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Every facet of society is seeking ways to be cost effective, be it running a business or running a household. Nursing schools are no exception. Budget reductions have and continue to have an impact on nursing education.
One of the most important aspects of sustaining a high quality faculty is to choose those who will be added to the ranks when vacancies occur. Since there are many candidates seeking positions, careful attention needs to be paid to qualifications, as well as fit with existing faculty and the goals of the school. Yet gone are the days of unlimited budgets for transporting prospective faculty members, wining and dining them, and providing lodging.
Faced with the enviable position of having nine applications from very qualified candidates to fill two positions, and the usual constraints related to budget, the dean and faculty of one nursing school devised a process for conducting telephone interviews. The purpose of the telephone interviews was to screen candidates and set priorities for the more expensive oncampus interviews to follow. This article will discuss the process of using telephone interviews and the advantages and disadvantages of this method of screening potential candidates.
Conducting the Interview
The first step in the process is to identify who will comprise the group of faculty to conduct the interviews. In our case, the available positions were for undergraduate medical-surgical faculty. The dean selected three senior undergraduate faculty who represented the generic curriculum and the RN curriculum. It is important that those chosen are viewed as being representative of the faculty. The faculty selected by the dean to conduct the interviews met with her to clarify the exact nature of the need to be filled by these two positions and to define the task. The group then met together and developed an interview schedule which included the questions to be asked. The interview questions are included in the Figure.
Although there was interest in people who could teach both graduate and undergraduate students and a nurse practitioner certificate was desirable, the primary need was for clinically competent faculty who wanted to teach undergraduates in the clinical area as well as the classroom. This meant that in addition to learning the individual's commitment to research and area of research interest,...