Monday, November 26, 2007

Answer from Harvard Professor

Those of you who read the immediately preceding post know that I wrote and asked a Harvard Prof about an empirically verifiable statement made with respect to a candidate. The statement was that the candidate had 28 call backs within a few days of the recuiting convention. As it turns out, the reference indicates she confused call backs for campus interviews with interviews at the hiring convention. I attribute no bad faith to anyone involved but the whole incident made me smile. Do you realize the difference between 28 call backs and 28 convention interviews? In the first case, it would mean that nearly every school a candidate met with in DC invited the candidate to campus. I am not sure but this could be a record. The second case is probably about average. That is, I expect having 28 interviews in DC would be about normal. In the word of shopping for cars it would be like losing track of whether you were shopping for a 500 series BMW or Ford Escort. I wonder what kind of environment a person lives in to confuse the two. Again, no doubt at all that it happened just as reported but very very big difference. I do not know but my hunch is that Harvard is one of those schools that hire "off menu" -- S.Ct clerks before and outside of the conference.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...
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Jeffrey Harrison said...
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Jeffrey Harrison said...

Dear Anon: I am sorry. I initially posted your complaint along with a response of my own. On second thought, though, I think it may make more sense to simply say that the person who comes out of this incident untarnished is Doe. So much so that if she joins my own faculty, my positive feelings have taken a leap upward. The implication of your comment is that someone has said otherwise and from that someone may infer that the reality is otherwise. Better, I think to let the facts speak for themselves.