Dear Fab,I know that RYS covered this a few times, but with your much larger cohort of "correspondents," I was hoping I could impose on them all at one go with a "thirsty."
I am in a tenure-track job that is not working out. No animosity; we're just looking for different things. The department needs more classes about widgets covered than when I was hired, and I'm a dedicated thingamajig specialist.
But there are jobs out there for me, and I'm in the market big time. My year end conference looms. I have my black suit. I have my "impossibly tiny glasses." I've got three interviews already scheduled. Yet, I am paralyzed with fear. I don't want to make that ONE mistake that will cloud everything else good that I am and can be.
Q: Dear CM correspondies...what MUST I avoid in my interviews? What MUST I not say? What MUST I not ask? What is the dealbreaker for you when talking to a candidate who is otherwise just Goldilocks-right for the job?
A: Post replies (if you willl....thanks) below.
This is an impossible question. So many things vary. But for me, I'd just say, avoid playing a character or a role. Don't "act." We want to hire a human being.
ReplyDeleteIf you're "paralyzed with fear," this is a mistake. Try to relax. This was an error that I made in my job search, in 1998, not a good year to be hunting for faculty jobs, but not as bad as now. Try to present the image of confidence: it isn't easy. But at least, the image of confidence isn't the same as true confidence, and only the image of confidence is necessary here.
ReplyDeletePrepare a set of economical, tight answers to the inevitable questions about your work and its significance to the field of thingamajiggery. Rehearse them in the mirror. Then try to treat the rest of it like an interesting conversation between colleagues, if that helps you relax.
ReplyDeleteAsk about the students, ask about tenure standards. Don't ask about service or teaching loads. Don't ask about commutability from semi-distant urban area.
And if your nerves really are getting the better of you, I know people who have hired acting coaches to help them prepare for the conference interview/campus interview process. Do it what it takes to look poised, relaxed, confident, and interested in what others do, not just in what you do.
Are you really timid? That doesn't play very well in interviews. Remember your accomplishments. Forget anything else. You've MADE it through a gauntlet already. If they're talking to you at a conference, it means you've likely beaten out dozens (or in my field) hundreds of people already.
ReplyDeleteShow your stuff. Be confident. We want to hire someone who knows she can do the job...
I bet you can do it!
It is so much easier to do job interviews when you already *have* a job. Keep in mind the fact that you are already employed and have already made it into the profession. They need to sell themselves to you, too, a little bit, even as you need to convince them that not only your work, but the fit, is good.
ReplyDeleteDon'ts (as in, things I have seen sink an interview):
Don't babble without making eye contact
Don't exclude one person in the room from eye contact.
Don't express interest in working with a particular colleague by name.
Don't name-drop, period.
Don't be dismissive of a scholar, a method, or a book.
Don't refuse to translate your work to people who are out of your field, or not conversant with your theoretical framework.
Don't forget to talk about the kinds of courses your research enables you to teach, having had a look at the actual curriculum of the university.
Well, in my discipline, that's all I can think of.
@Archie: is it okay to ask about service, or at least express an interest, if you actually *want* to do it? I'm not on the market at present, but the fact that service isn't part of my job (and, oh yes, the lack of support/credit for research and the low salary and the high teaching load and the poor job security) is one of the reasons I might go on the market in the future. I'd think that saying "I miss the chance to serve on departmental committees; I'm looking forward to having that be part of my job" might actually be attractive to some departments (but less so, I realize, to those that really want me to concentrate on research and/or generally hold service in contempt). But maybe I'm wrong about that.
ReplyDeleteCassandra,
ReplyDeleteThere are always exceptions to every rule, and I think you just hit on one. Most people who ask about service are signaling their unwillingness to serve. But if you put it the way you just did, I think it can be a plus. But not generic service. It is good if you can point to something specific like the undergraduate research journal or the like.
And I absolutely second Marcia's point about never saying something bad about a scholar or a book. I once did that in an interview only to realize later that one of the people in the room had been the undergrad research assistant of the person whose book I said something bad about. You never know who people are connected to or what their interests/concerns are. Keep it positive.
I’ve always found these sorts of questions really difficult because EVERYONE is going to tell you something different. I’ve had decent luck on the job market since I got my Ph.D. in 2008 (four t-t interviews, and three offers) and I have always asked the questions I am apparently not supposed to ask. No offense to Angry Archie, but I have always asked about teaching loads. Look at it this way: you have another job. What you are trying to do is find a school that is a better fit for you than your current one. And teaching load is a big part of that. If you know you are the type of person who can’t handle a 4/4 teaching load, why not find out about that up front? Obviously, don’t let that be the first question out of your mouth, but I think you should try to find that out over the course of an eight hour campus interview.
