Since American colleges and universities will need to hire about 500,000 faculty members in the next 25 years, it is important that speech communication graduate schools and current graduate students who will be in that labor pool think about the professional needs of small schools as potential employers of speech faculty. The academic background of an applicant is the foremost qualification to be considered in a hiring decision. Small colleges seek the best qualified people available, usually doctorates from quality graduate programs who have shown an inclination toward scholarship. The second requirement is a commitment to teaching. Small colleges can no longer afford to hire PhDs solely interested in research; the strongest selling point for these small colleges will continue to be friendly, caring treatment of undergraduates by highly educated faculty members. One other criterion is collegiality--the ability to get along with peers. Ultimately, choosing a small school for a career must reflect an individual's desire to work at the undergraduate level, to prefer active participation in the classroom to research in depth, and to view communication less as a specific field of study to be pursued in depth, and more as a central set of theories and skills that need to be integrated into the total curriculum of an institution. (HTH)