A request in the comments of a recent discussion about appropriate attire for interviews asks for a discussion of interviews. It seemed to me a good idea.
Q: What advice can you give to those brave souls on the market who get interviews? What questions should they anticipate? Prepare for? Spin? And ask? What are your warnings, tips, suggestions, etc? Anything but the fucking clothing!
We received five million applications for this spot. We're not Harvard, but the glut is unspeakable.
ReplyDeleteWe're not looking for perfect; we're looking for the person who is perfectly qualified for this position. So be bland. Don't offend any of us in any way. Just be qualified.
Never mind. I'm wrong half the time when I try to predict which candidate will come out on top.
We always hire the most mediocre person. Always. It's the least offensive of the group. Always. The best people never get picked because they piss someone off or make someone feel too much envy.
ReplyDeleteWe never pick the worst either, although there's always one committee member who goes for that person in a weird way.
If you've applied at any college with a mission statement or "core values," make sure you think about how you would support those in your teaching, even if you're a Phys Ed instructor.
ReplyDeleteThey always ask, and it's always like trying to carry a gallon of Jello in your arms.
There are some good interview stories on RYS, of course. This is my favorite.
ReplyDeleteDon't allow yourself to ramble in your answers. Keep them concise and precise. For fuck's sake talk about your work as if you are really into it, because if you aren't, no one else in that room will be. If you can't make it through the research part of the interview in more or less one piece, you shouldn't be in that room anyway.
ReplyDeleteIf you have affect problems (too manic, or so low key you come off as depressed) drugs help. Just don't take them in front of the committee.
The questions tend to be pretty standard, but the advice above about interviewing at schools with "core values" and such is good in terms of how to prepare.
Be prepared to talk about your teaching as if you give a fuck, even if you are interviewing at a school that patently doesn't care about it. The conference interview is the one time each year that my colleagues pretend that they spend more than a fraction of a second thinking about the classroom. They want you to pretend too.
For survey courses, be prepared to justify which texts you would assign with a logical explanation. In fact, just be prepared to talk about that for any class you might teach. And while we're on that subject, Jesus H Christ on a Unicycle, have some clue what the curricular requirements are for every school you are interviewing with. That is to say, don't start yammering on about Western Civ if we eliminated that course a decade ago. And if you are one of those people who likes to hand out your sample syllabi like party favors (1997 called, they want their slick interview trick back) then don't hand me a semester syllabus if my school is on the quarter system. That'll just piss me off.
A question I like to ask in the teaching part of the interview is "tell me about something that went terribly, disastrously wrong in one of your classes and what you learned from that experience."
Other teaching questions you should be prepared to give good answers to might include:
How do you a handle students who hate your subject and are just in the room to satisfy a distro?
How do you handle huge differences in ability level in the same classroom?
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ReplyDeleteWear clothes. I’m surprised that, in the previous discussion of what to wear, no one suggested, “nothing.”
ReplyDeleteSeriously, one question one should anticipate is: “If we hire you, what exactly will you do when you get here?” It’s embarrassing not to have a snappy, plausible answer to that one.
When “teaching philosophy” comes up, just once, I would absolutely lurve to hear a candidate who has the honesty and integrity to say, “Since our field is physics, which as you know is intellectually very rich, involves known facts and right answers, and demands reasoning and not just scholarship, I lecture. The smart students know enough to write down what I say and what I write on the board and learn from it. They also know that the only way most humans really learn this is by doing the homework problems, by themselves, and honestly. The ones who haven’t caught on to this by this late stage and are also proficient at mathematics likely never will, so one shouldn’t waste a lot of time on them, although one should still strive to be as courteous as possible, and remember that some people can and do change, for the better.” I’d recommend hiring anyone who said this on the spot! And don’t worry, you’ll NEVER get more than one of these per year.
Seriously again, what we’d like is to hire a normal person with whom we can work, someone free of pretense, dishonesty, jealousy, greed, or other hangups. Have you hung out with a bunch of academics lately? It’s a wonder anyone gets hired.
