13 Radical Interview Questions to Incorporate Into Your Campus Hiring Process
Unqualified white and cis folks love to hire other unqualified white and cis folks in higher education. Habitually hiring a traditional white candidate with very little skill and experience around identity, power, privilege, and liberation, instead of hiring a person who knows these concepts intimately. Departments consistently hire this traditional candidate, and then promptly leans on multicultural affairs offices to both tell them (department) what to do in regards to social justice work on campus and to train their new hires to work with some of our most vulnerable students. Often times ending in unpaid and wasted labor for the primarily Black and brown queer and trans folxs who staff multicultural offices throughout higher education.
Creating a diverse applicant pool and hiring a diverse candidate is the charge of most well-intentioned searches in higher education, and is a great example of performing goodness. When I say performing goodness, I mean doing the bare minimum in both your professional and personal life to center equity and justice. Instead, well-intentioned folks are only concerned with the optics of being good, not actually committing themselves to goodness. It is a performance, and a weak one at that. The proof lies here — most departments and academic units on college campuses continue to be staffed and led by predominantly white cisgender (cis) people. We can track patterns of whiteness (and cisness) in conduct offices, disability centers, housing departments, alumni centers, wellness centers, endowment staff, advising offices, and admissions.
There are many reasons we end up with largely white and cis candidates throughout our searches. One reason being our inauthentic, ineffective, outdated, and violent interview questions.
We ask questions like….
What are your strengths? Areas of improvement?
* Can you give us an example of a successful partnership?
* What role do you play on a team?
* What is your leadership style?
* How do you supervise?
* What is your experience managing budgets?
Our questions in higher education are rooted in white supremacy — primarily around production, and never around holding folxs in their fullness. We’ve got work to do!
Below I’ve created a list of questions that can be used throughout the interview process. These questions help shape the politic of your unit, the politic of the visiting candidate, and your personal politic around justice and equity. Four things to play close attention to as you introduce this idea in your areas:
- Track how resistance shows up around (and within) you as you introduce this idea in your areas.
- These questions could be seen as aspirational — fight to not lessen their impact in the now.
- This is a moment to be radically honest about what you care about. And if your core values are in alignment with what you say you care about.
- These questions do not touch on every identity and experience. Create your own questions and share with us.
Creating honest and radical interview questions is a start to holding organizations accountable to their mission — missions that often include a statement around caring or centering the most marginalized bodies in our campus community.
13 Interview Questions to Consider-
- How do you care for Black and brown queer and trans students, staff, and faculty? How have you shown your care in the past 3 months? Past 6 months? In the past year?
- How have you supported student activist and activism in times of civil unrest? What does your support look like when the noise dies out?
- You’re in a meeting on the usage of pronouns during summer orientation. By the end of the meeting, the leadership decides to ban pronouns showing up on name tags or being included in new student orientation staff introductions, as they fear a conservative response from parents/guardians. The previous weekend was the Pulse massacre, an attack on the queer and trans Latinx and Muslim community. What are the next five steps you will take?
- Do you have experience supervising a person of color? Queer and trans person? A person living with mental illness(es) — anxiety, depressive disorder, bi-polar disorder, etc? Tell us about your supervision style.
- Your institution forms a committee to address diversity and inclusion issues on campus. The committee is 15 people strong, but there is no representation from any of the equity centers on campus (multicultural affairs, women’s center, sexuality and gender diversity office). You are on the committee. Do you share your observation? What are the implications?
- Justice has often been described as love in action. How do you define justice? What role does justice play in higher education? In your personal life?
- You are charged with coordinating a drive-in advising conference next spring. Holding that folks have a variety of disabilities and needs, speak on a few things you need to be cognitive of in your planning.
- You are the coordinator of Welcome Week on your campus. A student reaches out to you with concerns for one of the programs included in Welcome Week. This student doesn’t feel like they can fully participate in the movie on the hill, as the film chosen has overt anti-Black and anti-indigenous sentiments. How do you respond to this student? What are your next steps?
- You work in the student affairs office. A student meets with you to talk about violent experiences in the classroom. They said the faculty member allows queer and transantagonistic slurs in the classroom, often explaining away the violence by stating it’s an educational space. How do you support the student? How does your privilege play a role in your response?
- A Chinese international student shows up to your office in tears. The student said they feel like an outsider in their residence hall, dining hall, and most of their classes. They can’t even prepare a comfort meal for themselves because they don’t have access to seasonings and ingredients to make the dish. They are upset, confused, and hurt but doesn’t know what to do. How do you help the student in front of you? What can you do to make systemic change?
- You’re at the Chancellor’s mid-semester town hall meeting. The Chancellor confused the names of the two Black women on their cabinet, referring to them by the other’s name. The room is full, yet, no one calls out the mistake. Who’s impacted by this moment? What do you do?
- Can you point to an issue/problem/barrier/ in the history of higher education that has been resolved — specifically issues that affect the most vulnerable folks on campus?
- In what ways do you align your budget with supporting the most marginalized (vulnerable) students, staff, and faculty on campus?
Bio:
Cody Charles is the author of ’RuPaul’s Drag Race’: On BeBe Zahara Benet And Pushing Back Against The Anti-Black Sentiment In Drag, 6 Scenes from ‘Moonlight’ That I Still Dream About, College Advice for Students of Marginalized Identities, The Vixen Is The Queen We Deserve, Radical Friendship Contract: 10 Expectations for Loving People Fully, 10 Common Things Well-Intentioned Allies Do That Are Actually Counterproductive, Black Joy, We Deserve It, and What Growing Up Black And Poor Taught Me About Resiliency. Join them for more conversation on Twitter (@_codykeith_) and Facebook (Follow Cody Charles). Please visit their blog, Reclaiming Anger, to learn more about them.
