Faculty Jobs: Overview of the Assistant Professor Job Search

Wednesday, March 15, 2017

I'm moving this portion of a previous post here to its own post, as it'll make a nice overview of the process, along with all the posts I wrote about this same topic.

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Applying for academic (i.e., professor) positions is tricky. Especially if you're a bit of a newbie, like myself. This post is just covering the very initial, useful resources of which I took advantage. There's other posts I've written about the other bits and bobs of the faculty job hunt process.

Resources for the Entire Faculty Job Hunt Process

There are some good resources on the process, including timelines, advice on creating & tailoring application materials, interview tips, negotiation advice, etc. Particularly:

• Stanford's Postdoc & PhD Career Guide: A lovely overview of that week-long jobs workshop I took. Invaluable.
• The Professor Is In: The blog *and* the book. Both very useful, like a job workshop. Really handy if you don't have a mentor who's useful for this bit of professional development. The author also provides consulting services (such as negotiation consulting!!!), and a variety of $50 webinars. I attended a week-long workshop at my university called "Jumpstart Your Academic Career" which was a near equivalent going over the cover letter, research statement, teaching statement, and diversity. If I did not have that support The Professor Is In webinars would be worth every penny. Karen Kelsky is the career advisor you never had. A bit polarizing, but better than complete ignorance!
• The Journey to a Teaching-Oriented Faculty Position: A Handbook of Advice for Graduate Students was written by Janet Davis, who's written a decent amount on the topic. I didn't know about this when I was on the job market, but it looks to be very useful advice for the entire process.
• SIGCSE Committee on Computing Education in Liberal Arts Colleges, specifically for Computer Science. 'Has relevant job postings and other resources.
• Philip Guo's Faculty Job Search Overview: The author is in my field, which yields this day-by-day rundown of events incredibly useful for me, but it's nice to get a rather frank insight into the entire process. The timeline at the end could give you great insight into how the whole interviews/offers/negotiation thing might work on a day-by-day scale.
• 'The Jobs I Didn't See' a junior faculty member's personal account of his time on the job market in-between research and teaching schools.
• Another colleague in my field wrote a four part series weighing the pros & cons of an R1 Faculty career versus Industry: [1] [2] [3] [4] (note: the liberal arts college perspective is omitted in this resource)
• Your usual mentors: PhD Advisors, collaborators, peers who have graduated, Post-doc mentors, department heads, etc. etc.
• University Resources: Does your university run a careers workshop for people with PhDs? Or a CV review? Or even just a writing/speaking center for improving your written materials and job talk? Your university career center may be more or less useful, depending on whether they cater to PhDs at all.
• Your Friends'/Peers' Successful Applications Materials: Do you have a friend who proceeded to the interview stage in their faculty job search? Get their cover letter, research statement, and teaching statement. For research institutions. For liberal arts colleges. All the jobs. People don't mind sharing :)
• I'm probably missing some good ones, but these are an okay start.

If anyone has any questions or ideas for future topics, I'm open to it, otherwise I've somewhat run out of things to formally say on the Faculty Jobs front ;)

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Here are all the posts BYOV has written about the faculty job hunt:

1. Overview of the Assistant Professor Job Search
2. Applying for Academic Positions
3. Remote Interviews
4. Packing for On-Campus Interviews
5. On-Campus Interview Lessons Learned
6. Sample Assistant Professor Job Hunt Timeline
7. Reflections on Negotiation
8. Descriptive Statistics of my Job Search
9. Deciding Research or Liberal Arts

Specific Resources I'm Glad I Accessed

Also note that the Deciding Research or Liberal Arts post has some concrete suggestions directly related to preparation for Liberal Arts Colleges. Teaching

• Formal [written] teaching feedback from an education expert at CMU's Center for Teaching Excellence and Educational Innovation
• Early course evaluations I collected from students, at the recommendation of that same Center for Teaching Excellence and Educational Innovation at CMU
• A semester course on goals, instruction, and assessment alignment from CMU's Psychology department
• Various volunteering activities with girls in computer science. Seriously pursue things you enjoy.
• 2x Teaching Assistant opportunities in my department during my PhD
• Having the head instructor sit-in on all of my recitations, so he could write a well-informed teaching reference letter (and also giving him a bulleted list of specific things to talk about to jog the memory - this is a wise move for more distant letter writers).
• Several guest-lecturing opportunities in my department during my postdoc
• CIRTL Evidence-based Online Courses for Teaching STEM Undergraduates

Professional Development

• Attending practice job talks for other folks.
• Attending actual job talks for my department.
• The one internal grant-writing opportunity I've had as a postdoc (would've been nice to have more)
• Personal Websites hosted on university servers with my teaching portfolio and research projects portfolio
• CV workshop held by my department head at CMU
• Negotiation workshop held by my department head at CMU
• Stanford's Jumpstart Your Academic Career week-long workshop on applying to faculty jobs
• Stanford's Hume Center for Speaking and Writing for when I needed a lay person's read of my application materials
• Stanford's BEAM Career Center for providing me with a Science Career Coach with a PhD who edited my research statement and Skyped meetings with me in-between campus interviews about how to handle my multiple-job-offer decision-making
• Shared job talk slides and a Skype conversation with a colleague in a position that I wanted to emulate
• The Professor Is In for being the 4th mentor I never had. Philip Guo's Faculty Job Search Overview for an additional perspective. And the foundational Stanford Postdoc & PhD Career Guide.

PhD-specific

• 'Making Things Interactive' course, because I ended up talking about it in my interviews. I'll now be teaching a similar-ish course on topics from this class, and projects from my volunteering experience.
• Standard PhD stuff: Dissertation, Publishing lots, Advisors that have your best interests at heart, etc.
• Drilling my dissertation defense over and over and over again with my advisor, until I picked up the useful skill of telling a research story
• 2x 12-week internships during my PhD with one publication each. One international company, one at a brand name place. 'Shows I can work in multiple environments.

Postdoc-specific

• Doing a postdoc. How does anyone write their dissertation while also applying to faculty jobs?!
• Doing a postdoc at a university I haven't previously been affiliated with, with collaborators I've never worked with previously.

Specific Things I Wish I'd Done

• Teaching a full course as lead instructor would make the liberal arts sell a bit easier, and my future teaching as well
• More grant-writing experience
• Having my job talk semi-prepared after submitting applications (campus interviews happened so fast). Having attended lots of job talks & speaking with some mentors, I was pretty sure how to go about doing the job talk, but I would've liked to use my university's speaking & writing center to video & constructively criticize my talk.
• Set up more collaborations during my postdoc earlier, try to establish some career-long ones.
• Attended more of Stanford's postdoc pedagogy workshops earlier, and more frequently.
• I had completed all the requirements for a Future Faculty Teaching Certificate during my PhD, except for the 40 hour curriculum development project. I should've just finished the thing!
• Publish more papers in my main field. The usual.
• Pursued more of my academic-relevant passions. That Dissertation Doom Cloud was soul-crushing.

Are there any resources you're grateful you had access to? Or things you wish you'd done differently during the faculty job search?