It also helps for the job candidate to be independently wealthy and to announce that paying a salary will therefore not be necessary, so the department can put this money into the faculty travel budget.
Also, people who give a handshake that feels like a dead fish, or the other extreme, almost always guys, whose handshake squeezes so hard it makes me cry out in pain, are double-plus ungood. My initial reaction is, “Jerk!”
Be sure to ...
ReplyDelete- hit on the hottest member of the committee. If you don't get a chance to drop some hints during the interview, invite that person up to your hotel room if and when you run into that person later in the conference.
- let the committee know that you are a Jain and can't shake hands, as that might harm the microorganisms living on that part of your body.
- keep looking at your watch.
- giggle at random times while someone in the committee is talking.
- ask specifically what the college's policy is about sexual relations between professors and undergrads. Ask follow-up questions about certain types of details - hetero, gay, age limits, consequences of student pregnancy for your tenure review, whether the policy differentiates between sex on campus or off, etc.
- follow that with the question of whether it can be considered likely that a random student at that school would have condoms at any particular time.
- receive and respond to several text messages during the interview.
- tell the committee you've got a really nasty itch right in the middle of your back and request that someone help scratch it. Afterwards, be sure to say, "Thanks, that's a real bitch when that happens during a lecture."
- find something in your suit pocket and wonder out loud what it is. Sniff it and be perplexed. Then hold it out for someone in the committee to sniff. "Can you tell what this is?"
- If you're a white male, act very insecure while continually apologizing that you won't be able to help the department meet any quotas. Also try being offensively defensive about possible accusations of racism. "I could get hit by a car and become handicapped if you need someone for that. I don't think I could do gay, however. My cousin was married to a black guy for five years. I had some Jewish friends in college...."
- and if you're not a WASP heterosexual male, remind the committee of that at every opportunity. "As a handicapped Jewish lesbian of color, I have found...", Include at least one such reference in every utterance you make.
- make sarcastic remarks about the college mission statement.
- say you'll pull your weight, but you have this obsessive compulsive thing about symmetry. So you're fine with eight courses per year, but it'll have to be 1/7 or maybe some years at 2/6. 3/5 makes you nervous and 4/4 is, unfortunately, completely out of the question.
- tell them at length about the novel you wrote that hasn't been published yet, but would make great core reading for several of the classes you have seen in the college catalog. Be sure to emphasize how the fascinating premise and the artful language represents a synthesis of human art and the human experience for our time, something no undergrad should miss and the students at this school will be lucky to have.
- ask if you could keep living where you do now and teach online. Promise to fly in for the faculty Christmas party every fall and the graduation ceremony every spring.
- turn your chair around and lean forward against the back of the chair.
- complain about all the stupid papers you've heard at the conference so far.
...and finally, of course...
- ask if CM blog entries count towards tenure!
One of the first questions, that I ask a candidate is, “What do you know about our institution?” I am always surprised when this question is received with blank stares. It is not that difficult to do ones research on our institution and at least know where it is located.
ReplyDeleteCindy:
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't dare ask a candidate that. There's the possibility that they would be tempted to tell the truth and tell us what a sucky institution we are. Why put them in that position?
My own reply:
ReplyDeleteRemember that the interview is, in a real way, a date. If you get the job, you will be down the hall from these people for the next 30 years. You will be having coffee, complaining about students, haggling about duties and teaching assignments, sharing papers, and generally being in each other's lives for a long time. So, not unreasonably, people want to hire people that will both be good at the job but also will be good people to live with.
So, act like you're meeting your new dorm roommate as much as you are meeting a potential employer. You're going to be stuck together for a long time if it works out, and it's better to know earlier than later that it won't work out.
If AdjunctSlave didn't already provide enough good questions, here are a few more:
ReplyDeleteWhat is the absolute minimum effort I need to get tenure?
You guys don't get all bent out of shape about any of that diversity and sustainability crap, do you?
I listen to Rush from noon to 3 pm so I can't teach then.
How closely does IT monitor web surfing by faculty?
*sniff, sniff* Damn, who farted?
