Tuesday, November 27, 2007

So.

Think interview was neither great nor awful. At any rate, it is Out of My Hands, and that at least is one fewer thing to worry about.

They do not prepare you in grad school for things like having the student member on the search committee ask you questions about the class she's taking with you right now. (Actually, they don't prepare you in grad school for having undergrads on the search committee at all. I keep thinking I should do a whole post about the things your grad school professors won't tell you about interviewing at smaller colleges, except I feel like I should actually get a t-t job before I take it upon myself to dispense advice.)

5 comments:

Bardiac said...

I think maybe it's not that your grad school profs won't tell you, but that they are clueless about teaching at anywhere but R1s, so they don't know to tell you.

heu mihi said...

I think Bardiac is right; grad profs are teaching at R1s, for the most part, and many of them have only ever been hired by R1s. On a similar note: My mock interview with my advisor and various other grad profs was about 90% focused on my research, but my interviews last year--at SLACs but also a couple of comprehensive RUs--were 80-90% about teaching. A fair number of these guys are just way out of touch with the current market and its demands.

A question, by the way. Did you say that this was a phone interview? And why are they doing phone interviews when you're already there? Or did I misread something?

Fretful Porpentine said...

Bardiac -- Oh, I'm sure it's R1 insularity and not malice; I meant "won't tell you" as in "will not tell you," not "refuse to tell you."

Heu Mihi -- Yup, I had a phone interview with the people who work down the hall! The thing is, the committee is required to treat all candidates the same, so I guess they're not allowed to do phone interviews with some people and face-to-face interviews with others.

And yeah, that was exactly how my mock interviews went in grad school, especially the first year, when one of my mock-interviewers was on my diss committee. (I think the mock-interviewing thing generally works better if the interviewers are not in the same subfield as the candidate.)

Anonymous said...

History and 1995, but possibly useful: Using the Annual Meeting to Get a Small College Job

I think starting a round of discussions on undergrads on search committees would be very useful!

Fretful Porpentine said...

Thanks for the article link, Dance! IIRC, there was a similar piece in the Chronicle a couple of years ago that I found really helpful -- I'll have to see if I can dig it up.