Is it the best "fit?" A TPE Candidate Perspective

Hopefully by now you know that The Placement Exchange and the NASPA Annual Conference in New Orleans is right around the corner. This will be my second time at the conference, yet this time around I fall on the candidate end of the pool at TPE. Now if you’re a type-A personality like myself, you have been looking forward and planning for TPE since early in the fall. 

As a candidate there are a million things to consider when you are trying to decide where to apply. You need to think about not only what functional area and kind of position you want but also there should be quite a lot of time spent considering what type of institution you want to work for. Sure size, geographic location, make up of the student body are all important factors but what I mean by type of institution is: what do they value and how do they (meaning your potential coworkers) embody those values? And the most important part of that answer: how does that align (or not align) with your own values?

For me, its about what kind of value does an institution and department put on social justice work and how do they see social justice play out as a value in their work. Now in my own framework I mean that broadly from anti-racism work to Queer/Trans* inclusion and disability awareness. For me its about the ways we make space for folks to be their whole selves, to be seen and heard and valued, and that with all of the social identities people have, those intersections and connections are given thoughtful consideration. But for the purpose of this blog, I want to center around marginalized genders and sexualities, not that those are more or less relevant/important but that for this KC, it is the center of our work.

Being someone who identifies as a queer trans-masculine person, there are particular things that stand out to me when examining if a school is a potential right fit. The TPE website is useful in that it does highlight if an institution has a nondiscrimination policy for sexual orientation or gender identity/expression. But one of the many things I have learned in graduate school is that policy doesn’t always equate to practice.  So then maybe your next step is to read over both the mission of the institution but also the guiding principals of the department. Do they use the words diversity and inclusion or equity? Do they name particular marginalized identities and if so who isn’t listed? Do they say sexual orientation and gender identity/expression or the moniker of LGBT or LGBTQ or one of the many other ways those letters fit together?

Now you can read everything until you’re blue in the face but those are just words. They certainly can raise red flags if you have a particular reaction to what is written but those statements won’t tell you about the climate or how that value plays out in the daily interactions and responsibilities. So at some point you take a leap of faith and apply. Then, if you are fortunate enough to get an interview, comes the task of being able to tease out those things over the phone or in the case of TPE – face to face.

This is where I cannot understate the importance of your questions to employers. The way you craft them is a really useful tool to judge how well you would fit at an institution. Ask them about particular phrases from their mission or “About Us” page and how that shows up in their work. Ask about how decisions are made in the office or how hierarchy plays out. There are a million different ways to get a perspective on how your values do or don’t show up.

 I am incredibly fortunate in that I have some really great mentors and supervisors who have talked with me at length about how complicated this can be. I’ve been told that you pay attention to what words the employers use to answer your question and their body language. However, the tough part is determining how genuine that may be.  I’m not trying to say that people will lie to you but the reality is as much as you are “selling” your skill set, employers are “selling” the position and the institution.

There are so many things that can make or break an interview, or how you feel about working at a particular place. You may feel like the department would feel welcoming in regards to your identities but then you have hesitations about the way decisions are made, how being on-call works, or how their conduct process works. Like I said there are a million places a red flag could come up for you. And one of the things I have been told, it is rarely a clear yes or no. It’s almost always a lighter or darker shade of grey.  

So as a candidate, all we can do is do our due diligence in preparing our questions and answers. Get our dry cleaning done before March 18^th, print our extra resumes and buy some thank you cards. We can do all we can so that our attention is firmly planted in the interview in front of us and we can gather all the queues we can. It won’t be easy in the interview hall that will be swarmed with potential competition. It’s an employer’s market after all, but that doesn’t mean you need to cave on your values for that first offer that comes to you.

It’s a profoundly personal decision on whether or not you come out in an interview and how you may do that, which is why that’s not the subject of this post.  I hope that some of this helps with the question of whether or not a place is the right ‘fit’ for you and how you could possibly figure that out. And to end my ramble of suggestions, I want to add one last point. Don’t ignore your intuition. While that may not be a wise thing to base your whole decision on, you get that gut feeling for a reason and it’s useful to consider where that is coming from.

So to all my fellow candidates, I wish you all the best. And I look forward to seeing you all in New Orleans in a few short weeks!!

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Bryan McKinney is a queer and trans*masculine artist who hails from Upstate New York. Bryan joined teh NASPA GLBT KC Leadership Team in 2014 as the Co-Core Member for the Newsletter. They have their Bachelor's of Architecture from Syracuse University and are currently in their last semester of graduate school (also at SU) in the Higher Education Administration Department. Bryan is the current Graduate Assistant in the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Resource Center at SU and is geratly looking forward to graduation and the next step in their Student Affair's career.

You can reach Bryan at [email protected] or behanc.net/bjmckinn

If you are interested in contributing to the GLBT KC's blog, please contact Kaitlin Winters at [email protected]