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BYOV Posts on the Faculty Job Search

1. Overview of the Assistant Professor Job Search
2. Applying for Academic Positions
3. Remote Interviews
4. Packing for On-Campus Interviews
5. On-Campus Interview Lessons Learned
6. Sample Assistant Professor Job Hunt Timeline
7. Reflections on Negotiation
8. Descriptive Statistics of my Job Search
9. Deciding Research or Liberal Arts

Faculty Jobs: Deciding Research or Liberal Arts

Wednesday, March 8, 2017

Until I took a faculty jobs workshop last September, the term "liberal arts college" had never really entered my thoughts. Reading through example application materials during the workshop, I identified most with the applicants to liberal arts colleges, just like I had subconsciously been drawn to teaching and educational research the bulk of my academic career. And so it became clear quite quickly that I should apply to liberal arts colleges. The application preparation process actually clarified what I should do with my life.

The elevator pitch I generally gave during my interviews revolved around a couple key points (brevity is very important):

1. I was always drawn to teaching experiences. My research spends much time looking at learning largely due to this, but I have also spent significant time outside of research on improving my teaching in X, Y, Z ways.
2. My research specialty is particularly well-suited to institutions that prioritize interdisciplinary work that incorporates diverse perspectives from the students as well as the surrounding community. This specialty has a particular emphasis on including multiple perspectives and critical thinking that are particularly instrumental for developing citizens of the world.
3. Frequent references to concepts from my teaching statement, because I live and breathe that document on the regular.
4. (Occasionally) I believe I haven't been in an environment that properly prioritizes student learning in line with my values, and I want the space to be able to grow as an instructor. I believe a liberal arts college will do this.
5. If I had ever attended a liberal arts college, this would be another great point to mention briefly. But alas...

This is all true and genuine. No bull sh*tting necessary.

This was really the extent of my reflection during the applying process. Writing my liberal arts college materials came a little easier to me, and it was not going to hurt me to submit 12 liberal arts college applications. The campus visits further solidified this feeling of goal alignment with a liberal education. The institution with which I had the best chemistry was also a liberal arts college, and so that was the direction I chose. I am so incredibly, overwhelmingly excited about where I'm headed right now.

Like any major life decision, you make the best choice you can given the information you have at the time. The trickier bit here is that you have some control over how much information you have, but some is kismet. Had I not encountered others' liberal arts application materials during that jobs workshop, I may have remained ignorant to the potential of the path I eventually chose. This appears to be a fairly common affliction, as its echoed in this post by another junior faculty at a liberal arts college.

What is a SLAC?

Just like with research institutions there is a range of endowments, supports, expectations, and quality of Primarily Undergraduate Institutions. If you have degrees from highly competitive research-oriented academic institutions, you may wish to focus your efforts on the more selective of the bunch of liberal arts colleges, or Selective Liberal Arts Colleges (SLACs). You can find lists of these online, and investigate them that way, but I tend to think most schools with less than 5 courses/year teaching load and no graduate students will fall generally under the title of SLAC.

Just because liberal arts colleges do not have graduate students, does not mean there are no research expectations in the tenure process. This is especially false for SLACs. The lighter the teaching load, the higher the research expectations. But perhaps, instead of being expected to publish ~4 peer-reviewed papers per year and bring in $X grant dollars, you might only be expected to publish ?twice? per year and bring in $X/8 grant dollars. Or less, who knows! None of these expectations are ever explicit enough. That being said, doing research at a low course-load SLAC may be somewhat comparable to being a postdoctoral researcher. But we shall see.

SLACs want you and your competitive degree.

I recall being told at a grad student party that "teaching schools don't want professors from top tier research schools"; the explanation being that teaching institutions generally did not trust that these research PhDs would want to stay long term at a teaching college. This is pretty much the opposite of the truth, at least for moderate to high achieving teaching institutions. The SLACs want graduates of {Stanford, MIT, U-Dub, CMU, the Ivy Leagues, and other places as well}. They will interview you, you just need to convince them that you thoroughly enjoy teaching and have always pursued pedagogical opportunities.

For the most part, this means that any academic institution with less than 6 courses/year teaching load will not scoff at an application from research-oriented alum. You will, however, have to explain in your cover letter, quite explicitly, why you are drawn to promoting a liberal education. If you have sought teaching opportunities beyond simple teaching assistantships, such as instructing/designing your own full course at your home institution or a neighboring teaching-oriented institution (!!!), you are likely to do well. If not, you will need to do a little narrative yoga to make a convincing argument as to why you are not just qualified to teach, but intrinsically motivated to do so and have been making strides toward that goal.

There do, however, exist some teaching-oriented schools that are suspicious of applicants with overly ambitious research histories. Not knowing my worth on the job market, I applied to one of these institutions and received a response challenging my desire to work at that locale. But with a little digging I discovered that the teaching load at this institution was 6 courses per year, and so I learned my lesson.

Apply generously beyond your word-of-mouth bubble.

Also, do not limit your applications to only places you have heard of. You will be severely limiting yourself, unnecessarily so. Start with lists of top-ranked liberal arts colleges or moderate-ranked research institutions. Not all state schools have the state's name in their title! Having never attended a liberal arts college, I do not think I had previously heard of most of the SLACs I ended up applying to. But I started with an Internet list, and checked each school's department to see if they were hiring, working my way down the entire list. And then I did other goofy things, like read Lin Manuel Miranda's Wikipedia page, and discovered that he attended Wesleyan University, and applied to their department that was hiring. There was also the quite sensible name-blind application criteria that I used for aggregated lists of faculty jobs, to ensure I didn't limit myself to the well known to me.

There are many paths to discovering schools that can be a fantastic fit. Please don't limit yourself to only the familiar.

Breaking the Liberal Arts path to your research advisors.

If your academic background is at research institutions, it's quite possible your typical mentors and advisors may think you're from an alien planet for wanting to go to a liberal arts college. My postdoc mentor was incredibly open to the idea, and wrote me a separate, generalized liberal arts college letter of recommendation, but I don't think this should be the expected response. For example, this paraphrased email conversation with my PhD advisor:

Me: ...I have job offers from these three schools. E University was interesting, but I didn't like the fit. A University could be a potentially good fit, although they have no research expectations. And I really liked A College, they might be top of my list... PhD Advisor: ...I think E University is the best fit for you...

Most of your research-oriented mentors will be pulling for you to end up at a research institution, like them. They may have a tendency to think of what would be best for someone like them rather than someone like you, or maybe they're thinking of how to expand their research network and lack some understanding of what the liberal arts college experience is. This is understandable. Having never worked at or [possibly] even attended a primarily undergraduate institution, most research mentors aren't going to have the slightest clue what being at a liberal arts college is like. Hence the looking at you like you're from an alien planet.

If you're super uncomfortable with convincing these very-important-to-your-career people of your desire to apply/end-up at a liberal arts college, you can always use the general letter of recommendation you obtained via Interfolio. But if you get liberal arts college offers, you're going to have to break it to your letter writers at some point. 'Just be prepared for the above conversation snippet, or potential isomorphic situations.

The only person who gets to make decisions about the best way to achieve your goals is you.

Diversity Concerns

Should you select a private liberal arts college, you may get a bit of guff and gentle teasing about how your selection is a "school for rich kids". And I think for many liberal arts colleges, this is not terribly far off from the truth. Thankfully, there's actual data out there to help you better understand each institution's economic and ethnic diversity.

