I had a terrible experience here and wanted to alert applicants who are not affiliated with either UC Merced or the UC System as a whole. I applied for a senior administrative role and was pleasantly surprised when a recruiter promptly asked to speak with me. Before the preliminary screening, three odd things stood out: (1) I was asked to phone the recruiter and not vice versa (2) I was never addressed by name in the e-mail correspondence (3) The e-mail messages - two in number - were impersonal in nature and the recruiter never responded when I thanked her and wished her a pleasant weekend. Before the phone interview, I decided to glean as much information as possible regarding the institution, the role for which I was applying and the person who occupied it. To my dismay, I found that she had left the institution several months before and that there was an interim administrator whose title had not been changed in the revised organizational chart; the latter information, however, was obtainable via LinkedIn. This person's profile and education matched the job description perfectly; the outgoing person had a doctorate while the interim person possessed an undergraduate degree. There is nothing inherently wrong with this if the search process is truly transparent and genuinely open. On the day of the phone interview, I called at the exact time and the recruiter nonchalantly told me that she was getting coffee (from Starbucks??); I thought that this was rude and unprofessional of course but went along with the 'program'. I discussed trivial things (like the weather and humidity) until she got her coffee and finally commenced the 'interview'. Not once did she apologize for the delay or wasting my time. She posed the first question and cut me off after I had uttered only three words by saying that was not what she asked. I was shocked but continued with my response. At the very end of the interview, I asked what prompted the vacancy and she answered with a one-word response: 'retirement'. When I inquired regarding the person to whom I would report, who also was acting in an interim capacity, the recruiter boasted (unprofessionally again in my view) that he was well-liked and would get the job eventually presumably after a search. As is my custom, I sent her a 'thank you' note via e-mail after the interview to which she responded with a link (which I did not open) regarding gratitude and claimed, in one sentence, that she liked 'it' (gratitude). For the first time in my life, I withdrew my candidacy several days after receiving her message. My advice to you, if you are applying for a position here, is to ascertain whether the search is truly open to all or simply a perfunctory exercise; these days, many universities conduct searches, bring candidates from outside and after wasting their time, appoint their internal candidate who either has been doing the work all along or is a known 'commodity'.