1. In cases where a current employee is an applicant for a position, care should be taken to treat such applicants equitably with other applicants. As with all other applicants, members of the search committee should not discuss the progress of the search or the applicant’s likelihood of moving to the candidate or finalist stage.

2. Internal applicants will not participate in search activities (e.g., meet with candidates, attend candidate presentations, provide feedback) at any point during the search.

3. Internal applicants must be vetted using the same criteria as external candidates. They should be advanced to candidate status based on those criteria, not as a “courtesy” to the applicant or because advancing the candidate would provide an opportunity for the individual to practice interviewing. Advancing internal applicants for reasons other than the criteria used to advance other applicants compromises the integrity of the search process. If an internal applicant is selected for additional review, that review should be equivalent to other applicants at the same stage (e.g., if others are meeting via videoconference with the committee, the meeting with the internal person should also be via videoconference or if other candidates are having dinner with members of the search committee, the internal person should also have dinner with members of the search committee).

4. The one way in which internal applicants may be treated differently than external applicants is when communicating that the individual is not advancing to the next stage of the search process. Although email is generally appropriate to inform applicants that they are no longer under consideration, it is appropriate for the search committee chair to inform internal applicants by phone or in person that they are no longer under consideration. As with other applicants, there should be no specific discussion of the applicants’ qualifications relative to other applicants. If appropriate, the search committee chair may offer to provide references, teaching observations, or other support to the applicant for searches at other institutions.