next »

[horrible]

(and by the way, I knew all their names, and their specialties and everything, but they did not allow for any exchange. god it was horrible)

[seeking]

After making sure that I know the bios of the committee, how do I address them over the phone? Dr. So-and-so or "Mike."  Using the Dr. seems respectful and proper but does that make me seem less of a colleague and more of a student? Using "Mike" seems pretty informal considering I've never met the person but conveys that I could be a good colleague.

(Note when they introduce themselves they will likely use both first and last names so that won't clue me in)

[%sig%]

[Search Committee Member]

Professor so-and-so is safest; it's possible at some schools that not all would have a PhD, and in many departments at schools where everyone has a doctorate, using "Dr." is seen as insecurity/small-time degree. Students often call everyone "Professor," and we use it in writing even when the person is an associate professor or a visiting assistant professor -- and even if (as at my school) one of the people on the search committee is a graduate student, that person too will be somewhat accustomed to being called "Professor" in class by undergraduates. First names are ok in a campus interview once you've been invited to use them, but over the phone you can't see how informal or formal people may be. Use of titles tends, in my experience, to go with departments in which men wear a coat and tie every day, while even in on-campus interviews I tend to be able to look at a table of faculty from another department at the faculty club at lunchtime and say to myself "they must be doing job interviews -- there's one man in a tie at the table; he's got to be a job candidate."

[could you repeat that?]

I had a phone interview and they called MY CELL PHONE even though I specifically requested they use the land line.  You can imagine how well that went, speaker phone on the other end and me standing on tiptoe with one arm extended, hoping that the call didn't get dropped.  To top it off, the committe were asking scripted, long winded questions so wordy that THEY were stopping to gasp for breath in the middle of them.

Even so, I thought I did ok.  I didn't get an on-campus interview but I suspect that it was because I was ABD at the time.  Honestly, though after those questions, it was not a great disappointment.

[anon]

I recently had a phone interview. At the beginning of the interview, the chair listed the  7 people on the committee. I frantically started writing the names and positions, but then realized how ridiculous it would be to attempt this. I ended up contacting the secretary after the interview and got the proper spellings and departments for each committee member. And then ended up writing 7 different thank you notes.

[Anon and on]

 
> As for Seeking, I had a successful phone interview which was at
> its most triumphant when a committee member asked me a sly,
> tricky grammar question.  But, slyer me, I had my trustiest

Oh, please, tell me you are a composition or English PhD... the thought that this kind of question comes up in other contexts scares the Dickens out of me ... oh, boy, I think I may have made an English (Lit) joke...