system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
In the current employment market with such a glut of applicants, how is a failed search even possible?

With literally hundreds of applicants for each job posting, how does it actually happen that the search committee is unable to find someone? In my frustration I'm thinking it's ineptitude...but I've never been on a search committee, and so I'm looking for a more empathetic explanation.
gpt
I've been on a search committee numerous times when we have had a failed search. I'll give you a breakdown of the current one:

1. Position for an assistant professor, tt. 75 applicants total.

2. 20 are international and blindly apply to everything, whether they have the experience/expertise we need or not.

3. 20 are obviously using PUIs as a backup if they don't land an R1, and it's very obvious in their application. 

4. 20 are pretty mediocre. They don't sell themselves well, and never make it past the "meh" stage for pretty much everyone. They need to go to a workshop that teaches them how to put together an application packet.

5. We give a phone interview to 8 people we all agree on from the remaining 15. Not all of them are good. Many trip over words and can't answer basic questions. One person asked us to remind them of what the job was even for. He did not make the next step.

6. The next step is to figure out which of the 8 were the best bet. We invite 3-5 of them because that's what we can afford.

7.  Of those, some can't teach. We have had a few strong ones, and some where the person has zero energy, or has a lot of inaccurate information in their presentation. 

8. We decide to offer a job to the top, but they may have already accepted somewhere else. So we try the next person, and they may also have accepted somewhere else, or didn't like the area when they visited, or wouldn't settle for our pay scale. If those things happen, we have a failed search.