• NYTimes Interactive Report on 'Some Colleges Have More Students From the Top 1 Percent Than the Bottom 60' [Income]: From this interactive report, you can see what percentage of a school's student body is from the economic top 1% versus the bottom 60%, and some rankings on upward mobility. Most notably, 38 colleges had more students from the top 1% than the bottom 60%, and 8 of the top 10 worst offenders are liberal arts colleges (Colorado College, Washington & Lee University, Trinity College, Bucknell, Colgate University, Kenyon College, and Middlebury College). As a bit of a comparison, you can check out where Williams College, Amherst College, Smith College, and Oberlin College fall in that ranking. You may also notice that most state universities tend to have way more bottom 60% students than top 1%.
• More on economic diversity: 'Top Colleges Doing the Most for the American Dream' - Amherst, Pomona, Vassar, Williams, Wellesley, Knox, and Barnard all end up in the top 20 of colleges providing access to students of varying socioeconomic status.
• Hechinger Report on 'How do they do it? A few wealthy private colleges have found ways to serve many needy students without jeopardizing their financial health': This article looks at four liberal arts colleges (Denison, Grinnell, USC, Williams) in an interview about how they serve students on Pell Grants (i.e., family income less than $40,000).
• Forbes' 'Diversity At Top Colleges: Here's The Proof': The visualization at the bottom of this article shows the ethnicity break down for a considerable number of top-ranked schools from the 2014-2015 academic calendar.
• I've got nothing in aggregate for gender diversity, but that might be best done on a department-by-department basis.

In short, some liberal arts colleges actively recruit for diversity while others are considerably less successful/dedicated.

Specific things to prepare for teaching in higher education.

• Pursue many opportunities to teach. Guest lectures. TAing recitations. Being the head instructor for a course (bonus points). Weekend workshops for local middle schoolers. Teaching a community college or other external course (super bonus points).
• Seek feedback on your teaching. Have a pedagogical expert sit in on a lecture and give you formally written feedback. Collect mid-semester course evaluations from students, so you can address concerns before it's too late.
• Earn that teaching certificate. Does your university offer a teaching certificate for grad students or postdocs? Or even a semester-long class on course design? Take it.
• Attend pedagogy courses that are useful/interesting for your goals. If your university doesn't offer a semester-long class on course design, consider online resources like the free CIRTL Evidenced-Based Teaching Online Courses. Similarly, attend any seminars, lectures, or workshops offered by your university's center for teaching excellence or school of education that you think could be useful. Keep reflections and "Big Ideas" from these sessions in a notebook, so you can refer to them later.
• Incorporate your new pedagogical knowledge into your teaching statement. A good teaching philosophy will likely include "evidence-based teaching" and "active learning" (alternatively, "learner-centered approach"); if you've already done the above recommended activities, you'll know why ;)
• Create a teaching portfolio. This should include your teaching philosophy statement, syllabi you've created for courses, formal evaluations from pedagogical experts of your teaching, early and final course evaluations from students, short videos of you teaching (or a video or two from a flipped class lecture you've done), main takeaways from any pedagogical courses you've taken, teaching aids you've designed that you particularly like, overview of any volunteer opportunities that involved mentoring or teaching, teaching certificates, etc. etc. Heavy on the photos, minimal on the words, if at all possible.

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BYOV Posts on the Faculty Job Search

1. Overview of the Assistant Professor Job Search
2. Applying for Academic Positions
3. Remote Interviews
4. Packing for On-Campus Interviews
5. On-Campus Interview Lessons Learned
6. Sample Assistant Professor Job Hunt Timeline
7. Reflections on Negotiation
8. Descriptive Statistics of my Job Search
9. Deciding Research or Liberal Arts

Faculty Jobs: Descriptive Statistics Report

Wednesday, February 22, 2017

Being a bit of a scientist, I like numbers. So here's a great quantity of histograms to illustrate my experiences with the assistant professor job market. Now when I spout off my experience writing faculty job applications, handling remote academic interviews, and thriving during 12 hour campus visit interviews, you'll know just how many grains of salt to throw my way.

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I applied to 31 schools...most of which were research institutions, but a great proportion were liberal arts colleges as well.

I had a very busy autumn getting married and applying to academic institutions avoiding those ~3 weeks of wedding/honeymoon activity. I was essentially out of commission October 15 - November 10.

I've withdrawn myself from consideration from all remaining institutions, so hopefully these graphs won't change too much more! I received remote interviews from two-thirds of my liberal arts college applications and a little over a third of research universities. To me, this is representative of two things: (1) I felt much more passionate about my liberal arts materials, and (2) my publication record could use some work. I've been in the process of switching communities, and it's been a rough switch. Nonetheless, a 50% return rate on applications --> remote interview is pretty lovely.

I had originally thought I'd done terribly on phone interviews rather than Skype/video interviews, but it seems I performed pretty well on both. 75% of my phone interviews turned into on-campus interviews, and 50% for the remote video interviews. I know the "No"s here are actual "No"s and not "???", as once I had a job offer, I contacted the places with which I had remote interviewed, forcing them to provide me a concrete answer with respect to a campus visit interview.

There was quite a bit of variance in how long it took academic institutions to extend remote interview invitations (left) and campus interview invitations (right), with teaching-oriented institutions keeping the tightest schedules. With the research universities it seemed almost random how long it would take to get an invitation!

I received on-campus interview invitations from more than 50% of the places I remote interviewed with: 2/3, to be exact, with a 100% success rate with research institutions and a 50% success rate with liberal arts colleges. I apparently could've used a bit more practice on my remote interviewing skills from the liberal arts perspective.


I received 5 job offers at varying points, and I withdrew myself from consideration for the two research institutions listed as '???'. So we may never know my absolute success rate!

However, I'm exceedingly pleased with these results. I worked my rear off on my application materials, and that process really helped me communicate more effectively about my work both during remote and face-to-face interviews. I'm proud of myself for committing so well to this process, learning so much, and not falling asleep during any of the 9 interview dinners at the end of a day of being "on". There's a great deal of luck involved in this process. Some institutions just weren't looking for a me-type professor at this time, but luck worked out pretty well on my behalf anyways. I'm incredibly grateful, and so excited about how things worked out!!

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BYOV Posts on the Faculty Job Search

1. Overview of the Assistant Professor Job Search
2. Applying for Academic Positions
3. Remote Interviews
4. Packing for On-Campus Interviews
5. On-Campus Interview Lessons Learned
6. Sample Assistant Professor Job Hunt Timeline
7. Reflections on Negotiation
8. Descriptive Statistics of my Job Search
9. Deciding Research or Liberal Arts

Faculty Jobs: Reflections on Negotiation

Wednesday, February 15, 2017

Now that we're really getting into territory that I'm not an expert on, might I recommend Stanford's Career Center Guide for PhDs? Page 36, in particular, includes "36 Negotiable Items in an Academic Position". This is very useful to read. As is talking to your fellow students who have recently obtained assistant professor jobs, your PhD advisors and/or postdoc mentors, as well as any contacts you may have at similar institutions.

