In Medias Res #26- Suit Up!

1. What the dapper gentleman wears for ACPA
I went suit shopping this weekend. This-I believe- is the first time I’ve ever gone suit shopping by myself. It is in fact one of the few times that I’ve gone shopping for clothes alone. I know I don’t have much in the way of taste or personal style. This is why I almost always bring someone else with me to shop. Initially I did do that. A coworker joined me for the first round-and ended up buying himself an overcoat- but for day two I went out on my own.
I needed a new suit for ACPA. I’m interviewing candidates for 4+ days. The alternatives were either: wear a sport coat one of the days or double up on a suit. This is what I ended up doing at placement last year (for the curious I wore a sport coat in lieu of doubling up). The whole time I was walking through placement, though, I felt underdressed.
The suit I bought is nice. It was on sale. It is a pretty uneventful suit. Clothes shopping, though, got me to thinking about professionalism. That word in the form of an outcome for improvement came up in my last performance review. I have had a rough transition between ‘grad’ school appropriate and work uniform. I know there are certainly days I come into the office with too much beard scruff, or an un-tucked shirt. I also know this is unacceptable.
Here’s the thing though: this job runs us all ragged. Something has to give for people. For some its their social life. They spend their nights and weekends at work and spend their free time preparing for work. I have a colleague like this. I could not live the way she does. For others its sleep or vacations. I give up ironing my pants. You may be wondering how ironing can be that time consuming. Well, I’m going to have you to simply accept the reality that doing laundry is a bitch. I hate it. With a passion.
The whole issue of ‘what to wear’ gets compounded by the fact that I have very few ‘dress’ clothes. Basically I own enough to get me through a week, however when you return to the same place week after week that’s not sufficient. So I know where my tax refund is going: Banana Republic (and their ilk)!
The irony? I actually really like wearing dress clothes. I think I look universally better in them, and I’m almost always more comfortable when I have to attend a meeting or visit with a colleague.
2. Recruiting
How very underwhelmed I am by the process of recruiting a new hire. Most of the resumes we get have no related experience, are vastly under qualified, or they have some glaring spelling or grammatical error. Now, I know I’m not prince dear reader. I misspell stuff all the time. But not on my resume! Not on the resume I posted to the placement site!
What has been most interesting about this phenomenon has been the ‘unexpected applicants’. These are either alumni of the institution who are now in student affairs or former colleagues and friends that the director who I am recruiting for (but do not work for, I should add) would like to see in the position. Most of these people? No real experience and to cap it off a lot of them have wildly erratic resumes. Were they not ‘known’ applicants or friends of friends they wouldn’t make it pass the first resume review. Quite a number of these applicants have less than a year experience at any institution they’ve worked at.
I know student affairs is hard. I know circumstances change. But when you’re making a lateral move after three months at one institution to a position at the same institution! And then you don’t even stay in that position a year? There are multiple applicants like this. The whole thing makes me uncomfortable, and its making me suspect of this colleague.
I have friends from grad school. I would love for them to live in this city (and believe me I’m lucky because two of them do). I would love more for them all to work at this institution. That’s never going to happen though. Because where I work is not a good fit for many of them. Hell, it’s a horrible fit for most of them! They would hate many of the very things I love about it. Case in point: I spent two hours yesterday in a faculty reading group. This is a professional expectation. They would also hate many of my colleagues, in some cases for the reason that I love them. Case in point: the colleague who made attending faculty reading groups an expectation.
Unfortunately there’s no good way about discouraging this director from pursuing these candidates. They can’t see the forest for the trees, and as such most of us will get stuck with a colleague who gets burned out after nine months. And then we get to do this process all over again (assuming they have the decency to tell us they’re searching-which given their current track record doesn’t seem likely).