Interviewing Advice

[pseudonym]

I am interested in general interviewing advice, but I also have a specific question. I had 3 in-person and 5 phone interviews in the last year (with teaching institutions and cc's). I felt as though a few of them went rather well, yet I did not receive an offer. I've tried to craft a friendly yet professional interview persona. I'm concerned that I may be projecting an overly-eager image that faculty members might not like. For example, I often mention potential plans for introducing new teaching techniques into the classroom. I fear that some overworked and overwhelmed faculty members might worry that my enthusiasm would disrupt the status quo (perhaps I'm being over-analytical). Does anyone have advice on how to project a balanced image of someone who is interested in students and innovative teaching without seeming too eager? Any other general advice?

[ehrbert]

I don't have any advice, but it is entirely possible that your interviews did go just fine. A lot of places, especially CCs, ended up not being able to hire anyone last year. So maybe they would have hired you if they could have. It is a really tight job market and sometimes, I'd say even most of the time, it is not that they didn't like you or that you did anything wrong. There are just so many people applying. I recently hired a research assistant to work part-time doing just data cleaning, and I got applications from 20 people with PhDs in soc.

[tnrd]

A few thoughts.

First, ehrbert makes a good point, many things go into hiring decisions and many aspects have little to do with the candidate's performance. This is very frustrating to hear, but so it is.

Second, this one is hard to guess, but may be worth addressing during the interview before you go into specifics about courses you'd like to teach. Some schools are looking for people to teach new courses, others are looking to rotate existing courses among faculty. If a place has profs who are happy teaching what they teach currently then they may be threatened by someone who sounds like would mainly come in and teach what's already covered. Some people don't want to have to develop new preps and so would not want to give up what's already on their list. Again, hard to guess, but this is a possible scenario. Alternatively, if they're not looking for new courses, they may not be that interested in your ambitious ideas for new material. They may know that their curriculum has no room for it.

Another possibility is that you are, indeed, being unrealistically ambitious regarding your teaching ideas and the faculty may think that you'll never pull it off and may crash and burn. Do you have very concrete experiences with what you're suggesting that would offer evidence of your ability to follow through on your ideas?

Finally, I'm curious, what about the interviews made you feel they went well? I'm not questioning that they did, it's great that you think that they did, but sometimes I wonder what people focus on in their evaluation/perception of those experiences.

[pseudonym]

Thank you for the advice. With respect to my personal evaluation of the interview, I suppose I felt they went well because the interviewers expressed enthusiasm for my research and teaching style. I know this may be a standard polite reaction, but it seemed genuine at the time. I also feel that I am a better interviewee (and certainly more comfortable and natural) since I've had a few interviews, which contributes to the positive self evaluation. I suppose I just had the feeling that "they really liked me". I've come to accept that I have little control over the selection process, and that there are several decision-making factors, but I'd like to improve as much as I can in the areas over which I DO have control. I'm excited to teach, and I'd like to get started as soon as possible! Thanks to you and others who have replied/will reply to this thread.

[travelbug]

Another suggestion -- have you thoroughly researched the places where you are interviewing? Many teaching institutions seek to hire faculty who will be able to publish as well as teach, so it could be that you are focusing too much on your teaching skills and not enough on your research plans. Perhaps you also might want to focus not just on techniques, but on the content of courses -- which topics or books you would be excited to include.