Academic Job Search III - First Round Interviews

For other posts in this series:
Beginning a search  Networking      On Campus Interview      Contract       Rejections

So you got a phone call or email inviting you to the first round of interviews.  Excellent.  First hoop jumped through.

Much angst has been lived by graduate students worrying about whether their scheduled first interview time is "good" or "bad" for their prospects.  That is, if the main conference is held from Thursday to Sunday and your interview is 9:00 am Sunday morning, that's got to be "bad", right?  This is on the assumption that later in the conference people are tired and less likely to want to hear you.

That may be so. Truly I have no idea here, but this is, again, one of those things over which you have no control. 

There are two things that matter most, regardless of interview time:
1. First impressions do count.  What my dad always told me is true, even though he's an engineer and not "in academia".  Philosophy PhD Husband did not want to believe what my dad told him at first, because "obviously academia cares about your thinking first and foremost."  Not really.   

2. The hiring committee wants to know that you are "normal."  Read: Your presence in their department will not make extra work for them and, all around, you are the interesting person that they first met in your cover letter and other dossier materials.   In other words, they already suspect these things: confirm and develop them.

Luckily, these things relate to each other.

How to Convey Good First Impressions and Normalcy
You are on display (but only for about half an hour!), so consider carefully how you want to display yourself. (If you prefer a more academic tenor here, consider "performance" a la Judith Butler.)  From the committee's point of view, preferably the "you" that you are should match up with what they read in your cover letter.  (And yes, assume that they've read your cover letter...)
This is the one time where a suit is a good thing even though academic culture, for the most part, does not require suits.  

So what can you tell about someone on first impressions, especially in something as high stakes as a first round interview?

A) How well you deal with nervousness...can you press on despite your self-doubts, your anxiety, and the voices of your spouse/mother/children/friends screaming that THIS HAS GOT TO LEAD TO A JOB because you're broke.  Can you smile like you mean it, even if the rest of you is shaking?  (Cue Kipling's "If" poem here....)  Can you show your courage, your stamina, your ability to go with the situation as it is even though you have no control over it?

This is actually a key test in academia. I've been talking with graduate students over the last couple weeks about "Imposter Syndrome", the idea that one doesn't belong here, or deserve to be here.  The feeling never goes away, at least not for me.  I wonder, if it does go away, that might be just as detrimental as misplaced nervousness because you come across as too aggressive and sure or yourself.

But also consider - there will be many times on the job when you'll have a similar kind of situation: facing students in a new class, meeting the tenure and promotion committee, hobnobbing with the trustees, interacting with media calls (those rare times when non-academic media want sound bytes for their articles on homelessness or politics or women in the workplace or whatever).  Can you be the "expert" the world expects you to be because you have a PhD, even though you know, as Socrates did, that you really know very little?

In my very first first-round interview, I totally bombed it because I was so nervous that I spent the precious little time asking questions about people who were in the department but not in the room.  NOT a good strategy.   They thought I was just interested in the "big names" in the department and all my talk didn't give them a sense of me as a teacher or researcher.

B) How organized and/or prepared you are....  

The members of the hiring committee will likely ask three categories of questions:

• Teaching questions: How do you see your teaching role?  How would you teach _______ class?(usually they'll specify a class you'd teach in the ad or in the phone call inviting you to the interview) How do you teach writing?  How do you teach with technology?  And other specific questions related to the teaching paragraph and/or teaching philosophy you sent in your dossier.
• Research questions: Be prepared to discuss your dissertation in 3 minutes, pitched to educated lay people.  Don't presume your committee knows all of the big names you've studied for your dissertation, even if Mr. Studies Big Names himself is on the hiring committee.  Also be prepared to discuss further research directions.
• Institutional questions: have you looked beyond the job ad?  Do you care about the school for itself, or are you just looking like someone who applied for every.single.job advertised, regardless of potential fit?  Can you at least describe how you would fit into the school?

Prep those questions, write out the answers, and perhaps even put them in a nifty folder so that you can quickly review them before your interview because you will be too nervous to remember the cool answer you wanted to give.

One help for the nervousness that also makes you look amazing:

Bring handouts: extra CVs in case the committee needs them, copies of a potential syllabus or book list of a class, list of future research projects, abstract of a dissertation, and similar.

