Atypical Rejection?
Hey all. About a month ago, I had an on-campus interview for an advisor position and I felt confident that it went well. I enjoyed the committee and department I spoke to and I prepared like crazy for the interview, especially the open forum portion. A few weeks went by and I didn’t hear anything (they gave me a shorter timeline of when I should hear back), so I emailed the search chair for an update. The next morning, I received a phone call from the search chair that they had gone with someone else and HR was taking a very long time processing it. During the (short) phone call, the search chair encouraged me to look out for other position listings for this campus. As of this writing, I still have not received a formal rejection from HR (this phone call took place about a week ago).
I’ve been rejected from other positions before. I haven’t had much luck breaking into higher ed, as of yet. I currently work in financial assistance despite having a master’s in higher ed (as so many of us do- get the reference?) and a background in campus diversity (we all know how that’s currently going with this administration). I’ve never been rejected like this, however, and it’s confusing me. I’m totally okay with moving on after grieving the rejection for about a day and I know higher ed is incredibly slow with its hiring process, but I’ve never had the search chair call before, let alone encourage me to seek out other postings for the campus (there are currently none that I qualify for). I’m assuming (okay with being wrong about my assumptions, as well) that the verbal no means I likely didn’t place as a top finalist for the role? I’m not familiar with the campus’ hiring practices unfortunately. And the lack of a written, formal rejection from HR (either by email or mail) is a bit strange but I attribute that to how slow the process generally is. I reached out to the search chair last week to see if I could get feedback so I could better prepare for any potential interviews in the future, but have not heard anything since. I know I likely will not get a response, but I figured I’d ask in the off-chance that I could get a response. They might not be able to release any of that info.
Long story short, is this typical or atypical? Perhaps I’m likely impatient and I’m not expecting anything further, I just like to prepare better with any information I can obtain.