Readers Tell Us Their Dumbest Mistakes on the Market

We asked readers to share their stories about mistakes they made or saw others make on the job market, as candidates or interviewers. Here's a sampling of what they said:

» From an interviewer: In a recent job talk a candidate said, (after a 30-minute introduction), "OK, now you can go to sleep 'cause I'm going to talk about the research method, and I'll wake you up when it gets interesting again." This at a Research I institution. Of course the mistake I made was wearing my skirt inside out the day I gave my job talk, but hell, that absentminded professor stereotype comes from somewhere. I still got the job, and I've since made tenure, so, I guess it wasn't fatal.

» From a job candidate: Once many years ago, before I stopped eating meat, I ordered steak tartare during a lunch interview, thinking that it was cooked meat with some type of sauce. So I was very surprised when what was essentially a half-pound of seasoned raw hamburger meat arrived a few minutes later. Since I wanted the job, and didn't want to look like an ignoramus, I ate the whole thing, although the last few bites almost didn't go down. Perhaps the interviewer was impressed by my persistence, because I was offered the job. Since then, I warn students, "Don't order steak tartare unless you know what it is!"
» From a job candidate: When a department chairman called to invite me to an interview at the M.L.A., I didn't write down the name of the institution, just the professor's name. I blame my mistake on a football game that was playing on the TV in the background. I thought I knew what institution the chairman had called from, but when I arrived for the interview, I was sent on my way. I figured out when I got home that I had missed the real interview (with a much more desirable department) because I couldn't remember the institution's name.
» From a job candidate: Last March, I went for an interview at a small, liberal-arts school in Virginia. I arrived fairly late in the afternoon, and the first order of business was a dinner with two senior members of the department's faculty, both men (I'm a woman): I'll call them Professor 1 and Professor 2.
The dinner was a little awkward for me because Professor 1 refused to look me in the eye, even when he was asking me a question or listening to my answers (he kept his body turned away from me throughout the whole meal). But the evening didn't get really strange until Professor 2 pleaded with Professor 1 to tell those "great Jewish jokes" he had been making the other day. Professor 1 proceeded to tell them, assuming that it was "OK" since he was Jewish. However, it was not apparent to me at the time that he was Jewish, and more importantly, he had no idea that I was Jewish or that such jokes might offend me. In many contexts they would not, but it was strange to find myself listening to these jokes during a job interview.

Then came the final straw: Professor 2 passed gas right there at the table. That's right, he farted ... loudly. He did not, however, say "excuse me" or anything that might have identified him as the farter. Unfortunately, the origin of the sound he emitted was ambiguous enough that Professor 1 couldn't have known who the farter actually was -- me or Professor 2.

In any case, I did not get the job.

» From a job candidate: In my first interview for an assistant professorship in chemistry I met with the president of a church-affiliated, liberal-arts institution who asked me, "How will you reconcile creationism with evolution in your biochemistry classes?" My response was: "As long as you do not ask me to lecture on the topic of creationism alongside evolution in a science classroom, we will have no conflict." Needless to say, I was not offered the position.
» From an interviewer: Once when I was serving on a search committee I noticed that a candidate had approximately two years missing from his résumé. So I said to him in private conversation, "There seem to be two years missing here. What were you doing then?"
He replied, "Oh, that was when I was hospitalized for a mental breakdown. But I have a certificate here that says I am O.K. now."

At the gathering of the committee as a whole, our old and sage chairman immediately dissed the candidate and removed his name from contention because, the chairman said, "We all know why."

But I thought to myself, "Wait a minute! This guy has a certificate that says he is sane. No one else at this table has a certificate!" I have always regretted not saying something at that meeting.

» From a job candidate: When I interviewed for an assistant professorship, I was asked whether I had read a certain book by a well-known economist. I gave the honest answer, "No," but that put an end to the conversation with that particular faculty member. I did not get an offer and I know this was one reason why. Actually, I was familiar with what the book was about, though it had nothing to do with my own research and had never been assigned in any class I'd taken. So a better answer might have been, "It's a great book. I'm just getting into it. What do you think about it?" (Or some other similar question to kick the ball back into the faculty member's court.) Not an entirely honest answer, but it certainly would have been better than my actual fumble.