Thanks for the rejection

I'm not being sarcastic at all when I wrote that title.   I got a rejection email today, and it got me thinking about how courteous a timely rejection email is.

I've been involved in the hiring of 12 people so far at my company in the past few years: 6 for my direct group, and 6 for other groups. We have committee-based hiring at my company, so in essence, I've chaired 6 committees and served as a regular member on 6. These positions ranged from techs to higher level scingineers with salaries ranging from $50k to $150k.

We get around ~200 applications for any given position, the recruiter narrows it down to ~30 for us and we start narrowing down further. At this point, we phone interview between 5 and 10 of them. We invite between 3 and 6 for on-sites. 

Once I've talked with a candidate, even on the phone, there's a more personal connection. The person has my email; knows my name. So if they don't move on to the next stage of hiring after an interview, I kindly call or email them with a message saying that they're no longer being considered. An automated email will suffice for those that didn't even make the first cut, but someone that takes time out of their life to interview with me over the phone or come out to my lab deserves the common decency of a rejection email. It allows them to stop thinking about it and move on. Ripping off the Band-Aid, if you will. 

I have much more kind thoughts from a company/school that tells me ASAP that they don't want me, rather than not hearing from someone too chicken to tell someone on their short-list they didn't make the next cut. It's common courtesy.   I do it even though I'm just as busy (if not more busy...at least from my conversations with my old advisors) than most academics. With 10 candidates to email it should take no more than an hour. Even if it means I'm typing from home. But maybe I'm the only one that believes in this courtesy.

For those paying attention to the count, I've accepted a couple more phone interviews and I'm waiting to hear back.

Outright Rejections (their loss): 11/29
Phone/Skype interviews offered: 14
Phone/Skype interviews accepted: 8
1st campus visits offered: 5
1st campus visits accepted: 2 (although I'm still waiting to hear back after I accepted)
2nd campus visits offered: 0
2nd campus visits accepted: 0
Offers: 0

Your research is too applicable?

I got my first official rejection letter.  From my top school.

In my company, when I hire one candidate over another, I can only tell the rejected candidate that we had to go with someone else.  A very generic statement since legal says we can't give reasons (I'll never understand this legal shit).  My rejection letter today was interesting.  It said a bunch of generic crap then, "The search committee determined your research was is too clinically applicable."  The job posting was for a bioengineering faculty member that could work directly with the local medical school to develop new therapies.  This is perfect for me since I've already launched medical products that are saving, on average, 200 lives per hour (according to statistics I got last week).

I have very strong opinions about the difference between science and engineering.  My views might be misguided but I consider scientists as those that search for a better understanding of the universe.  Engineers apply this understand with existing technologies, and scigineers perform some combination of understanding the universe and building things outside of just research devices.  PhDs in bioengineering usually fall into either science or scigineering.  The ones that fell into bioscience may have well just majored in biology.  These bioengineers piss me off because I feel like it should be a requirement that if you have a PhD in ANY type of engineering, that you should be able to solve a first-order differential equation.  Those that do only core biology research for their PhD in bioengineering don't deserve it.  Sorry, you should switch majors.  I've met far too many that can't solve dy/dx=x.  And that really pisses me off if you have a PhD in engineering.  It's a personal opinion that a lot of people hate, but good math skills and engineering are supposed to go hand-in-hand.

My application packet had a lot of scigineering: using new experimental techniques and the data from the novel techniques to drive new types of medical device design.  A strong marriage (non-Hollywood) of science and engineering.  Shit, my official job title is Senior Principal Bioengineering Scientist.  I work in hospitals, develop new therapies, pitch them to the board, do science to understand the problem, and create therapies and save lives.  This is what I'm great at.  So why does the search committee think my research is too applied for a position that works with hospitals to create new therapies?  I understand the search for knowledge, and I have a shitload of fun doing those types of projects, but as engineers, aren't we supposed to have applied research?  Isn't the current biomedical funding landscape better built for applied research?  I was certain this school would be interested given the clinical collaboration they're looking for!  Oh well...