The All Important Post-Interview Tips:
1. Send a thank you note to the committee chairperson.  Email is fine, especially if that's the way they've been communicating with you.  Hand written is always nice, though may not arrive before the committee makes its decision, if that matters to you.

2. Indulge in post-interview review with friends, preferably ones who will tell you to let all the mistakes roll off your back, especially the ones that loom so large in your own eyes.  Learn from the big mistakes, forget the small ones.  One of my own big gaffes was answering a question about technology and teaching by giving a mini-lecture on why powerpoints are not a great thing in the classroom.  Not my finest hour and perhaps one of the reasons that they didn't call me back for a second round interview.  But it reminded me that the first round interview is NOT the place to give those mini-opinionated lectures!

The committee will probably see between 10-20 candidates, all of whom will be nervous, and all of whom will make some mistakes.  Will the hiring committee remember those mistakes?  Maybe, but they also remember the total picture that you present. If you did your research on the school and if you answered as positively as you could (and gave no stupid mini-lectures) you should at least be able to hold your head up high.  At this point, it is, yet again, not about you.

Special for Women/Moms: I'll just reiterate what I said in my "Networking" post about being able to speak to feminist concerns.

There is at least one special additional situation to consider, though: what if you're pregnant at that first round interview?  This has happened, and actually it happened to me... I was not able to attend the conference where all the hiring was done because I would have been 36 weeks along - no airline would take me - and of course, I knew this when I sent in my dossier.  In the cover letter, I mentioned that I wouldn't be able to be at the conference but would be happy to speak by phone further.  I did not mention the specific reason at that point, but I did mention it once they called for the first round interview.

How much do you say?  It's a bit of a tense situation to negotiate because you don't want "Might Immediately Take Maternity Leave When She Arrives Here" as a reason for them not to hire you.  It's illegal anyway, but the hiring committee may ask the gauche questions anyway.

I think it depends how far along you are. If you're in the first trimester, don't worry about saying anything at all, since it's fairly standard in the culture at large not to mention pregnancy until the highest danger for miscarriage has passed.  Bring along all the things that prevent you from having morning sickness or be prepared to excuse yourself quickly if need be.

If you're in the second trimester or early third trimester, and especially if you're showing, someone might actually ask the illegal questions.  They shouldn't but it happens.  You can elect not to answer.  You can take whatever action you might be able to take in that case.  You can also try to come up with a bland answer like that shows that you are (or seem to be) in control of the situation: "I am pregnant and we are developing a plan about the baby once I am working."  No need to give details.

Any other tips out there?  Things I've missed?  Please send them along....

The Funny, Sad Parking People Story

Some of my readers will have heard this story in an oral storytelling form, but I figure it's good (bad?) enough to share in writing too.  I mentioned in my first post that my institution is family-friendly in most cases.  This is one of those cases where it isn't all that.

So imagine - a 29-week pregnant woman (a full-term pregnancy begins at 37 weeks; pregnancy is generally considered to last about 40 weeks - at least, that's how the due date is calculated).  This woman's doctor has just told her she needs to be doing "modified bed rest" because of pregnancy complications.  She can go to work, but she cannot do pretty much anything else.  No prenatal yoga (despite how great it makes her joints feel, and especially that place up in her rib cage where the baby is kicking too much); no household chores (well, that was nice, actually); no setting up things for the baby :-( ; no shopping trips; no picking up her 3 year old daughter.  Et cetera.

So this woman, a fairly intelligent woman, thinks to herself: "Hmmm, my approved parking lot at my university is about a quarter mile and up three large flights of stairs from my office.  Clearly, I cannot continue to park there.  There is a much, much closer lot, though - maybe I could get temporary approval for that lot."

So she calls the Parking Office and asks.  They say, "Sure - you just need a doctor's note.  You can even have the doctor fax it to us.  Now, the caveat is that you can only get a temporary pass for a month.  If you want it for longer, you'll have to go to the state Motor Vehicle Division and request a handicapped parking pass."  The woman thinks: a) the doctor's note is reasonable; b) the month-long limit is slightly ridiculous especially when it is only six more weeks till the end of the semester, it is clear that I am pregnant (notice the basketball sized bulge), I am only requesting a temporary pass, and I will cease to be pregnant at some point very soon in the future, but (hopefully) not in the next four weeks.  Besides which, she thinks, going to the DMV, standing in line there, is likely NOT to be on the list of approved things that the doctor wants her to do.

