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[48 hours]

What is the shortest period of time that you have had between being asked for a campus interview and the interview?

[it was insane]

6 days.

Or maybe I should say, it made me insane.  Temporarily one hopes, but that depends on whom you ask.

[anon]

I was once called and invited to get on a plane the next day, coast to coast, for a nice little SLAC.  They paid more than $1800 for the flight.  They told me they weren't happy with the people they had seen.  I was therefore rather optimistic.  Well, they hired one of the people they had already seen, not me; it seems they were happy enough with him, but they were so unhappy with the other ones they had interviewed that they felt they didn't have a real choice.  In other words, they needed to be able to turn down someone reasonably good in order to feel that they had had a successful search experience.  I've always thought that this said loads about the dynamics of search committees, at least at institutions wealthy enough to engage in this sort of thing.

[couple of days]

I usually have to fly, so it's always at least after the next weekend. Usually enough to put together or polish a job talk. The only critical thing is if they request lots of additional documents (write-ups of stuff).

[peeved]

Well, for me, it's been since last Monday and I have to leave this Wednesday, which doesn't seem like a short time, but I haven't received all of the instructions for the teaching demonstration (see my post), and I'm pretty nervous about that. I never got it as promised all last week - when I was on vacation and could have put together something great - and I finally contacted them and got some HR lady who wasn't sure and sent me something, but now I'm not sure this is even what I'm supposed to teach. So, I feel I have very little time to prepare. I have some other major things happening right now and only one evening to plan it. Ah well... As for phone interviews, I've been asked to have on the very next day.

[jellyfish]

I was called on Friday afternoon and visited on Tuesday.

[too short]

Called Friday, arrived Monday.