The article looks into the consequences for recruitment of Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development's recommendations that universities should manage their resources strategically to foster excellence. Using institutional ethnography as described by Dorothy Smith in a sociology department in Norway, it shows how strategic recruiting for excellence resulted in nominating candidates who were not able to teach the sociology program. Operationalizing potential for excellence as the number of (international) publications in the last 5 years resulted in nominating candidates with narrow fields of expertise who had been offered favorable conditions to publish internationally. When academic quality is translated into the number of international publications in the last 5 years, it undermines the policy of gender equity in academia by ruling out women who use paid parental leave to have children during their PhD period. The focus on publications in English also threatens to marginalize sociology's contribution to public debate and national policy.