I recently discovered that it might be the case that faculty searches at my college cannot request or consider closed/confidential letters of recc in job searches. We're allowed to request a list of references and call those references, but we can't request closed letters for [HR policy reasons related to us being a public college]. I've been on hiring committees, but never coordinated one before so it hadn't occurred to me to ask until now.

Has anyone else had this experience? There's lots of armchair reasoning about why closed letters are better than open ones, but I wonder if anyone can speak to a situation in which it really mattered.