This is the fourth of five installments of “How to Get an Academic Job,” a new guide on the tenure-track search from our Career Talk columnists. Previously the series explored “How to Manage Your Applications.” Next up: “Negotiating an Offer and Starting Work.”
Once the initial excitement of landing an interview subsides, it’s vital to prepare and practice. Preparation involves not only doing research on the institution and the department but also reviewing your own CV and brainstorming a set of examples and talking points that you could use to answer some of the most common faculty interview questions.
You already may have done some of that prep work in assembling your application materials. But it’s vital to review and deepen that preparation before an interview. Many departments organize formal opportunities for their doctoral students to practice interviewing for faculty jobs. Be sure to participate, even if you don’t feel ready and even if you don’t have any interviews lined up.
How to Get an Academic Job
Don’t assume that search-committee members will know your background well. Most likely they’ve only given your materials a cursory glance since putting your name on the first-round interview list.
So it’s up to you to tell your story. Make a plan: What do you want the hiring committee to most remember about you? It can be helpful to think of three main points that you hope to convey and develop examples to support each. For example, you may want to highlight your use of technology in the classroom, your experience teaching introductory courses in your field, and your participatory research methodology. Identify specific experiences that best demonstrate your expertise in those areas.
Then practice, practice, practice –– not just in your own mind, but out loud. We’ve done mock interviews with many Ph.D. students and alumni; they are often surprised at how hard it can be to answer the most basic faculty interview questions. Give yourself plenty of practice time –– with fellow doctoral students, faculty advisers, friends, or staff members from the campus career-services center. In a pinch, use your phone to record and listen to your responses.
It’s easy for an interview to feel awkward, with search-committee members rattling off the same list of questions they just ask everyone. But the best interviews feel like a conversation. And if your interviewers drop the ball, it’s up to you to bring the sparkle. Do your best to stifle your nerves and smile. Answer the questions fully, with examples. Ask for clarification if you need it. If you feel like you’re spending too much time on one question, acknowledge that and offer to move onto the next one. In our interviewing experience, most candidates don’t talk enough. (For more advice, read our 2023 column on faculty job interviews.)
Interview Questions
Most of the questions in a faculty-job interview are fairly predictable, and will focus on your research and teaching. You may be asked about your service if that’s an important part of the job description or if you’re interviewing at a community college or other teaching-focused institutions. Remember that everything on your CV and other application materials is fair game to be queried by the hiring committee. We can’t predict every question you may face, but here are the most common ones:
On scholarship:
- Tell us about your research.
- What are your publication plans?
- How did you get interested in this topic?
- Have you considered [well-known scholar’s] work on the topic? How does your research mesh with or diverge from that professor’s?
- What is your next project?
On your classroom experience:
- Tell us about your teaching.
- How do you manage challenging discussions in the classroom?
- How do you build inclusivity into your teaching?
- What are your learning goals for your students?
- How do you use technology in the classroom?
- How would you teach “Intro to X” [or any other typical course in your field]?
- How does your research connect to your teaching?
- Do you use undergraduates in your research projects? And how?
- Have you taught a graduate course? How would it be different from your undergraduate teaching?
On service:
- Tell us about the service you’ve done at your current institution.
- Have you had experience directing undergraduate capstone projects?
- For this position we’re looking for someone who can help build our new major in [X]. How might you do this?
- What experience do you have in curriculum development and review?
In a faculty search, you will have to prepare for two types of interviews: a short screening interview (usually conducted over Zoom) and an on-campus visit that could last one to three days.
The First-Round Interview
Screening interviews were once primarily held during the annual conferences of major scholarly associations. A combination of factors –– emerging technologies, sensitivity to the travel expenses incurred by job candidates, and the Covid pandemic –– have shifted this stage of interviewing onto Zoom and other remote meeting platforms.
Keep in mind, however: Even if you aren’t interviewing formally at your field’s annual conference, you are still on display. Between sessions, you may find yourself talking with professors in a position to hire you some day. Take those conversations seriously.
Preliminary interviews at conferences had the distinction of usually being slightly longer (45 minutes to an hour) than those now done via Zoom (as short as 15 to 20 minutes). A remote interview presents opportunities (you can have notes, you don’t have to travel) and challenges (it’s hard to make an impression on camera, Wi-Fi glitches can happen without warning, pets and family members can make unexpected cameos). A few tips:
- Practice your tech. By now, most of us are pros at operating Zoom. But whichever program you use, make sure it’s fully updated before your interview. It’s also worth practicing with friends to see what they think of your background: Is it distracting or professional? Be sure your interview space is brightly lit and turn off any notifications on both your computer and phone.
- Dress professionally. And yes, that means head-to-toe in case you have to stand up for any reason while you are on camera. It’s fine to use notes to stay on track with what you want to say, but don’t sound like you’re reading them. Be sure to look at the camera from time to time. Many candidates prefer to position their laptop so that the camera is at eye level.
