The academic interview

 


If you are reading this, you are fortunate enough to have been selected by an academic search committee for an official on site interview. Although each institution follows its own style, the general template in US universities involve giving one or two lectures, one on one meetings with faculty members, and meetings with graduate and possibly undergraduate students. The whole ordeal usually takes place over two days.

The most important thing to consider when interviewing is that the department is always looking to enhance itself. Is the department looking to expand into new fields or is it filling some gaps in research topic or teaching? If the job advertisement was field specific, chances are the department is interested in filling certain needs. If the ad was broad, then the department maybe looking for the "best" person, independent of field. Regardless, most departments aim to hire someone who not only enhances but complements at least some of the existing faculty.

The fit

Before you interview, be sure to scan through the faculty roster and familiarize yourself with names, faces and their disciplines.  Familiarize yourself with their scientific facilities and various key educational programs. Ask yourself what makes this department special. Although you must be able to function as an independent scientist and build your own research program, being able to relate or interact scientifically with others in the department is a plus for you and the department. Identify faculty members you may potentially collaborate with or that you think you might want to learn from in the future to expand your own horizons. Does the department appear to have some sort of vision or guiding principle, which you can often synthesize from their webpage or the makeup of their faculty? Does the department's vision or direction resonate with you?

The reality is that if the department doesn't think you complement or enhance the department, you probably won't be hired.  Nothing impresses faculty more than a candidate who has studied the department and knows how she or he will fit in. If you come in not knowing anything about the department or who the faculty are, you will give the impression that you simply do not care. So do your homework before you visit. 

Of course, stay true to yourself and do not contort your message just to fit in. Fits must come naturally. If you look like you're trying too hard to please the faculty, it won't look good. Be yourself, but appreciate how you would contribute to the team and the vision should you be hired.

Your interview talk/s

 Your interview talk is a critical component of an interview. What we expect to assess from the talk is your depth of knowledge, ability to communicate to a broader audience, ability to identify and frame important research problems, ability to think on your feet and your demeanor. When you think about this, it is a tall order. How does one demonstrate scientific depth and at the same time demonstrate breadth? One could have a separate blog on giving talks, but some points are outlined here. First, if you are given 1 hour for a talk, plan to talk for about 45-50 minutes, which means no more than 45 slides or so. Less is usually better. Do not try to cram everything you ever did in your thesis or past into one talk. That usually will not go well.

Each talk should have one or at best two key messages. So decide on what your message should be.  The introductory part of your talk needs to be broad enough and jargon-free so that it is clear to a general audience what your research is about.  A general rule of thumb is to make sure the first few slides are basic enough that your mother or father (assuming they are not scientists like you) can understand! Once everyone is on the same page, you can start zooming into greater technical detail and depth. Those who are not experts may not understand some of these details, but they are willing to listen through it if you set the stage well.  When you talk about the details, this is the part that will be satisfying the very few experts in the audience, but don't get stuck for too long on details. Remember to zoom back out every once in a while and remind the broader audience what the main message is. Zoom out, zoom in, zoom out, zoom in, and so forth. In the last part of your talk, you should zoom back out and summarize the main conclusions, but put in a broad context so everyone can understand. You might also have one or two slides of new questions or new research directions your work is leading to.

In addition to the science and the big picture, it may also be useful in your talk to have a few slides that describe your skillsets. For example, what types of instrumentation or computational facilities did you use? Did you have to go to the field to collect samples? It may also be useful to show a picture of yourself or a student you advised in your research element. This gives the audience a better feel of who you are and that you were in the trenches doing the work.

In some interviews, the candidate is asked to give two talks. The first talk is almost always what I describe above. But the 2nd talk can vary. Ask the search committee chair for what they are looking for in a 2nd talk. From my experience, there are three sorts of 2nd talks. In some cases, the committee is looking for a highly technical talk. The first talk was given to the entire faculty and students. The second talk might be to see if you are technically proficient - this may be a smaller audience. For example, a seismologist might give a first general talk, but then a technical talk to the seismology faculty to "prove" that she/he actually has the depth to run with the team! Another type of 2nd talk is the research vision talk. In your first talk, you are presenting what you did, with a little bit of where you are going at the end.  In the vision talk, you are being tested to see whether you have some coherent vision of your future research. This is where you can lay out preliminary data and describe the projects you have in mind to write proposals. Be careful of going too far out on limb - stay anchored to the work you've already done because your credibility rests on that.  The third type of 2nd talk may be on your teaching vision. Here, talk about what you want to teach, what your teaching and advising style/pedagogy might be.

At the end, and sometimes during your talks, there will be questions. Be as prepared as you can in answering questions. It is okay to say I don't know. It is not okay to bullshit. Think about the questions as a conversation, not as an exam. This puts you on equal footing rather than on the defensive. It is often good to repeat the question before you answer it. This gives you some time to think about the question, but also allows you to rephrase the question in a way that is more focused sometimes. If the question is a good one, tell the audience that the question is indeed a good one and explain why. If the question is only tangentially relevant, you might note that it is an interesting question, but rephrase the question a little.