Nonetheless, the woman has the doctor's office fax the note.  Four weeks is better than none and, perhaps there will be a way to negotiate a couple extra weeks just to the end of the semester.

Later that day, she goes to the parking office to get the temporary pass.  Underling 1 is cheerful and tries to be helpful, but when he inputs her name into the computer, his face falls.  Underling 1: "The computer says you don't have a pass here."  Pregnant Woman: "Oh, that's because it's in my husband's name.  We only have one car and we share it all the time."  Underling 1: "Well, if the pass is not in your name, you can only get a 2 week temporary pass.  Hang on though, let me check with my supervisor."  Underling 1 returns: "Yes, I'm sorry, Ma'am, but we can only give you a 2 week temporary pass if the original pass is not in your name."  Pregnant Woman (now dangerously close to tears as it has been a rather trying day, starting with the doctor's announcement of needing bed rest):  "But we only have one car.  You people are ridiculous."  Pregnant woman walks, no storms, out of the office.  (NB: This is my one regret in the whole story - the poor underling had no control over any of this; wish I hadn't shouted at him.)

The next day...

Pregnant Woman shares the whole story with Helpful Office Administrator 1, who has been here a long time and knows a few people.  HOA 1 calls the head of the parking division and says, "Okay, you should be all fixed up now - just phone this number and they'll work things out."  Pregnant Woman telephones.  Parking Office Head says, "Okay, now WHY exactly would you need a temporary pass in this cushy close parking lot?"  Pregnant Woman (taken aback by tone): "Well, because my husband and I both drive our one car to campus.  If I need to use the car to, say, go to an appointment, then it is better for me not to have to walk a quarter mile and up some stairs to get to the car."  Parking Office Head: "But our computer shows here that your husband teaches Monday, Wednesday and Friday; you only teach Tuesday and Thursday.  Can't you just have him drop you off?"  Pregnant Woman: "Not really - because again, I might need the car.  And, I do work here full time even if I only teach twice a week.  I come to the office everyday."  Parking Office Head: "Okay, we'll give you a temporary pass, but only on Tuesdays and Thursdays when you teach."  Pregnant Woman: "But I need it especially on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, because I drop off Philosophy PhD Husband and then drive to drop off our daughter at day care.  He teaches at 8 am and the day care doesn't open till 7:30, so he can't drop her, drop me and park and get to his class on time in that time frame."  Parking Office Head: "Okay, we'll do a Monday/Wednesday/Friday only pass."  Pregnant Woman sighs and accepts this deal, grudgingly.

Later that day....

Pregnant Woman mentions this story to a few colleagues, including her department chair person.  She is laughing about it, because it is SO ridiculous, but is also rather angry.  But Department Chair is even more upset.  Over the course of the rest of the day, Department Chair gets four other administrators on board, all of whom are livid about the situation and all of whom try to get the Parking People to change their minds.

Which leads Pregnant Woman to ponder: "How many administrators does it take to screw in a lightbulb for the Parking People?"  Will they have to take it all the way to the President's Office?

Apparently, no.  Parking Office accedes and says that there can be a temporary pass for a month, for every single day of the week.  Yippee.  Philosophy PhD Husband goes to the Parking Office to get the hard-won pass, where....  Underling 2 grills him about WHY Pregnant Woman needs this pass.  "But you carpool, right? You can just drop her off."  Philosophy PhD Husband returns home, empty-handed.

The next day...

Pregnant Woman speaks again with the administrators.  By mid-morning, HR Administrator has (thankfully) cleared everything up, INCLUDING the four week problem.  "Just tell them how long you need the pass for," she says.  And Pregnant Woman does.  And almost immediately, she starts feeling a bit less winded, a bit less concerned about the welfare of the unborn baby.

NB:  Friends at other institutions say that, despite the best intentions and whatever the "Mission" of their school might say, the Parking Office has given them similar grief.  From a Parking Office POV, especially on campuses with limited parking, I can see the need to be firm about spaces.  But it is also clear to me that Practical Wisdom needs to be taught a bit more often in training courses, et cetera.