TABLE 2.

Faculty member affiliation according to the 2015 Carnegie Classification (see Supplemental Table S2) and illustrative quote for each of the Final ACRA qualifications identified by R faculty as being significant contributors to hiring decisions in the qualitative study (n = 18)

Institution	Illustrative quote
Research vision and strategy
R1-1	A. “That’s what we’re looking for: ‘What’s the question?’ Tell me what the most important questions in your field are and how your research plan is perfectly suited to answer them. Especially in the chalk talk, I would like to see somebody start with that. That’s the person who’s going to impress me … And you have to show me that you’re going to be able to take those big picture questions and break them down into, ‘If I do this experiment, it will answer that question.’”
Publications
R1-3	B. “We don’t discuss impact factors. We try very hard not to pay attention to the journals, but inevitably someone will say something about Science, Cell or Nature. But there will be other people in the committee [that] are like, ‘Dammit. That’s not … We’re talking about the science,’ like: ‘Is this science important?’ There’s a lot of awareness, I think, about trying to really think about ‘What’s the important science? How are they going to advance science in the future?’ The expectation is that it’s a high level, it’s creative, it’s important, it’s potentially new. Yeah. Impact is all those things in that, I think, that context.”
Funding plan
R2-2	C. Interviewer: “Is what you’re saying basically that the funding track record, looking back, is less relevant maybe than the funding potential, if you imagine seeing this person’s package come through a study section?”Faculty: “I think that’s 100% true because not everybody has the opportunity ... to write grants. Right?”
BAC-2	D. “Let’s imagine somebody’s in a huge lab where nobody writes any grants. Do we really penalize them for not having written grants? No, but if they write well, if the papers are well-written, and they’re first author, that’s a really good sign that they can write and collect their thoughts.”
M1-2	E. “If we see an applicant that has [a K99], chances are we don’t actually look at them that seriously, because there’s no way they would come here once they see ... Number 1, if they have that kind of grant, with the teaching load, there’s no way they’re going to be able to do that grant. So, at some level, having that doesn’t really help you here. It probably hurts you, but again, it’s position-dependent.”
R3-1	F. “Fundability. Yep. That is another essential thing because we do hope that you secure outside funds and in the application, at least you’ve demonstrated that you’ve thought about how you might pursue these funds. Agency: have you looked into the funding by the agency, and so forth. Will they fund an undergrad institution? (...) At least they’ve shown that they’ve at least begun to research how their projects might be funded, like what agencies. (...) What’s most likely or most appropriate sources of funding, (...) The more specific they are, the better, if they don’t just say NSF or NIH, but they know particular programs, (...) the better. They seem more serious.”
R1-2	G. “Someone who has thought at least through the first major grant. Not, ‘I’m going to come in and this is the first experiment I’m going to do.’ It’s: ‘This is this key important question that I’m going to spend the next 5 to 10 years of my life trying to understand.’ And a lot of problems that postdocs run into is they think of the next experiment ... or set of experiments, and not, ‘The long-term goal of my research is ...’ That should be a statement in your R01. And that needs to be big and important ... you would have to convince someone that it’s worth doing.”
Research independence
R1-2	H. “Are they actually really dependent on people who do certain techniques or certain collaborators at their home institution, and will they be able to maintain those connections when they establish their own lab?”
R1-1	I. “It’s about: they were the ones who were thinking about what the next experiment would be. They were the ones who are developing the collaborations. They were the ones who were doing all that stuff.”
R1-3	J. “I would say that I think this idea of being independent, there is often a lot of discussion out of ‘is this person distinct from their postdoc advisor?’ If they seem similar, is the advisor letting go of a project or was it a new direction within?”
R1-3	K. “It ranges from, ‘We’ve talked about this and all of these things are going to be mine to take,’ could be, ‘I’m really good friends with my advisor and we communicate regularly, and I know we’re going to do that in the future. We’re not going to step on each other’s toes.’ That’s what I said in my case, I was like ‘yeah, we communicate, we have communicated, we’ll keep communicating.’ People need to have thought about ... If they’re like, ‘I don’t know,’ that’s a bad sign.”
Recommendations
M1-1	L. “I think there’s a big red flag if the person doesn’t get letters from certain people that they should be getting letters from (...) If they don’t have that, they really should explain it. (...) Because that might make us feel better. Otherwise we’re just going to ignore them (...) maybe it would work as a side e-mail to the chair of the committee. (...) Because most of the time people just don’t say anything, and we’re left with: ‘this is kind of worrisome.’”
Fit
CC-1	M. “Like somebody who has an understanding and meets the needs of the institution would be somebody who has this understanding of equity and has teaching experience and has a teaching philosophy that matches those things. In a way this seems like a compound category.”
M1-2	N. “A lot of it’s just fit for the position. Anyone that’s too similar to what we already have, we typically remove, because we don’t have the capacity for redundancy here. (...) I think disciplinary fit for us is probably the most important thing. That’s where ... We have so few faculty to cover all of biology. We still have holes. We can’t have redundancy.”
R2-1	O. “It’s really like survival in a really challenging environment where you’re going to have to be resourceful, you’re going to have to be able to get along with a lot of different personalities, and you’re going to have to launch a research program while also teaching at a very high level, and that you need to have a certain grit to do that, right?”
R1-3	P. “Fit, I think for us, will sometimes mean within the context of our department or community ... Will this person provide something new scientifically? Will they synergize with different communities that exist? (...) some schools will try and build strength in an area, so I think fit can mean those things, as R1 institutions.”