The Professsor Is In also has some posts about negotiating offers: (1) How To Negotiate Your Tenure Track Offer, (2) Negotiating Your Tenure-Track Offer(s), (3) How (Not) to Negotiate a Tenure Track Salary, (4) Stop Negotiating Like a Girl, and (5) Category Archives: Negotiating Offers. The Professor Is In even does negotiation consulting for about $500, here: TPII: Services and Rates.


So there's lots of lists that include what to negotiate for at a higher level. But what do the items in these lists include? I'm going to list some specific items. These aren't necessarily what I requested, but maybe it'll give you a good feeling for what can be requested? I stuck every item I wanted into a spreadsheet with (1) the item (and quantity), (2) price, (3) frequency needed (once, every year, etc.), (4) URL, and (5) Note/Justification. Just remember, I don't actually know if I did any of this successfully or not ;)

I included everything I could think of needing for my first three years, even if I knew the school would be supplying that (i.e., a desk, student funding, etc.) from alternative sources outside of the start-up package. I told the search committee representative (who was negotiating with administration on my behalf) that we could discuss what items on this list are being provided by other resources, so s/he knew that I was open to items being removed from my proposal.

Do not spend excessive amounts of time finding the best deal, in fact, quote the price of the highest quality version of the item you can find. You might be stuck with that item for quite awhile!

1. Salary: 5-10% increase. Research says women tend to avoid negotiating, so I made it a point of feminism to request this, no matter how uncomfortable I felt about it (i.e., very). Your justifications are either your qualifications or other comparable offers you have (careful).
2. Start-up package (first 3 years):
   
   1. People: Student researchers (number of grad students, undergrads, etc.) during the school year and during the summer, Transcription services, Human subjects payment funds, Research programmer time, Lab managers?, ...
   2. (Equipment) Computers: Laptop and desktop, Laptop docking station, Ergonomic keyboard, Ergonomic mouse, Wrist rests, Monitors, Monitor stands, Powered USB hub, Port adapters, Printer/Scanner, Speakers, Headphone/Mic set, USB Conference phone, Webcam, Pointer/Clicker, Tablet (worked example video lectures), Other things you need to virtually collaborate or give presentations...
   3. (Equipment) Research Equipment: Audio recorders, Video recorder, Tripods, Student/Lab computers, Mobile devices, Mobile device camera stand, Bamboo tablet, 3D Printer, Laser cutter, Eye tracker, Virtual Reality whatever, High speed computation access, Other specialized equipment you need to do your research...
   4. Software: Statistical software & add-ons, Adobe Creative Suite, Microsoft Office, Camtasia/Screencast Software (for your flipped classroom), Data Visualization Software, Cloud server storage (AWS?), Subscriptions to SurveyMonkey or Qualtrics, Professional Github Account, Mobile Developer Licenses for you + students, Other software/digital licenses needed to do your research or presentations/publications, ...
   5. Furniture: Ergonomic chair, Ergonomic keyboard, Ergonomic mouse, Adjustable standing desk, Standing mat, Sitting chair, Task lamp, Whiteboard, Rollable Whiteboard, Bulletin board, Lockable filing cabinet (for you and students, if needed), Bookshelves, Stuff you'll need in your lab space...
   6. Space: Office, Lab/Desks for students, Human subjects room/closet, ... (Note: Liberal arts colleges tend to be a bit squishier on the space-front)
   7. Miscellaneous Office: Money for books and articles, Money for printer ink/paper, Research poster printing funds, Money for assorted office supplies, Professional memberships, ...
   8. Travel Funds:
      1. Money for conferences you're presenting at
      2. Money for conferences you're not presenting at (Justification: Networking)
      3. Money for PC meetings
      4. Money for workshops
      5. Money to send students to conferences, etc.
3. Moving Funds: Get an online quote or two to move your belongings and car. If you're going to drive your car, there's a government reimbursement rate for mileage you can find online.
4. The Internet recommends other categories: Extended time to consider the offer, Guaranteed junior sabbatical, Summer salary, Starting date, Paid visit to look at houses, Spousal positions, Summer insurance, Purchasing your graduation regalia, etc. etc. Ask around. Do your research. I've emptied my pockets of ideas.

The Professor Is In says to never accept an offer the day you receive it. She also says to request the offer in writing, and not to negotiate before you have that. However, every academic institution I spoke with wanted to know my start-up package and salary demands before writing an official (PDF) offer. So, while theoretically it may make more sense not to negotiate until after the official offer is provided, practically, I'm not sure if that ever happens.

Things To Ask About

1. Expiration/Extension of start-up package funds
2. Starting date (expected arrival / expected paychecks)
3. What happens if I use up all my start-up funds before the 3 years is up?
4. Faculty housing
5. Look up benefits/insurance
6. Know the tenure and sabbatical clock

Handling Multiple Offers and Various Timelines

Having multiple offers is a great problem to have, but it also introduces a great deal of pressure and stress. Quite simply, the schools on the earlier timeline (November and prior) will interview you in December and produce an offer the week of Xmas. Meanwhile, you're still waiting on campus visit invitations for January and February. Once you get an offer, you should tell any schools you've remote interviewed with in which you're still interested that you've received an offer with a decision deadline of __/__/__.

Thus begins the never ending dragging out! Academic institutions want you to accept within a week of the offer being extended. You can usually pretty easily get this pushed back an additional week. But two weeks won't be enough for the other institutions you've notified to give you a campus visit and offer. So you have two options: (1) begin negotiations or (2) be very grateful and appreciative as you decline the offer. If you do begin negotiations and you continue to get additional offers, then you may be able to get additional time, or decline less ideal options as you go.

In general, you should not decline an offer unless you (1) really don't wish to work there or (2) you've accepted another offer. This was advice I was given, and it nearly killed this honest-to-a-fault lady. So. I don't know what advice to give. These timeline pressures are awful, and I hated it, and I'm glad things magically worked out the way they did. And it's over. Thanks be to the FSM.

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BYOV Posts on the Faculty Job Search

1. Overview of the Assistant Professor Job Search
2. Applying for Academic Positions
3. Remote Interviews
4. Packing for On-Campus Interviews
5. On-Campus Interview Lessons Learned
6. Sample Assistant Professor Job Hunt Timeline
7. Reflections on Negotiation
8. Descriptive Statistics of my Job Search
9. Deciding Research or Liberal Arts

Faculty Jobs: Sample Assistant Professor Job Search Timeline

Wednesday, February 1, 2017

There's a fantastic sample academic job timeline at the end of this reflections on assistant professor job search, so I thought I'd fill out a bit of my own timeline here, as well. Knowing what other people's timelines were gives a good feel for what to expect. It also shows that it's a good idea to have your application materials ready by October, and that you should begin immediate preparation of your job talk. The speedy arrival of the interviews really surprised me! Of course, if you don't plan to apply anywhere until December, then the schedule can be adjusted. But there are plenty of deadlines in October and November, so procrastinate at your own risk.

Generally, there were several waves of application deadlines: [mid-]October, [mid-]November, early-December, and later. More selective institutions typically have December++ deadlines, but that's not always the case. I applied rather liberally to nearly any school in the northeast with less than 3 class preps per semester, so this left me with a rather wide spread of ~30 schools, with deadlines all over October, November, and December, resulting in the timelines below.