How much am I allowed to drink during lectures?
"I listen to Rush from noon to 3 pm so I can't teach then."
ReplyDeleteThe band or the blowhard?
From my experience as an instructor and as an interviewee, I learned the following.
ReplyDeleteLike Kimmie mentioned, never be better-qualified, more experienced, or noticeably smarter than the interviewers as they will never approve the hiring of someone who could possibly run rings around them. However, if one such candidate was hired, their life could be made into a living hell later on and that can start from as high up as the dean's office. This can be summarized in the following points.
1. If most of them have only bachelor's degrees, one might get away with having an M. Sc., but candidates with Ph. D.s haven't a snowball's chance.
2. Don't have extensive experience practicing in one's field unless it's a job requirement or one is retired. Interviewers will think that if a candidate is so good, they should be applying for a position out there.
3. Don't mention anything about one's professional or technical society memberships unless being registered is a job requirement.
4. Being intellectually gifted can be a liability, so don't let on to being a member of Mensa.
In an interview, always give answers that show how one would be beneficial to the institution's finances as, after all, post-secondary education is largely a matter of money. Don't ever mention that a potential student might be better off going somewhere else for their education, even though it might be closer to what they're looking for, as that indicates that one is not interested in maintaining or possibly increasing the institution's revenues.
If one is applying for a teaching position in a professional field, never ever say anything about the requirements and standards of that profession, and the public which it serves, being more important than the "needs and expectations" of the students. (In other words, don't even think about talking about weeding out those lacking any inclination in that field. Just push through as many of them as possible.) As far as the interviewers are concerned, the "public" consists only of the institution and those students. One's job won't be to educate and train them for a professional occupation, it's to give those future graduates just enough qualification to bluff their way through a job interview. Their employers will teach them what they really need to know.
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ReplyDeleteContinued from my previous post.
ReplyDeleteBe prepared to talk about one's teaching style and educational philosophy. Make sure that one emphasizes that one uses student-centred techniques, so know how to make PowerPoint slides. Apparently students nowadays are incapable of learning anything that might be written on a whiteboard and definitely won't if chalk is involved. Interviewers would prefer candidates who relate well to the students, so make sure one's lectures are presented like pop song videos (using high-definition 3-D graphics and stereo sound) which can be downloaded onto a smartphone from a Facebook page. Using the 3 Rs to teach is considered a liability, but using teaching aids such as hand puppets would be considered an asset--after all, this is adult education and things have to be kept simple.
Oh, it also helps if one practices a Kumbaya style of teaching which, as we all know, is a participatory group activity. We're skipping along all together on this wonderful journey of learning like Dorothy and her friends on the yellow brick road, aren't we? Also, being a unicorn wrangler and a conjurer of rainbows would score points with interviewers.
Candidates who are married or about to be or are living in some domestic relationship are preferred. That'll help them blend in with the department. Those with children are highly prized as the candidates will relate better to the students as teaching is seen as a variation on parenting. But such qualifications also mean that an candidate who's hired won't pack up and leave that quickly as they have at least one other person to consider.
Finally, be prepared to work for rock-bottom wages. I once applied for a certain university transfer position at a junior college and, after the main interview was over, the matter of salary was discussed. Between my time as an instructor and as a TA, I had over 10 years teaching experience. The institution was only willing to pay for as much as 6 years unless the dean recommended otherwise. Half of my teaching experience would have been for nothing. Unfortunately, I wasn't offered the position as I would have enjoyed telling that place to shove it.
Strelny:
ReplyDeleteWhich is worse?
@Archie:
ReplyDeleteHow do you a handle students who hate your subject and are just in the room to satisfy a distro? Shoot 'em.
How do you handle huge differences in ability level in the same classroom? Grade appropriately. You are doing the losers no favors by lying to them.
OK, Archie, how do you answer these?
P.S. Scratch shoot 'em. The real answers to both questions are: grade appropriately. You are doing the losers no favors by lying to them.
