When the job is already decided: On appointments, power plays, and the unwritten agenda

After your PhD comes the job search.

And there, too, the unwritten agenda quietly governs what happens.

My first position was a temporary teaching contract at another university. The job description was vague. They were looking for someone to replace one of two senior lecturers, in two completely different fields.

At the interview, both lecturers were present. It quickly became clear that this was less about my suitability than about an internal power struggle. The question was who would get to offload a teaching responsibility.

Of the three shortlisted candidates, two had a PhD in field A. The third had only a master’s degree, but in field B.

The next day I received a call. The job was mine, but only if I agreed to teach field B.

My expertise was in field A.

The message was unmistakable.

The lecturer from field B had won the internal battle, but his preferred candidate was not credible. So the position was offered to me, with the quiet expectation that I would decline. That way, they could still appoint their second choice.

They had not counted on my stubbornness.

I needed a job, and this manoeuvre annoyed me. So I accepted.

Was it a good decision? No.
But quietly playing along with that game felt worse.

Years later, I applied for a full professorship. This time, the process felt like a reality show.

Twelve candidates for two positions, all staying in the same hotel. On the first day, everyone gave a presentation and sat through a short interview. That evening, we all met again for dinner, civil, polite, and acutely aware of one another.

In the bar later that night, another candidate told me the real story. The chair I was applying for had already been promised. The current procedure was a formality. The position had been offered to the fourth-ranked candidate from an earlier round.

I was furious. I had travelled all this way and prepared a talk. For nothing.

The next day, just before lunch, we were all gathered together when each of us was handed a letter, informing us, in public, whether we had made it through to the final round.

Some candidates slipped away quietly.
Others said their goodbyes.
A few announced they hadn’t made the cut but stayed for lunch anyway.

My letter confirmed that I was through.

At lunch, I commiserated with the other “losers”, already knowing that the job, at least in theory, had been decided.

Later that day came the final interview. Seven committee members were seated together on one side of a long table, with me alone opposite them. It was deeply uncomfortable, and by then I had stopped trying to be agreeable.

After hours of waiting, mounting irritation, and the growing certainty that this was a farce, I decided that if I was there anyway, I would speak up.

I told them their procedure was better suited to a television programme than to appointing a professor. That it was absurd to have already promised the position internally. And above all, that they were making a mistake by appointing someone with a specialism the department already had. They needed new blood.

I walked out convinced it was over.

That evening, I had dinner with another candidate, toasting our shared failure.

Back in my hotel room, I saw the missed calls.

They offered me the position.

Apparently, saying the unsayable had shifted something.

The moral?

Even when you are certain a job has already been decided, the dynamics can still change. Sometimes the unwritten agenda is not set in stone. Sometimes it is just waiting for someone to say the quiet part out loud.