K College (liberal arts)
Application Deadline: 10/1/16
Remote Interview Invitation: 10/19/16
Remote Interview: 11/7/16 (delayed due to schedule conflict)

E University
Application Deadline: 10/1/16
Remote Interview Invitation: None
Remote Interview: None
On-Campus Interview Invitation: 11/16/16
On-Campus Interview: 12/8/16
Unofficial Job Offer Phone Call: 12/16/16
Job Offer Deadline: 1/9/17 (declined 1/9/17)

A College (liberal arts)
Application Deadline: 10/10/16
Remote Interview Invitation: 10/13/16
Remote Interview: 10/17/16
On-Campus Interview Invitation: 10/21/16
On-Campus Interview: 11/10/16 (delayed due to schedule conflict)
Unofficial Job Offer Phone Call: 12/20/16
Job Offer Deadline: 1/9/17 (pushed until 1/19/17, due to being one of my top choices; declined)

E Institute
Application Deadline: 10/15/16
Remote Interview Invitation: 12/2/16
Remote Interview: 12/15/16
On-Campus Interview Invitation: 12/21/16
On-Campus Interview: Declined, due to other offers

A University (comprehensive)
Application Deadline: 10/24/15
Remote Interview Invitation: 11/3/16
Remote Interview: 11/8/16
On-Campus Interview Invitation: 11/17/16
On-Campus Interview: 12/9/16
Unofficial Job Offer Phone Call: 12/19/16
Job Offer Deadline: 12/23/16 (pushed until 1/6/17, as they were in my top two) (pushed again until 1/12/17 and declined at that time)

O University
Application Deadline: 11/1/16
Remote Interview Invitation: 1/27/17
Remote Interview: 2/9/17 (declined 1/27/17 due to accepted offer)

R College (liberal arts)
Application Deadline: 11/1/16
Remote Interview Invitation: 11/17/16
Remote Interview: 11/22/16
On-Campus Interview Invitation: 11/29/16
On-Campus Interview: 12/12/16
Unofficial Job Offer Phone Call: 12/23/16
Job Offer Deadline: 12/28/16 (declined 12/28/16 due to other offers)

B College (liberal arts)
Application Deadline: 11/10/16
Remote Interview Invitation: 11/14/16
Remote Interview: 11/16/16

M College (liberal arts)
Application Deadline: 11/14/16
Remote Interview Invitation: 11/28/16
Remote Interview: 12/8/16

D College (liberal arts)
Application Deadline: 11/18/16
Remote Interview Invitation: 12/1/16
Remote Interview: 12/2/16
On-Campus Interview Invitation: 2/6/17 (delayed due to first search failure)

U University
Application Deadline: 11/28/16
Remote Interview Invitation: 2/4/17
Remote Interview: 2/10/17 (declined 2/5/17 due to accepted offer)

Y College (liberal arts)
Application Deadline: 12/1/16
Remote Interview Invitation: 12/12/16
Remote Interview: 12/14/16
On-Campus Interview Invitation: 12/19/16 (accelerated due to existing offers)
On-Campus Interview: 1/3/16
Unofficial Job Offer Phone Call: 1/12/17
Job Offer Deadline: 1/20/17 (Accepted)

L University
Application Deadline: 12/1/16
Remote Interview Invitation: 12/9/16
Remote Interview: 12/14/16 (a second one 12/20/16)
On-Campus Interview Invitation: 12/21/16 (accelerated due to existing offers)
On-Campus Interview: 1/11/17
Withdrawn after accepting an offer

R University
Application Deadline: 12/1/16
Remote Interview Invitation: 12/6/16
Remote Interview: 12/14/16
On-Campus Interview Invitation: 12/20/16 (accelerated due to existing offers)
On-Campus Interview: 1/17/16
Withdrawn after accepting an offer

O Institute
Application Deadline: None listed (applied 10/10/16)
Remote Interview Invitation: 12/21/16 (first round, with insinuation of there possibly being a second round of remote interviews)
Remote Interview: 1/9/17 (declined 12/28/16 due to existing offers)

T Institute
Application Deadline: None listed (applied 10/8/16)
Remote Interview Invitation: 2/9/17
Remote Interview: 2/13/17 (declined 2/9/17 due to accepted offer)

It should be noted that academic institutions do not send rejections. Not at the applications-stage, nor the phone interview stage, nor the on-campus interview stage. So I simply left out the non-responsive locales to which I applied, leaving just the above. This is out of ~30 total applications.

A Special Note on Declining Offers

The most professional way to decline an offer (as instructed by my academic career coach) is to decline over the phone, and then follow-up via email. I did this rather inconsistently, only when it made sense. Whatever works.

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BYOV Posts on the Faculty Job Search

1. Overview of the Assistant Professor Job Search
2. Applying for Academic Positions
3. Remote Interviews
4. Packing for On-Campus Interviews
5. On-Campus Interview Lessons Learned
6. Sample Assistant Professor Job Hunt Timeline
7. Reflections on Negotiation
8. Descriptive Statistics of my Job Search
9. Deciding Research or Liberal Arts

Faculty Jobs: On-Campus Interview Lessons Learned

Wednesday, January 18, 2017

I'm not an expert on campus visit interviews, but I've been reasonably successful with my on-campus interview-to-offer ratio and learned a few things in the process. This is just a brain dump of things I've learned.

As always, The Professor Is In has some nice resources: (1) Rules of the Campus Visit, (2) Search Committee Interview, (3) Rules of the Job Talk, (4) Stop Acting Like a Grad Student, (5) The Be Yourself Myth, (6) How To Talk To a Dean, No Missed Opportunities on the Campus Visit, and many more. Just scrounge the website for 'campus visit'.

These are all great resources, but as a general guideline I would say the keys are:

1. The three most important things you need to find out, for yourself, are Do I like these people?, Does the department want every hire to receive tenure?, and Can I see myself happy here in 7 years?
2. The Campus Visit is 50% about your job talk and 50% about personality fit (both you-to-colleagues and colleagues-to-you). Mess up either one, and there's no recovery.
1. Make them laugh
2. Small talk
3. Be the nicest, most optimistic version of yourself
4. Don't put down anyone or anything.
3. Don't do anything that makes you look like a grad student rather than a colleague.
4. Play it cool.
5. Have something to ask/say when people always ask you if you have any questions for them.
6. Ask for bathroom breaks. Once there, eat a snack, file your nails, take notes on the day's conversations so far, whatever you need to do.
7. Take ~10 word notes on conversations you've had with each person throughout the day. Do not wait until the end of the day. Do not wait until you're in the airport. You will not remember anything, and you need these notes for a quick amount of personalization in the thank you notes.
8. When scheduling the interview, if there's blank spots in your schedule or they ask you for names of people to meet with, always give them a few names in the department and a couple from across the institution that you'd like to meet. The Professor Is In agrees.
   

