How to Prepare for an Academic Job Interview

By Paul Hirt, Arizona State University

This article is designed for those who are seeking their first academic job beyond graduate school. Although the job market is tight, it is nonetheless large and diverse. There are different types of interviews to go with different types of jobs. Interviews can be half-hour sessions at the AHA, one-hour phone interviews, or the coveted on-campus two-day marathon. Jobs can be part-time or full-time, temporary or tenure-track, teaching emphasis or research emphasis, entry level or advanced. While different jobs require different interview preparation strategies, there are some general principles that apply to most interviews.

Carefully examine every detail of the job announcement and prepare to respond to the specific elements in it. Departments seek to fill identified needs and you must show them that you meet those needs. This is extremely important. When you discuss your qualifications and interests, don’t stray too far from the job description or they may question your commitment or appropriateness for the advertised position.

Find out as much as you can about the interview: how long will it last, who will participate, what questions will they ask, what do they want you to do. Get as much information as possible about any formal presentations they want you to make. Clarify whether they want a teaching or research presentation or both. Ask about the presentation venue: students or faculty or both? How many? Room size? Equipment? Be sure to tell them ahead of time if you have technology requirements for your presentations. Always be prepared to present without technology. If the projector bulb dies, it won’t be your fault but it will nonetheless reflect poorly on you if you are flustered or stalled because the equipment failed.

Thoroughly research the department before your interview. Find out who is the chair and who is on the search committee. Review all the faculty profiles, especially their areas of expertise. Peruse some faculty publications, especially anyone who is on the search committee or who works in a similar field as you. Look carefully through the course catalog and degree programs. Look for courses that you think they might want you to teach based on information in the job announcement. See if anyone is currently teaching those classes. If not, consider working up syllabi for those classes so you can distribute them at an appropriate time during your interview. (This can be risky if you offer a syllabus for a course that someone else in the department is teaching.) Read about the department’s areas of specialization, endowments, lecture series, special publications, etc., so you will be knowledgeable about the department when you arrive. All of this information is usually available on-line. If it isn’t, contact the head of the search committee and ask them to send you any materials you don’t have. Don’t be worried about annoying them with these kinds of requests. Most likely they will be pleased by your interest and professionalism.

Practice your presentations ahead of time with a friendly audience, especially if this is only your first or second academic interview. Arrange a mock interview at your home institution with supportive graduate students and faculty. We do this at ASU as part of our “Preparing Future Faculty” program sponsored by the Council of Graduate Schools (see http://www.preparing-faculty.org/ ). If you are lucky enough to be at an institution that has a PFF program, take advantage of it. If not, be proactive about asking for advice from friends, mentors, or your graduate student association.

Make your research presentations succinct and leave time for Q & A. Faculty members come to your presentation to get to know you and your work. An engaging conversation will accomplish this more effectively than a lecture. It is better to pique their interest and stimulate questions than to bore them with unnecessary details. My rule of thumb is to spend 60% your allotted time presenting and 40% responding. Make sure that you are also prepared to quickly summarize your “next” research project. Presumably you are done or nearly done with your dissertation, so the faculty will be wondering what new project you’ll embark on next. If you haven’t thought about that yet, get busy brainstorming because any institution that requires a research component in your job description will want to see that you have a long-term, coherent research strategy that will lead to continuing productive scholarship.

Teaching presentations are different than research presentations. The department will usually want you to deliver a full 50-minute lecture with all the bells and whistles that you would normally use in class. Sometimes the department will ask you to lecture on a specific topic and sometimes they will leave that choice up to you. Try to engage the students but be conservative. This is not the time to experiment or take risks. Avoid reading from notes. Ideally you should blend content with analysis and historiography. You may have both undergraduate students and faculty in the mock classroom, which can be awkward. Pitch your lecture to the students.

My last piece of advice is to get a good night’s sleep. Social interaction is crucial and you should avoid being tired or unduly nervous. In the final analysis, the faculty observing your performance will be wondering whether you will be a dependable, cooperative, enjoyable colleague. When you get a job, you join a community. That community wants to know how you will contribute to their collective academic responsibilities as well as how you will influence the social dynamics of the department. Hopefully, it will be a good fit. If not, there’s always another job interview. Good luck!

(ASEH News, Summer 2006)