ReplyDelete@Dr Nate via Strel: I think it's pretty much the same. The members of the band Rush were Ayn Rand fans long before it was fashionable, and long before the radio personality Rush was ever on the air.
ReplyDelete@Frod: I've never asked those questions myself. But I keep a pretty comprehensive catalog of questions my grad students report being asked in interviews, and those two are among the more popular, it turns out.
As for how to answer, I suspect your answer is wrong. Not because grading appropriately is wrong, but because the question isn't really about grading. It is about whether one has a strategy for engaging reluctant students beyond just being a hardass. Personally, I favor the hardass approach, but you and I are both of the right age and gender to pull that off. Our younger colleagues, and especially our female colleagues can't do it, because the students read the same approach differently when it comes from them. Sad, but sadly true.
I think that if I had to answer those questions, I would try something along the lines of "by stressing relevance" or "by emphasizing the connection between the sometimes abstract concepts we are trying to convey and the real world." And I would follow that up with an actual example from one of my classes (even if I had to make that example up). Cheap, like all appeals to relevance, but probably the best way to go under the circumstances.
Sorry for the earnest answer. Because shoot them is the right answer to almost any question having to do with students.
AdjunctSlave for the win.
ReplyDeleteI did actually ask in an interview once if they were hoping to hire someone with inherited money (the position was part time). They all blinked and swallowed really hard. I said, "I ask because I would need the flexibility in my teaching schedule to hold down another job, and that may not be what you are looking for." Weirdly, I got the job.
@Archie: Bubba and Strelnikov might also be able to get away with shooting 'em, too.
ReplyDeleteBut I haven't forgotten what it was like to be young and untenured. Barely 13 years ago, I had to endure a department chair who was such a jagoff, I can't believe he actually believed the blather he blathered at me. For example, he once sat me down in his office and went through every one of my student evals, yelling at me for every bad one while ignoring every good one. If I had to relive that year, and was asked Question 1, I'd say, "Constantly remind my students how our class is relevant to their lives." For Question 2, I'd say, "Encourage them." That ought to hold the little bastards.
Also, I trust you folks know it's illegal to ask about marital status and children? Inherited money is tricky territory, too.
AdjunctSlave for the win.
ReplyDeleteThanks, but Beaker's remark about not teaching during "Rush" hours almost made my coffee shoot out my nose.
Here's one more question for the committee:
"Is everyone in the department as uptight as you guys are about this research and teaching stuff?"
We got an applicant this year who listed one of her references as "(deceased)". As if we are supposed to be impressed that the esteemed dead person might have said something nice about the applicant--if only he'd been alive to say it!
ReplyDelete{{{ eye roll }}}
jesus h fucking name-dropping christ....
@Froderick:
ReplyDeleteIt may be illegal to directly ask an applicant about marital status, but there are ways of finding out. All it takes is something like a casual remark during lunch. Since conversations between employers and references are, supposedly, private and confidential, who knows what's discussed, and the onus is on the applicant to prove that the information was improperly obtained.
After being hired, one's marital status might come up in a casual conversation and HR will definitely know about it. Of course, it could be used as an excuse for ensuring that an employee doesn't pass probation as it might call his or her character into question.
If you are asked about your teaching method, have stories ready----illustrative anecdotes (as I tell my 101 students) because they really make an impression. Don't just tell them how many teaching awards you have won.
ReplyDeleteAs far as not hiring someone who would run circles around the search committee, I can honestly say I am looking to hire someone high energy, hungry, aware of how hard it is but absolutely confident he or she can succeed and ready to explain to us HOW they will do it. I want to hire someone who might want to advance in the college, who really cares. I really do. I hope they do run circles around me. I hope they are awesome and they win all kinds of teaching awards while they are here and that all the students love them and that they rise in the ranks quickly and they set fire to the place, transforming it. That would be wonderful. If we see a shining star, I'll kill someone to get that person here. There is so much do be done and I am so darn tired.
Yep, what Bella said. I've chaired 4 search committees and hired my way into becoming a departmental mediocrity--albeit, I hope, one who supports great junior people. And that's how it should be.
ReplyDelete