Most on-campus interviews seem to consist of the following:

1. (optional) Arrival night dinner
2. Breakfast with a search committee member at 8am
3. A multitude of 30-minute meetings with various faculty in the department
4. Lunch or separate meeting with students
5. One-hour slot for your job talk later in the day (45 minute talk + 15 minutes of questions)
6. One-hour meeting with the Dean
7. Very limited breaks, if any at all
8. Lots of asking people where the restroom is
9. Dinner with the search committee that runs until ~8pm
10. (liberal arts colleges, optional) 20-40 minute teaching demo
11. (optional) Non-evaluative external faculty meeting
12. (optional) Realtor tour of the surrounding area
13. (optional) Second day of interviewing, including more meetings

"Interview" Meetings

At the end of a two-day interview I wrote 22 thank you emails, which implies that I spoke with about 22 people. Not all of these were 30 minute one-on-one meetings (some were a group lunch), but most were. For a one-day interview at a liberal arts college, I wrote 12 thank you emails. So. There's a lot of talking to people, and not actually a lot of grilling. A 12-hour interview sounds daunting, but if you think of it as 12-hours of discussing potential collaborations, it's actually pretty fun. Tiring, but fun. Both sides want the other to like them, so this leads to some really great conversations. You talk about your work a lot and their work occasionally, but maybe also side topics like spatial reasoning skills-computer science-gender (one of my favorites), politics (to make sure you fit), the importance of communication in research, etc. etc. So, you don't tend to get asked tricky human-resources-type questions, just more things like:

• Summarize your research.
• Give an introduction to your sub-domain.
• How would being at ____ Institution impact your research? Would you keep external collaborations? (the answer at liberal arts colleges is yes)
• Would you have enough resources here to do your work? (Be able to list the resources you need)
• Do you have any grant-writing experience?
• Where do you plan to get funding?
• Here's a list of questions from someone in a similar field, full of questions he asked and got asked.
• The Professor Is In details approaches to some of these.

These statements are of course followed by follow-up questions that naturally occur as part of a conversation. It is very important that you ask questions of your interviewers as well. Have some prepared. You can reuse some of the Institution-Specific Questions from your remote interviews, but hopefully your interest in the place will inspire further relevant questions. Remember, you're trying to make sure that you will be productive and happy at this place. Get the information you need to make that decision. People love talking about their work/students/campus/town/etc. A couple rules in your question-asking:

1. You're trying to convince them you're a peer, not a PhD student.
2. Don't be too enthusiastic about inquiring about sabbaticals/maternity leave/pay.
3. These meetings are where your sense of humor and personality are allowed to come through. If hired, these people have to work with you for decades.
4. Where opportunities for [tenure-related] feedback occur is a safe/intelligent question.
5. When my brain blanks on creating a question, I tend to fall back on "I find that people give great insights when allowed to just talk, so maybe you can tell me a bit more about ___?" Alternatively, ask what campus is like during the summer - who's around, can you leave for a bit to meet with external collaborators, etc.
6. For research institutions it's good to have one or two questions about your interviewer's research. It's not absolutely necessary, but lends you an air of thoroughness.
7. Be careful asking about the biggest negatives/obstacles to being at ___ Institution. This question is best saved for external faculty meetings. Alternatively, pair it with a "best/worst aspects of living/working here?" question.

The Job Talk

I generally agree with the wisdom of The Professor Is In: Rules of the Job Talk, but would add the following tips:

• For liberal arts colleges, start with a 10 minute overview of your sub-domain. Motivate why it's important, maybe go a bit in-depth into a method and a student project from a class you taught. Be sure this ties in with your research somehow.
• Have a big finish.
• The question-session at the end is way less stressful than anything I endured at my PhD granting institution. It's actually fun/productive/interesting. Minimal terror.
• I always feel like I could've done better in my job talk. There is always room for improvement, but I'm apparently a bit hard on myself.
• 'Pretty sure everyone always looks bored to tears during job talks. Don't sweat it too much.
• You can reuse some of your dissertation defense content, but really only about a third of it is particularly useful. My talk includes:
  1. an introduction to human-centered design/HCI
  2. one of the three experiments from my dissertation defense
  3. in-depth explanation of some current/future work
  4. a list of future research questions
  5. a grande finale that unites all this under an umbrella big-research-goal

Scheduling the Interviews

I dislike flying across the country, and have found that combining interview trips on the east coast helps reduce this. I have saved myself days of being suspended in air and boredom this way. But in the month of December this also meant that I had 4 full days of interviewing (12 hours each), in a 7 day period. It is very tiring to do this. Despite my exhaustion, I was pretty successful. So, tiring, but certainly possible. I think it's fairly more common to have one interview per week, as I did in January. Still exhausting, but at least there's a half week break in-between each. I also combined the blue and magenta trips in January, with a stopover at my parents' house for the half week. It really does help to have an East Coast base of operations for such coordination tasks. If you're interviewing in the same general locale as where you live, then you probably don't need to combine interviews as much. HOWEVER, do not schedule yourself on the last flight of the day, or airplane issues may cause you to miss your interview! Earlier is better, trust me!!!

Timezone Adjustments

If you are on the west coast and doing interviews on the east coast, it is absolutely necessary that you adjust your sleep/food schedule to the East Coast time prior to your (undoubtedly, early) flight out there. I start the process about a week prior where I wake up 30-60 minutes earlier each day until I'm waking up at 4am and going to bed around 8pm. The early wake up is necessary so that you'll be tired enough to sleep at 8pm. This is a self-induced one week of jet lag and it makes me completely exhausted and useless for the entire week. However, it also makes me fully functioning during my interviews, for which I usually wake up at 6am to get a bit of a job talk practice in prior to 8am breakfast. I have now been on east coast time for about 2 months, despite a couple stop overs in the California apartment. With an 8pm bedtime, I haven't seen much of J considering he gets home from work 30 minutes prior, lol. Also, book the 7am cross-country flight so you arrive at your destination before 6pm (helps reduce the devastation of delayed flights). You're already waking up at 4am, what effect will a 7am flight have on that?!

Stuff to Keep in your Briefcase

My post on packing for the campus visit covers this, but here it goes again:

1. A good quality, professional briefcase (leather)
2. Laptop + Charger
3. Cell phone + Charger
4. Notebook/Print-outs with names of everyone you're meeting with and one line about their research (this is not critical at liberal arts colleges). Something you can memorize, or at the very least, read during a bathroom break.
5. Projector dongle that converts whatever you have to VGA (you will need it)
6. USB Drive with a copy of your talk (and teaching demo, if needed)
7. Physiological sustenance: Water bottle, Granola bar, Chocolate bar
8. Business cards (although I've never used them)
9. "Emergency" 3"X4" Zipper Pouch with things you might need in the middle of the day:
1. Tide stain stick mini
2. Eye glass cleaner
3. Tweezers
4. Mini Emery Board
5. Chapstick (or Shea Butter for lips + cuticles)
6. Advil/Tylenol
7. Blister moleskins
8. Floss

This is just stuff I've needed through 12-hours of talking to people. Your list of necessities might change, but these are pretty solid must-haves for myself.