ReplyDeleteI actually found it was more important to have SOMETHING to ask, so I prepared a small list of questions I could stick in at the end, after we had talked about my research and their research. Inevitably, someone asks you what your questions are, and if you don’t have sensible ones prepared, you might find you draw a blank out of nervousness. And in my opinion, awkward silence might be worse than asking the wrong questions.
To the best of my ability to discern, the key seems to be to find that comfortable line between confident and cocky. To talk a little about yourself, but also to be very interested in who your potential new colleagues might be (and since it is about finding the right fit for you, you have every reason to be genuinely interested in them). Remember that while you are not God’s gift to all things academic, you are also not a supplicant. Try not to remind them of their graduate students.
First, remember, at the end of the day you can go home to a paycheck. It's not this or McD's.
ReplyDeleteLook over the department offerings (I'm sure the calendar is online) and see what you can offer THAT DEPARTMENT. They have a course on thingamajigs, oh good! You'd be happy to teach that. They DON'T hav a course on thingamajigs - you'll be happy to develop one if they would like. Whose research does your research intersect with? Whose research can your research be made to sound like it intersects with? You would be delighted to work in a department with a research emphasis on whirligiggery, since that synergizes nicely with your recent research on thingamajigs.
Find, in other words, for every department that's interviewing you, a research reason you'd love to be at that specific place (other people you'd like to work with, and don't only pick the high-powered name-brand ones; some juniors would be good to mention); a teaching reason you'd love to be at that particular place (courses you can or would like to offer); and some other reason you'd like to be in that particular place (mountains! beaches! great libraries! a fascinating thingamajig museum!)
Draw them all out as much as you can in the 15 minutes you've got about their own work. Nobody ever asks us about our work and I'm always tickled pink when someone looks genuinely interested.
When someone asks at the end of the interview, "do you have any questions you'd like to ask us?", one interviewee blew my socks off and got an on-campus interview by responding "I do have one. What do you like best about your job?" And we all went round and told her. This made us all feel really good about her because it was perspicacious AND because it reminded all of us that there WAS something we liked about our job, which is not always at the front of your mind at 9:00 a.m. in a cramped, windowless, airless hotel interview room surrounded by people in suits and the pervasive smell of fear.
What not to do? Don't act as if our job is not good enough for you. Don't act as if you're not good enough for the job, either. Act as if it would be great if you got the job and you would be delighted to be working there and would bring a lot to their (specific!) department.
Then go do it all over again with a different set of people and wonderful things about their department. When the conference is over, sleep for a week.
I like the idea of an acting coach, or just a mock interview with a couple of friends (hwhich is maybe even better). it helps a lot.
No offense taken. Of course things like teaching load come up during an on-campus. If the dean doesn't explain that during that particular tete-a-tete, something's seriously wrong. They have to explain what the job actually entails at that point. A lot of things happen during an on-campus.
ReplyDeleteBut I took the question to be specifically about the 30 minute conference interviews. And in that context I would stay away from teaching load unless one of the interviewers brings it up first. Whether you mean it that way or not, it winds up sounding snotty, and suggests that you don't want a job with a heavy load, or that you are already looking for ways to shirk before you've even made it to campus, much less been offered the job.
But I think the "what do you like about your job" question is sheer genius. Whoever thought of that should get a prize.
One thing that others have mentioned that I would endorse is that going into that hotel room when you have a job already is a totally different experience from being an abject supplicant. It certainly was for me.
They will treat you differently from a newly minted PhD, and you will feel different during the experience, whether you realize it just now or not. You've done this successfully before, and you will probably find yourself naturally falling back on the things that worked in those rooms in the past. That's how it should be.
Just a small addition that I didn't see mentioned in the great posts above: Be prepared for questions about the "clientele" where you are going to teach. You may get asked how you intend deal with or what experience you have working with certain groups of students such as minorities, older-aged, underprepared, etc. Don't get taken by surprise that X University has a large marjority of Purple People Eaters. Good luck!
ReplyDeleteAnother response to "do you have any questions for us?" that has worked reasonably well for me (and that I stole from a job-talk workshop, I think at the MLA) is "do you have any concerns about my candidacy that I can address?" It's a bit scary to ask, but can lead to a chance to clear up misconceptions, and may reveal some useful information (I learned that one of my recommendation letters focused solely on my potential as a researcher -- not a good thing in a market where I was applying for mostly teaching-oriented jobs).
ReplyDeleteCaveat: I've never actually landed a tenure-track job (and haven't done much applying for some years, for a combination of personal and professional reasons).
