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[Bear Bryant]

What type of questions would you expect to get on a telephone interview from a CC?  Teaching philosophy?  Content? Have no idea, please shed some light on the subject for me.

[football fan]

Well, if you are Bear Bryant, you might expect questions about football strategy, the playbook and discipline issues.  :o)

If, however, you are not Bear Bryant, you might expect to be asked about your teaching experience, teaching philosophy and style, etc.

[Michelle]

Bear, I teach at a CC.  I have extensive interviewing experience.  Nothing is more disorienting than a telephone interview.  You can prepare yourself, though.

First, have a glass of water beside you.  Also have writing materials, and be seated at a comfortable spot.  Turn off all noisy appliances and your cell phone.  Keep the kids out of the room.  When they call you, jot down the names as they introduce themselves, as well as a quick clue to help you remember who they are: e.g., "Janice, Eng. comp."  Have notes ready for answering commonly asked questions.  These will not differ from any standard list of commonly asked interview questions.  Here are some you should prepare to answer:

1. Tell us about yourself.
This is a chance for you to give a two-pronged answer about your professional highlights and your personal information.  Bear in mind that they cannot legally ask you much personal stuff.  This doesn't mean that you can't supply such info, so tell them what you think they are curious about.  For instance, in my own case, I let them know that my husband is retired and that we are mobile, since I know that they want to be sure I'm really willing to move to, say, Snow College, Utah, if offered.

2. Why do you want to teach for us?
Do your homework on this one.  Know about the institution and area and identify 2 or 3 attractive things about them.

3. What do you think your life would be like teaching at a CC?
Find out the realities from others who have taught at a CC.

4. Why should we hire you?
Have 2 or 3 cogent reasons and support them.  If they ask you why you are the "best candidate," admit that you don't know if you are since you don't know who else has applied, but assert that you are a strong candidate!

In general, be brief but clear with your answers.  They may have a long list of questions to get through.  Also, ask them to repeat any question that you don't understand.  And if you lose the thread of what you're saying in mid-answer, say, "I think I've lost the thread here!"  They will understand and help you out.

Above all, prepare!  If you wing it, you won't be as clear and concise as you need to be to make a good impression.  A phone conversation is face to face stripped of nonverbals, so content of answers is paramount.

[Bear Bryant]

Wow, thank you Michelle for the great tips!

[Michelle]

You are so welcome.

Please let us know how it goes for you!

[forty]

Above all else -- clear the house of screaming kids, hungry husbands, barking dogs, hard-of-hearing mothers-in-laws, etc.  They will only undermine the professional impression you are trying to make.

[52 Cents]

Michelle gives great advice on this matter. I would also add that in philosophy they are going to try to see if you can communicate clearly and no red flags go up about your personality. Being in philosophy myself, most candidates are excluded due to their lack of effective communication. In my experience, most candidates talk way too much about themselves instead of answering the questions directly and clearly. If you talk about your dissertation in a CC interview for more than a sentence or two, you obviously don't understand the role of a CC instructor.

[Professor 7/7]

It depends on how/why you discuss your dissertation.  If you engage in deep theoretical discourse without explaining how it supports your teaching, you will appear not to understand the CC instructor's job.  If you explain how the topics you address in the dissertation apply to your work in the classroom, that could help you.  Everything should be directed at your desire to serve the students and the college.  Avoid discussing your field-specific professional activity, such as conference presentations and articles, unless you are showing how they serve you as a teacher.  CCs want productive faculty who maintain currency in their areas.  They simply do not want scholars who neglect their classes to engage in scholarly activity.

[52 Cents]

To Professor 7/7, I respectfully disagree. While a brief mention of research and its application to what is taught in the classroom is fine, it is more likely you will bore the non-specialists on the committee and leave them out of the loop. This is a pragmatic issue.

It is more important to address how you relate to the CC environment than to talk about your research. Your dissertation is not that interesting to fellow faculty and CC students. If you think it is, once again, you've missed the boat at a CC. I've seen failed candidates over and over expound on the virtue of their scholarly work without ever realizing their audience--and most of the time, the audience doesn't even care to hear how their scholarly work fits in with their teaching. Once again, this is a pragmatic issue.

I always ask a question about one's dissertation or thesis, and give the candidate a time limit. Why? Because if you can't explain it in a relatively straightforward way in a minute or so, you probably can't teach CC students very well. My intuitions have been correct thus far.

[Michelle]

If anyone asks about your research, i would be quite surprised.  Research just is not part of the equation.  However, if your research is ABOUT teaching, bring it up during the "Tell me about yourself" question, but briefly.