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BYOV Posts on the Faculty Job Search

1. Overview of the Assistant Professor Job Search
2. Applying for Academic Positions
3. Remote Interviews
4. Packing for On-Campus Interviews
5. On-Campus Interview Lessons Learned
6. Sample Assistant Professor Job Hunt Timeline
7. Reflections on Negotiation
8. Descriptive Statistics of my Job Search
9. Deciding Research or Liberal Arts

Faculty Jobs: Packing for On-Campus Interviews

Wednesday, January 11, 2017

If your Application Materials get you the remote interview, then the Remote Interview gets you the on-campus interview. Which means that the on-campus interview gets you the job. So. Here we are. High pressure. At the 12-20 hour on-campus interview. Smaller schools only do a 12-hour (one day) interview, often including an 8am breakfast, dinner with the search committee, and no breaks. The longer two-day long interviews often have some breaks built in, but may also build in three dinners with various faculty.

So, how does one survive 12-20 hours of interviews?
By packing very carefully.

As always, The Professor Is In has a special post on How To Pack and Dress For Your Campus Visit, which is useful. As is the whole book...

Above is the interview-specific things you need, from the female perspective. I've done a handful of interview trips now, and this is pretty close to my final list.

Clothing

1. A suit
   
   • Dress professionally, preferably involving a blazer. I've also been successful with the green blazer + ankle pants separates on the right...and also done a successful job talk in the ankle pants plus a ruffle-front black plaid button-down blouse, no blazer.
   • Doesn't have to be expensive, but get that ish tailored (campus visits tend to occur the month after the application deadline).
   • I generally avoid skirts during the interview process, because I really don't care to other myself any more than absolutely necessary.
   • If there's a second day of interviewing, I pack an entirely different second outfit. If it's just a second dinner meeting, I only pack an extra blouse.
2. Button-down shirt to go with the suit
3. Nice wool coat
   
   • I love my duffel coat, but a pea coat will work too.
4. Reserved jewelry
5. La Canadienne Boots (they're waterproof and lined, perfect for walking around New England campuses in January while still looking good).
   • The shoes don't have to cost $200, but you get what you pay for. I got a good eBay deal on a pair because they had an unnoticeable blemish.
6. Wool Socks (once again, New England winters).
7. A clean shirt to wear on the return flight home (may be a back-up button-down shirt)
8. A reusable grocery bag
   
   • No, this is not clothing, but it is useful for not being separated from your interview clothing.
9. Weather specific items: an umbrella?
10. Mini lint roller
11. Travel/Entertainment items:
    • Kindle, mp3 player, earbuds, knitting, eye mask, scarf, neck pillow, etc.
    • Whatever you need to get you through days and days of airports.
12. Basic toiletries:
    • Face products, Hair products, Teeth products, Nail products, Pharmaceutical products, and whatever else you can fit in two toiletries bags.
    • Melatonin and Tylenol PM, if you tend to suffer from poor sleep / anxiety the night before the interview.
    • Especially important to bring soap/shampoo if the school is putting you up in a non-hotel, such as a campus guesthouse.

For my interview pack list, I like to pack high quality shampoo/conditioner, like the Le Labo Rose 31 travel-sizes I borrowed from our honeymoon hotel. Taking a rose-scented shower while cheapo-steaming my suit in the bathroom is the loveliest little pick-me-up.

During the Interview

Stuff you need to carry around with you for the 9-20 hours.

1. A good quality, professional briefcase (leather)
2. Laptop + Charger
3. Cell phone + Charger
4. Notebook/Print-outs with names of everyone you're meeting with and one line about their research (this is not critical at liberal arts colleges). Something you can memorize, or at the very least, read during a bathroom break.
5. Projector dongle that converts whatever you have to VGA (you will need it)
6. USB Drive with a copy of your talk (and teaching demo, if needed)
7. Physiological sustenance: Water bottle, Granola bar, Chocolate bar
8. Business cards (although I've never used them)
9. "Emergency" 3"X4" Zipper Pouch with things you might need in the middle of the day:
1. Tide stain stick mini
2. Eye glass cleaner
3. Tweezers
4. Mini Emery Board
5. Chapstick (or Shea Butter for lips + cuticles)
6. Advil/Tylenol
7. Blister moleskins
8. Floss

Transporting a Suit

There's many ways recommended by the Internet about how to do this to prevent wrinkling your suit. I've had decent success with just:

1. Transport suit on hanger with dry cleaner plastic bag over it.
2. Fold suit in half (if your suitcase has a special padded insert for suits, like my goofy one does, then fold it over the padded edge of the insert).
3. Place suit in suitcase.
4. Upon arrival, hang suit in bathroom and take a steamy shower with the door closed (free suit-steaming!)

This works okay.

Do Not Get Separated From Your Interview Outfit

There is a green reusable shopping bag included in the pack list, not just because it makes a convenient laundry bag, but also because it helps prevent you from being separated from your suit. Do not let yourself be separated from your interview outfit. Gate-checking your carry-on (where they do not check-through to your final destination, you pick it up at the gate) is fine, and unavoidable with small airplanes. There's a lot of small airplanes involved in this process. Use packing cubes, if possible. When you're boarding a full airplane and they tell you your roller-bag won't fit in the overhead, and it must be checked to the final destination, you:

1. Take out your reusable grocery bag.
2. Remove interview clothing from roller-bag (this is where packing cubes are handy).
3. Place clothing/toiletries in reusable grocery bag.
4. Check your now-empty roller-bag to its final destination.

It's best to do this slightly out of the sight of the staff, as you are basically now making it so you have 3 carry-on pieces of luggage. Hide your briefcase in the reusable shopping bag, too, as needed for this part.

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BYOV Posts on the Faculty Job Search

1. Overview of the Assistant Professor Job Search
2. Applying for Academic Positions
3. Remote Interviews
4. Packing for On-Campus Interviews
5. On-Campus Interview Lessons Learned
6. Sample Assistant Professor Job Hunt Timeline
7. Reflections on Negotiation
8. Descriptive Statistics of my Job Search
9. Deciding Research or Liberal Arts

Faculty Jobs: Remote Interviews

Wednesday, January 4, 2017

As of writing, I've done 11 remote interviews (out of ~30 applications), turned into ~8 on-campus interview invitations, as part of the faculty job search. I've learned some things about myself. (1) I do terribly at phone interviews, but not so bad when video's involved, and (2) 15 minute time limits to the interview really messes with the conversational flow. If anyone has figured out how to do well on a 15 minute phone interview, please let me know, because they're rough.

The Professor Is In has a post on rocking the phone/Skype interview. That's a good place to start. As well as a more general post on academic interview facepalms and an entire post on the question I was asked in every interview. Here's another list of questions from someone in a similar field, full of questions he asked and got asked. Also, this Chronicle of Higher Ed article on Skype/Video interviews specifically. Janet Davis' Tips for the Application Process for Teaching-Oriented Positions is pretty good for the interview section as well. ...Or, do a Google search?

Anyways. If your application materials pass muster, you may be invited to do a remote interview. On a phone. On Skype. On some other web video platform, who knows! Once you get the remote interview, your application materials no longer matter and then all the pressure is on your live-interview performance. Not every school does a remote interview, some skip straight to the on-campus. Although, pretty much every liberal arts college does a remote interview.