- Prepare questions for the committee. You may not have a lot of time to ask them but it’s important to demonstrate that you have done your homework about the role and the institution. It shows your enthusiasm and interest. Ask about teaching responsibilities (if it’s not clear from the job description), on-campus research centers and archives, and anything else that might not be discernible from the institution’s website. Use your final question to ask about the hiring committee’s timeline and next steps.
The Campus Visit
Your goal in a screening interview is to be one of the candidates (usually around three) who are invited to a second and final interview. Usually it’s held on the campus, but we are seeing some institutions choose to conduct this stage over Zoom as well. In person or virtually, it’s important to get a schedule for your visit, so you know what to plan for. Most final-round or campus visits (sometimes called fly-outs) include the following:
- One-on-one conversations with faculty members and administrators.
- A teaching demonstration.
- A research talk.
- A tour of the campus and the surrounding area.
- Social situations, such as a dinner or a reception, with faculty members.
- A final chat with the search-committee chair, who can answer your remaining questions and talk about timelines.
One-on-one interviews. They will take up most of your campus visit. To prepare, do some research on the people you’ll be meeting: What are their areas of scholarship? Which courses do they teach? Have they published any major articles or books recently? Background information about your interviewers can give you a sense of the questions they might ask and help you shape interesting questions for them –– about their teaching, their research, or their aspirations for the department or program.
You probably will be interviewed by the dean and/or other leaders. Be able to give a short version of your research geared to nonspecialists (unless the administrator happens to be in your field). Ask about their goals for the department, program, or school, and their priorities for the institution. Such questions might seem forced, but usually, other conversations during the campus visit will give you the context to frame your inquiries in ways that sound more natural.
Teaching demos. These come in several formats, none of them particularly easy for job candidates. You might be asked to:
- Teach a lesson –– on an aspect of your research or a topic you’ve taught before –– to a group of department members (who may pretend to be students).
- Give an already planned lesson in an existing course (i.e., step into an intermediate Spanish class to teach about relative pronouns).
- Teach in an existing undergraduate class –– on a topic of your choice relevant to the course subject.
If a teaching demo is on your schedule, you should make sure you have all the details about what is expected of you and who the audience for your teaching demo will be. Don’t be too bold in choosing what or how you’ll teach. Pick an approach that feels comfortable and has worked for you in the past. Consult if you can with staff at your institution’s center for teaching and learning. They are often able to assist and offer feedback.
The job talk. This is usually the most important thing to get right during your campus visit. It’s hard to come back from a job talk that doesn’t go well. If you’re on the market and sending out applications, we hope you’ve already given some thought to which piece of your research project might make for a good job talk.
Many academics describe a good job talk as having an hourglass shape: It starts with a broad context of the candidate’s research, narrows in on a particular aspect of the project (its methodology and findings), and then broadens again to implications for further research. As for technique, our best advice is to:
- Sound confident in your expertise on the topic.
- Stay within the time limit.
- Answer questions with patience and without panic. Practice your response if someone asks you a question you can’t answer.
- Be ready to talk about your next projects. This is particularly true for scientists, who may have to give an additional presentation –– a “chalk talk” –– on future research.
Once again, the best thing to do here is practice. There’s not always a lot of time between hearing that you’re invited to a campus interview and heading off to the visit (or logging into Zoom for it). That’s why you should start thinking about your job talk as soon as you finish sending off applications. You’ll be glad you did.
Group interactions. Lunches, dinners, and campus tours typically will round out a visit. Your two primary rules for social occasions are:
- Don’t drink too much (or perhaps at all).
- Don’t gossip.
No matter how chummy a reception or dinner might feel –– especially if it’s with your peers, such as fellow graduate students –– you are still being interviewed. Anything you say is likely to be repeated to the hiring committee.
Tours of the campus or of local neighborhoods are a chance to evaluate the institution and its location: Would you like living there? Does it seem like a place where you could build a career? Do the campus and the town have the resources you need? If you don’t see yourself staying there forever, is it a good first step?
Remember, you’re evaluating them, too. You are very likely to feel a lot of pressure to perform during a campus interview. But the department and the institution need to make a good impression on you as well. You may walk away from a campus visit eager for an offer, or feel more ambivalent. Pay attention to any misgivings you have.
Yes, the state of the academic job market is such that few candidates have the luxury of choosing among multiple job offers. Nonetheless, pay attention to your gut instincts: If it feels like a bad fit, it probably is.
Once home, send a thank-you email to the search-committee chair and to anyone else who helped organize your visit. Ideally, the chair will explain the institution’s hiring timeline. If it’s been a few weeks without any word, reach out with a short email, conveying your enthusiasm for the institution and asking whether a decision has been made. That message is unlikely to influence the course of events or spur the committee to move more quickly, but you do have the right to know whether a candidate has been selected. (A note to search committees: Do your best to treat candidates courteously. At minimum, let them know when the position is filled.)