Individual interviews with faculty

Individual interviews with faculty are where things can go way off script, both for you and the faculty.  In some departments, faculty might be told they can only ask certain types of questions and they may very well be working off a template. In other places, it is completely free form.  You of course won't ever know beforehand, so you will just have to go with the flow.  In any case, consider the individual interview really as a conversation. The easiest scenario is if the faculty member is in your field because you naturally have something in common you love to talk about - your science. The faculty member may ask you questions, but you should also ask her/him questions. Remember, it is a conversation, not an interrogation.

If the interviewer is not in the same field as you, you can still talk science. You should be prepared to summarize who you are and what you do in a few, broadly accessible sentences. If you took my advice above, you will already know who the person is sitting on the other side of the table from you. Never leave that 30 minute interview session without having asked the interviewer about her or his research.  Faculty love to talk about their own research. A good interview is one in which there is a balance between you talking about yourself and you listening to the interviewer talking about her/himself.

Interviews with students

In most interviews, the candidate will meet for a half hour with a group of students. The students of course do not generally get to vote on a candidate, but typically students are asked to meet candidates to make sure there are no red flags. What students - undergraduate and graduate students - are looking for is a faculty member who is truly supportive of student education and research.  Again, you might spend some time talking about yourself, your teaching vision, etc., but a better strategy when facing a panel of several students is to go around the table and ask them about themselves - their name, their major, their year, and what they are working on. Do that before you talk about yourself.  You might also ask them general questions about the department, university or the city. What is life like here?  What do people do here for fun?  The key with students is to be relatable. If the students think you are a arrogant, aggressive, dismissive or detached, that message may very well make it to the faculty. By the same token, if the students really like you, they will tell the faculty.  Little things like this make a difference.

Your attire

Each department and field is different in the formality of their attire, so it may seem difficult to figure out whether one is under or over-dressing. The bottom line is to dress respectably. For an interview, it is better not to come in jeans or shorts or your field gear. Dress professionally.

Be prepared for these questions

The following questions can be asked by any faculty member, the search committee or the department chair.

What do you work on? Not everyone will have gone to your talk, so be prepared to describe your work in a few accessible sentences.

What is your five year plan? We all know that five year plans are silly. But we always want to know if the candidate is thinking about his/her future plans? What are some of the projects you plan to pursue? How many students do you envision working with?  What type of lab do you want to set up? There is no single answer. You must choose what is best suited for you. Some people like large groups, some like small.

What are your needs?  What do you need to get your research program going?  Do you need a lab, computational resources, field equipment, etc?  What is the rough cost of all of the equipment? How much space do you need for your research? What type of laboratory space do you need?  Think about all of these things before your interview so that you are not caught off guard.  During the interview stage, you don't need to know the exact cost of every piece of equipment. Ball park is enough. The chair, for example, is only trying to see if you need $300,000 or $1,000,000 to get started. Working out details comes later if the department moves to make you and offer and start negotiations.

What is your plan for getting funding?  For junior faculty, this may be the question most foreign to you because as a grad student, you probably were never part of writing a government funded proposal. You should have an idea where most of your research dollars might come from. If it is NSF, you should be familiar with some of the funding programs.  You might not yet have a federally funded grant, especially if you are right out of grad school. This may cause some concern from some faculty, but if you have been awarded small grants from other programs as a grad student, you should mention those successes to emphasize that you have the ability to secure funding. Admittedly, it will be a learning experience, but you have done it in the past and are up to new challenges.

What will you teach?  Have a plan for the types of course you want to teach or help in teaching. Look at the current course curriculum. If it looks like you might fill an existing gap, mention that.  If you think you want to expand the curriculum to new fields, mention that. What types of experiential courses might you teach? Examples of experiential courses are those that might involve field trips, labs, or other hands-on or independent projects.

What are your thoughts on enhancing diversity? This might not always be asked, but it should be asked. If you are a person of color, this probably speaks for itself. But even if you are not from an under-represented minority group, it is important to have some sort of diversity statement. How do you envision encouraging broad participation in your field, research, outreach, etc.? 

Why do you want to come here?  This seems like an odd question given that you are the one being interviewed. But the reality is that by the time you are shortlisted, the department is actually really trying to recruit you to come. So you should think of this as a two-sided interview. Yes, the department is testing you, but in some sense, they are trying to put their best foot forward so that you choose them over someone else.  So think about how you would fit into the department in terms of its scientific portfolio, but also in terms of its vision. Quality of life also matters. Do you like the university itself? Do you like the city the university is in?  What makes the department special to you?

And one last word
Make sure you have a Google Scholar page with your papers. The faculty are not assessing your citation metrics, particularly if you are just out of graduate school. Having a Google Scholar page just makes it easy for faculty to find your papers and download them.

Make sure you have a webpage, which summarizes your research and teaching vision, along with your papers, etc. Keep it simple and attractive.

As for social media, like twitter or facebook, be very careful. Social media can be used to your advantage if done right. You can use social media to spread science out to a broader audience, but be careful not to get sucked into the diatribes that happen in social media. The first priority as a faculty member is peer-reviewed research, not social media.  You never know if individual faculty might look at your public presence and you don't know how your past tweets might influence their opinions of you, even before you arrive for your interview. In general, stay off of social media or use it only to exchange quality information.