A few years ago I applied for a professorship. I got invited for a job talk, but a few days before I got a message from a colleague from another country that he urgently needed to talk to me. It turned out that he had heard from a reliable source (but couldn’t give me details) that I would have a “hostile committee” at this job talk. We discussed whether there was anything I could do, but didn’t really have an answer. I went and gave the job talk, and the committee was indeed hostile – the job went to a man with a very similar profile to mine, but not even half the number of publications (and other CV items).
Story signed by : A humanities scholars (now happy in a permanent position)
This story happened to me in 2018