The library profession has seen radical change in people’s thinking about all aspects of work and life, due in part to the sudden and prolonged shift to remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic and increasing calls for social justice and antiracism in our services and practices. While many manuals for hiring and interviewing exist, including those in professional library associations and organizations, they may already be out of step with the rapid changes of recent years . This document seeks to capture emerging best practices as well as recommendations to encourage organizations to audit their interview processes to determine how unexamined assumptions and traditional practices may be disadvantageous to some applicants.

The format of the academic library interview has historically been similar across many organizations: a one or two day onsite visit with interview panels, individual meetings, meals, and a presentation. Necessitated by the pandemic, libraries have begun trying new formats including conducting interviews online, holding shorter interviews, and even hosting group interviews. Experimentation in itself is a positive trend, if it means examining what aspects are most important about the process and carefully selecting which aspects should remain from the traditional interview.

The principles and suggested action items in this report will help guide this examination while providing flexibility to try out new interview schedules and models, always maintaining focus on candidate-friendly and anti-bias practices.

This report was created by the Core Academic Interviews Project Team in 2021.