Fair enough, Archie-- I don’t think I did ask about teaching load at the weird sort of academic speed dating that goes on at conferences. At that point, I suppose you are really just sort of getting your foot in the door and trying to secure a campus interview. You can do most of your evaluation of whether or not this is the place for you on campus.
ReplyDeleteAnd, man, it is a whole different world interviewing for a job when you already have one. I just moved last year (for very similar reasons to Theresa) and the way people interacted with me, the way I was viewed and treated, the ease with which I spoke about my research and teaching, was so dramatically different from when I was ABD and scrambling around for any position. I think I smelled less of desperation. It calmed me down a lot to remember that even if I didn’t get the job, this was a great opportunity to meet colleagues in the field and expose new people to my research. If you think about it that way, you might actually start to enjoy yourself.
P.S. In addition to “what do you like best about your job,” I really like Cassandra’s question above. I’ve never used it myself, but I’ve had friends that cleared up serious misconceptions this way.
Another good one I've used: "How has the department changed in the past five years, and how do you expect it to change in the next five?" Can be used for that dreaded Dean interview (substitute "Division of Humanities/Social Sciences/etc." or "campus").
ReplyDeleteLove Merely's advice, but I'm *still* not sure about the "I'd love to work with xyz colleagues" statement. It can insult someone not named, or panic the committee who knows that xyz isn't goint to get tenured or is on her way out, or provoke silent mirth from the committee who knows that xyz routinely shits on new hires. Better to say, I think, "I'm especially excited to work with colleagues in X [cognate field, or unexpectedly not-cognate field], where X is a strength of the department. And say why, with your own research at the forefront, so you don't seem to be wanting to rub shoulders with the bigwigs.
I've just seen "naming names" backfire too many times.
I would second Low Salt's recommendation: be yourself -- not the "I'm desperate to get out of my current job" self but the everyday get up and eat breakfast self. I've always likened interviews to an incredibly long first date that may (or may not) lead to a marriage proposal. Because let's face it, academic jobs are (usually) long term propositions. The interview committee is looking for somebody they are going to want to see (although not necessarily wake up to) every day of the year. If you come across as pompous, smarmy, weird, or fake then you're cooked. Unfortunately, you have no way of knowing if you will be perceived as any of the above because, like in all dating situations, chemistry is pretty subjective and you either click or you don't.
ReplyDeleteNow the conference interview is different -- this is a first date, leading to a second date (that leads to the marriage proposal) so you just have to be normal enough for them to want a second look. So yes, just be yourself and hope that that's what they're looking for.
Oh, and don't say bad things about your current institution. If asked, explain the lack of fit as briefly and honestly as possible but don't blame the department for that lack of fit (in the "it's not my fault" vein) because then you will be perceived as negative, and nobody wants to marry a downer!
Just know that there's not necessarily a right way to do the interview. We see lots of contradictions in the comments here, for example.
ReplyDeleteI was on a very-very-top-administrator search committee last year. The finalists had radically different interview styles and content. Two-thirds of them were quite acceptable. At another school, the other one-third might have been acceptable; apparently they were, because they were all employed.
As a somewhat new department chair, and a tenured faculty member, I know that one of the things that I want to figure out from an interview is whether you will like being here with us and whether we will like having you here. Will we have to do this all again in 2 years? When we interview and hire, we are hoping for someone who will stay. We are a small 4-year state college, and the cost of interviewing can be problematic.
ReplyDeleteThis is in addition to all of the other qualities that we value - are you a good teacher? Will you supervise student research projects? Will you do your own research? Will you serve on committees?
In addition to all those, I need to know that you won't become a landmine that the rest of us will have to tiptoe carefully around. We don't have to be BFFs, but I don't want to call University Police and have them stand outside our seminar room during department meetings in order to keep the meeting civil (true story from our department, back in the old days).
Just breathe, prepare, and be yourself. And, good luck!
Clara is right, especially with her last point. PREPARE. How many times have I sat in the conference hotel lobby Googling every last detail I could about the school or department!!
ReplyDeleteYou can't know enough about the place. And you don't even need to drop the names or facts. They often just come up.
One time a committee member said to his colleagues, "She'd be a good candidate for the Thomas Project," a rather new library-related proposal that their Dean was behind.
I nodded and said. "Yes, and since that deadline isn't until next year, I'd have a chance to get a good start on it."
Jaws dropped. Got the job, but took another offer. Still worth it.
Avoid the following questions:
ReplyDelete"There's no drug testing, right?"
"What is the penalty for sleeping with students?"
"Is that a toupee?"