Some key tips to handle this remote interview:

1. My goal in every remote interview is to get them to laugh. Remote interviewing can be painful for a search committee with a bunch of them in a row.
2. Wear a button-down (i.e., look presentable).
3. Have some institution-specific questions to ask. Two should be enough, do some homework!
4. Prepare answers to a bunch of different potential interview questions.
5. Set-up your physical space for success (i.e., eye contact).
6. Think about how to wrap up your questions.
7. Write thank you emails to everyone on the call afterward.

Institution-Specific Questions

As far as questions to ask the search committee I tended to veer towards:

• Look up something unique to the school, and generate a couple different questions prior to the interview. Start with senior projects, independent study, winter term, common course all students take, etc. and ask a question about it. Aim for 2 institution-specific questions, at least.
• Is there a grants office? A teaching & learning center? Do faculty use it? What's it like to work with them? (Shows interest in teaching/research)
• What does collaboration look like at ____? Mostly external? Does the school fund internal projects? Who do you collaborate with?
• Teaching load? Research expectations for tenure? (Be careful with these).
• What role are you looking to fill with this position? How does this fit in with longer term departmental goals?
• (liberal arts)What do you think drives students at _____ to pursue computer science? Where do they end up afterwards?
• (liberal arts)What would you say is the most distinguishing feature of your institution that sets you apart from your peer institutions? (be careful with this one!)

Just keep in mind...you don't really get a feel for the school from a phone interview. So just make sure to ask questions to cover the basics of will I be happy & productive here? The on-campus interview is where you start to get a feel for what it would actually be like to live and work with these colleagues for the rest of your life.

Think about how you'll finish with your questions. "I have no more questions" isn't going to cut it. Something along the lines of "I could ask questions all day, but I don't want to take up any more of your time. Who should I direct future questions to?" may work. Plan it out in advance.

Prepare Your Answers to Interview Questions

I've gathered a bunch of sample interview questions at the bottom of this post, from all over the Internets. But here's a few questions I was asked repeatedly.

1. Summarize your research.
2. What classes are you willing/able/excited to teach?
3. (liberal arts) Why would you be a good fit for a liberal arts college? (or more generally, why would you be a good fit here?)
4. Why are you a good fit for this department?

In the beginning, it helped to actually type up my answers and read them aloud, prior to the interview. Not during the interview.

Setting Up The Physical Space

• You want to look your interviewers in the eye. Set your web camera to eye-level. I often use a cardboard box, or if I'm in a hotel room I might use a trashcan buoyed by hotel Bibles.
• Also on looking your interviewers in the eye: Look at the webcam. I use a post-it note with arrow pointing to camera. Does this mean you actually don't see the people on your monitor? Yes, it does, but the sacrifice is worth it.
• Earbuds for better hearing, I only use one earbud so I can modulate the volume of my voice better
• Paper & pen to record who is in the interview, for thank you emails later.
• Your list of researched questions (and general ones) to ask the committee.
• Try to ensure you're in a quiet space with a reasonable background, and no one walking around behind you!!! I have, however, had conversations about my cat making an appearance on the couch behind me and been given an on-campus interview anyways!

Thank You Emails

There are better resources around for writing thank you notes to the people you spoke with. But in short, they don't have to be long and they won't really make or break you. Just thank them for their time, mention why you enjoyed the conversation, and maybe why you might be a good fit. End with a "I look forward to hearing from you." You can send copies of the same thank you to multiple people at multiple institutions, but I prefer to customize a tiny bit if at all possible.

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Practice Questions

Here's a nice random sampling of potential interview questions to be asked and to ask yourself. Maybe you'll find some you like? I have the higher priority questions discussed above, but part of your preparation should include writing out the answers to all these questions and then reading them aloud to yourself several times.

Questions For You (be brief and to the point!!!)
1. What is your approach to teaching an introductory course in your discipline?
2. How would you aim to get students who might have no background in that discipline interested in it?
3. What text have you used in a previous course that did not work well?
4. What is the one text that you think you would nearly always want to include in an intro course?
5. What text would you nearly always include in an upper-level course in your area of specialization?
6. How do you understand the role of academic adviser?
7. How does your research inform your teaching, and vice versa?
8. What ideas do you have for generating excitement about your discipline across campus?
9. What do you think are the primary characteristics of an excellent undergraduate program in your discipline?
10. If you could teach anything, what is your dream course?
11. What is the benefit of studying your discipline even if a student decides to major in something else?
12. Tell us about your research program.
13. What classes taught or comfortable teaching, type, former responsibilities
14. Past, present, future research; know what is cutting-edge in your area of expertise
15. Why that college/university/position
16. How is your dissertation different from other work in your field?
17. What are your publication plans arising from the dissertation?
18. Who are the biggest scholarly influences on your work?
19. How would you teach a large intro class in your/our discipline?
20. Which textbook would you use for that class?
21. Can you name 3 classes that you would be interested to teach for us? Why?
22. How do you see your work fitting into our department?
23. How would you teach a foundational theory/methods graduate seminar?
24. What do you think the most important intellectual debate is in your/our field?
25. Can you envision any collaborations with faculty currently in the department?
26. What inspires your teaching?
27. We notice you were trained at a large public institution; how do you feel you'll fit in at a small liberal arts institution like ours? (and variations on this theme)
28. What is the most significant piece of research that you have read in the last year?
29. What do you envision for creating a research program here?
30. Do you plan to apply for research funding?
31. What is the funding record of your field?
32. We have a large teaching load here – 3 classes a term. How would you manage this and still stay productive in research and writing? Your current research requires more technological support than this institution is able to provide. How will you deal with this?
33. We see that you have done a lot of conference papers and presentations; we have limited research funding here to support that kind of travel. How will you adapt to that?

Questions To Ask Them
1. Departmental goals in next 3-5 years (unless on website)
2. How they see you fitting in their plans
3. Greatest strengths of this university/students/department
4. Tenure process
5. How is teaching evaluated?
6. Support for undergraduates at research conferences?
7. What's the relative importance of teaching, research and service for tenure?
8. About what percent of faculty receive tenure?
9. Tell me about your student population.
10. Where do the undergraduate students go after graduation?
11. What kinds of technology are available in the classroom?
12. How well does the library meet departmental needs?
13. What courses are you looking to fill?
14. How does the department and university support the improvement of teaching?
15. What resources for research are available within the department (e.g., computer facilities, equipment)
16. Is there a research office on campus to help faculty write grants?
17. What kinds of financial support are available for research and supplies?
18. Is outside grant support essential for promotion and tenure?
19. How are graduate students supported?
20. How do graduate students select research advisors?
21. Can grants be used to supplement salary?
22. What type of retirement program is there? What percentage of the salary goes to retirement? What does the school contribute?
23. What type of health program exists? What are the costs and benefits?
24. How many undergraduate and graduate students are presently in the department?
25. How are their numbers changing?

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BYOV Posts on the Faculty Job Search

1. Overview of the Assistant Professor Job Search
2. Applying for Academic Positions
3. Remote Interviews
4. Packing for On-Campus Interviews
5. On-Campus Interview Lessons Learned
6. Sample Assistant Professor Job Hunt Timeline
7. Reflections on Negotiation
8. Descriptive Statistics of my Job Search
9. Deciding Research or Liberal Arts