Faculty Candidate Evaluation: Fill & Download for Free

I can only address the question for Computer Science, and for how faculty applicants are regarded in top U.S. schools.In the CS field, the schools that are considered at the very top level happen to be in the U.S. People from these schools probably have an edge in getting the attention of hiring committees.But it's a small edge. Those top-level schools are strong across the board, but a large number of other schools are first-rate in a some areas of CS, or just have one excellent faculty advisor in some area. That includes many schools around the world, including in Germany. If you come out of one of those elite groups, you are not at a disadvantage, regardless of the overall ranking of your university.Also, every year we see cases of brilliant faculty candidates whose research record far outstrips the reputation of the group where they got their PhD. Often, but not always, that's a result of post-doc research the candidate has done.Some excellent candidates from lesser-known groups may escape our notice, but when we do notice them, we try to evaluate their potential as a faculty member by looking at the overall picture, and the university they came from plays only a small role in that evaluation, if any.I know that in CMU School of Computer Science, we have had some faculty with PhDs from German universities, and many from outside the U.S.

The primary purpose of most universities is (or should be) in educating the public. The secondary purpose should be in conducting new research and expanding human knowledge. (Not that these two endeavors are completely unrelated.)However, for some reason, it seems that in hiring faculty, the order of these priorities is very often reversed. Moreover, research track record is by far the most important factor in tenure decisions, which means that good or exceptional teaching among tenure-track faculty is not even particularly incentivized, either.I don't know, and I don't have much to say about, the best ways to evaluate research track record. But I think that teaching merits (or lack thereof) should be taken more seriously by faculty hiring committees at most American universities. This is a broad problem, not just a hiring problem.

This is yet another question that falls under the umbrella of “How many publications do I need to do X?”The answer is N, where N > 1.There is no magical formula or threshold for any of these landmarks: graduation from the PhD, getting a postdoc, or getting a faculty position in CS.Just like applying to a graduate program, you should remember that you’re not doing this in a vacuum. When you apply to the PhD, you’re competing for a few spots against that pool of applicants to the same department that year. When you apply for each open CS faculty position, you’re again competing for a single position with a number of fresh PhD graduates, postdocs, and in some cases faculty with current positions at other universities. It is highly unlikely that you’re the only applicant to a particular faculty position (and even if you were, you’re unlikely to get it, because no department I know of would settle for someone just because they’re the only applicant).So the answer is that it varies. The obvious super star candidate can defend their PhD with 10+ first author papers at the top publication venues (most likely conferences in CS) in their area(s). But there are plenty of superb faculty candidates who get the job with only 1 or 2 fantastic publications. If I recall correctly, MIT Prof Dina Katabi, who has received most honors possible in CS, finished her PhD with 2 papers, and received a job offer from basically every department she applied. It helped that both of her papers were at SIGCOMM, the premier computer networking conference, AND both papers received the best paper award at SIGCOMM in their respective years. Another example is Robert Morris (Prof at MIT), one of the smartest (and nicest) people in networking. While Robert had a number of publications prior to defending his dissertation, the story goes that he got his job offer from MIT because of exactly 1 paper (at INFOCOM 2000).Faculty hiring committees are generally made up of some of the smartest faculty in the department. Nobody makes decisions on hiring based on paper count. Once you get past some level of productivity that gets you on their radar, the committee will evaluate your work in exceptional detail, and you’re evaluated on the overall depth, impact, creativity of your research, and what it demonstrates of your potential for future success. Hiring faculty is probably the most critical decision a department makes, because right or wrong, each decision will impact the department for many years to come (minimum of 6, with no maximum).