0.4 How to maximize the impact of your interview seminar

Outline

• Strategy:
  • What is an interview?
  • How a hiring decision is made?
• The formal presentation –on campus visit
  • Before the visit:
    • Know institution
    • Know audience
  • During the visit
    • What you should talk about
    • What you should ask
    • Good technical presentation
• Questions and discussion

Strategy

You want to stand out in a positive way

• “Never alone and awake at the same time”
• The interview visit starts when host picks you up at the hotel and ends when host drops you off at the hotel
  • You are on even during dinner on the last day of visit

• “Interview”= entire campus visit
  • One-on-one meetings
  • Formal presentation
  • Informal meetings and interactions

Strategy

How a hiring decision is made (at R1 university)

• Step 1: being invited for the interview
  • Application (anywhere from 50 to 150 applicants for one position)
  • 3-4 applicants selected for the interview
    • Recommendations from dissertation advisor, postdoc supervisor, others
    • Match between position requirements and applicants’ research focus
    • Publication record: quantity, journal quality, impact (citations/year)
    • Formal application materials
      • Not a time to be modest–help search committee members identify your strengths on paper and want to learn more (bring you for a campus interview).
• Step 2: getting the offer
  • THE CAMPUS VISIT
    • you want to present yourself well (more in a minute)
    • you want to learn as much as possible
      • Don’t forget: you too are “interviewing” the department and should not leave campus without knowing whether it is a fit for you
  • Decision on offer:
    • search committee members ⇒ vote by all faculty ⇒ dean (final say)

The formal presentation

• Homework before the visit
• Most important rules for interview presentation (and beyond):
  1. Who is the audience?
     • Listen to your host’s instructions: “plan a department colloquium talk; our graduate and some undergraduate students routinely attend department colloquia”
  2. What is the context for the presentation?
     • You are the specialist, but almost nobody else in the audience is familiar with a lot of the “hot”research field you are about to discuss
• Practice your talk before coming to campus

Homework before the visit

• Read about the institution, the department and the research group you would belong to
• Ask ahead as many questions as necessary to prepare appropriate-level presentation
• Ask to meet with people you think will help you evaluate how good a fit the position is
  • Assistant profs in the department
  • Potential collaborators in the department and other departments
  • Female or minority faculty
  • Graduate students
  • Human resources staff
• How to get all this info?
  • Your contact person (usually search committee chair, person who contacted you with the invitation for interview)
  • Department assistant
• Think about all the information offered
  • They will really expect you to fulfill those tasks

    “The department has been running a very successful Professional Masters Program, and we currently only have two faculty teaching courses for the program. The newly hired faculty will have to get in on the rotations for a couple of the courses for this program.”

• Think about questions you will want to ask:
  • What are the P&T criteria?
  • Expectations for research $$ and grad student support
  • Teaching load
  • Department strategic plan
• Find out what courses the department needs you to teach
• Find out department’s priorities with regards to research areas
• KNOW EVERYBODY ON YOUR SCHEDULE
  • Know what their research area is
  • Have relevant questions during one-on-one meetings
  • Can suggest possible collaborations
  • Be aggressive!
    • One possible scenario: “this is easy, the faculty I’m meeting do most of the talking, I’m not being asked much about my research”…
    • STOP! You must thoughtfully get into the conversation:

      “I find your project very interesting, especially since last year I discovered the same effect in this other device. What I did was… I wonder what you think about applying your technique to my device.”