You would be nauseated if you could hear how poorly many candidates express themselves during phone interviews.  Rambling and nonsense syntax are examples.  Preparation can help greatly.  I suggest a very simple outline of possible answers to those predictable questions.

[Professor 7/7]

I must also, as you put it, respectfully disagree 52 Cents.  It is one thing to agree that research work ought not to be the CC instructor's focus.  It is an entirely different thing to dismiss any research work outright.  Does your institution not require that its faculty "maintain currency in the subject taught?"  Does not research activity, such as conference presentations, qualify under this area?  

It disturbs me that any search committee member would dismiss any candidate purely on the basis of having scholarly credentials, regardless of the easily explainable practical application of her/his work.  The fact is, for all the anti-intellectual rhetoric that seems to follow us CC instructors around, there are more and more Ph.D.'s being hired at the CC level.  I have never witnessed the kind of rigorous anti-scholarship efforts you describe, despite being on both ends of numerous CC search committees.

If there are search committees out there who are dismissing candidates for having scholarly interests at all, it is the search committees who do not understand the mission of the community college.  The instructor should be participating in the profession, in order to be a fully successful teacher and to aid students in making the transition to the colleges/universities where the profession is being defined.  

That said, search committee members should become bored by lengthy discussion of abstruse jargon or theoretical models.  Indeed, the instructor who argues for a more nuanced definition of post-colonialism in the phone interview probably should be dismissed from consideration.  I certainly hope that if the instructor spends two minutes outlining how he/she is particularly versed in the current thinking on international policy, because her/his dissertation looked at recent political crises in countries A, B, and C, and would be able to make the Fundamentals of Public Policy course particularly interesting by introducing discussion of incidents that are happening right now, that he/she would not be discarded because the applicant "spent a little too much time talking about that boring research stuff."

If search committee members are bored by any discussion of cutting edge research, they probably shouldn't serve on search committees at all.  The mission of the community college is not to rigorously ignore cutting edge research.  It is to develop the intellectual and professional possibilities of students.  If you insist that their instructors never expand their own, you reduce their goals to nothing more than classroom management and the reinforcement of absolete knowledge.

[prof_d]

Loved Michelle's answers.

Here are a few other ideas.

Write out the names of the people as if they were at a table when they introduce themselves.

I put two notes in front of me, One with the advice you've gotten:
Be Brief
Speak clearly
No nervous laughter

And one that is helping me most of all:  "Remember: These are potential future colleagues."

And, of course, always have a question for them.

[conjugate]

Speaking as one who has recently done phone interviews, I can add to Michelle's list of questions.

• How would you handle {poorly-prepared/disruptive} students?
• Do you have any experience teaching {minority/learning-disabled/first-generation} students?
• Do you have any comment on why are you leaving your present position?
  

The items in curly braces are there to indicate that there might be a number of possibilities.  We've made sure our candidates understand that our students come often from poor educational backgrounds, and often need refreshers in basic arithmetic.  The third item would probably only be asked if we were dealing with a person leaving an industry job or a non-terminal position; we don't ask it of, for instance, new Ph.D's or people leaving a post-doc.

If English is not your native language, make sure you are doing your best to speak clearly; lots of hiring committees are leery of people with accents or "foreign" speech patterns.  Try to speak calmly (take a couple of deep breaths when you hear the phone ring) and sound assured.  After all, you know you are a good hire and will be a qualified, competent, valued colleague; you need only convince the hiring committee of this fact.  Be careful about joking; one person's joke is another person's profound disrespect of an ancient and dignified institution.  It might not hurt, but be guided by the tone taken by the interviewer(s).

There's probably more; can anybody else think of anything I should have added?

[jay_leno]

I would like to add a few more questions:

--Describe a time where your teaching really clicked, and it went well.  What were you doing, teaching, and which way was the wind blowing.
--Describe a time when your teaching really failed, etc...see above.

[graine]

A few other tips....

-When they call at the assigned time - resist the urge NOT to pick up.  It's a whole lot easier then you think it will be!
-Be prepared to answer why you applied for this particular job (and "I need a job" is not the answer)
- if you can, find out before who will be in on the call, write them out and then you will be ready to go when they call - chances are they won't all be there. 
- I always use a hands free set for all phone-meetings, interviews or otherwise, it's just easier to have 2 hands free. 
- Use a sports bottle for water, rather than a glass.  If it spills you won't shriek ;)
- turn off every other phone, stick a "do-not-knock, interview in progress" sign on your door, turn off your computer; if you're likely to pace (like me) clear the floor so you don't trip.
- prepare LOTS of questions to ask.  I got 15 minutes of a 30 minute phone interview to ask questions once!