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[secretweapon]

This thread is quite amusing! My classic interview moments have included:

-being asked (and having) to play a well-known Japanese video game with a SC member's kids, in which I exhibited less than perfect gross motor skills

-having to ask random students to help me move 3 pieces of luggage that had broken on the plane, once I was dropped off at campus, since no one was there to meet me and help me go to the right building  (I had two bags plus carryon - including one extra big bag with Xmas gifts for my family, who I was going to see after the visit)

-as the dean saw this broken luggage (my next meeting was with her), she asked another tenured faculty member to help me tape it up with packing tape. So I went into that faculty member's office. I think he held the luggage, and I wrapped the packing tape around.

Good times.

These are hilarious! 

[undisciplined]

So did the Dean and the other tenured faculty member like your panties?

[athena1]

A couple of years ago, I had an interview at a regional uni in Just Barely a Town, which was 3 1/2 hours away from where I lived.  I drove up the night before the interview, and one of the faculty members took me to dinner.  The next day, another professor takes me to campus.  At about 11:30 or 11:45 a.m., while I am interviewing with the Dean, the secretary interrupts us to say that I have a phone call.  I'm thinking something bad has happened at home and they couldn't get me on my cell b/c it was turned off.  So I get on the phone and talk to...the hotel reservation desk.  They want to know if I can get my stuff, because it's checkout time and the school has only paid for one night.  I'm stunned, of course.  I tell her that I'm in the middle of an interview and can't resolve that right now.  When they finally return me to the hotel at 3:30, I get my stuff and pay for the "extra" night.  I know, I know, rookie mistake for not verifying checkout time or putting my stuff in the car before they picked me up for the interview, but I just thought, "Wow."  Did the hotel really think I, a guest of the University (yes, they knew who I was and why I was there), was going to run off from campus without my car or my clothes?  Just so I could get away with a free "night" at a hotel in Podunk?

Wow.

[cfox53]

Recently had an interview (for dean slot) at a good private U. Got to the connecting airport and found out all flights into the small airport near U were canceled - next flight at 11:30 the next morning (my interview started at 7:30 the next morning). I called the SCC and found out the nearest big city and I got a flight there, about 130 miles away, and rented a car and drove to the U (arriving at 11:00pm instead of 4:30pm) - and of course my luggage wasn't there. I was wearing 'business casual' so I was basically OK and stopped at a trucker stop to get essentials - hand washed and ironed my shirt and was OK - with a 19.5" neck getting shirts and ties that fit are a problem so I didn't even try.

Started my public talk by saying 'you'll notice I'm not wearing a tie but do have my powerpoint - that's because I checked my luggage but kept my flash memory stick in my pocket.' Ran the PP and none of the audio worked (had no time to check as the room was changed last minute) even though I had said audio was an important part of my presentation - MLK's 'I Have A Dream' speech just looks silly with no audio. During the interviews, several people commented on my calm and resourcefulness.

Returning home it took me 17 hours to make a (scheduled) 5.5 hour trip.

I did get the offer a week later but for many reasons I turned it down.

The sad part is that this type of thing during travel is getting increasingly more familiar.

[madhatter]

The sad part is that this type of thing during travel is getting increasingly more familiar.

Yes, indeed. I commend you for handling it with grace and aplomb.

[canonicalkumquat]

As I did on another thread, I offer virtual cookies--chocolate chip, white chocolate macadamia nut, peanut butter & bacon, toffee, and gingerbread--to anyone with more stories. 

I could use more of this awesome thread to get through the week!

[peppergal]

I applied for a job, and hadn't heard anything by the time the convention started, so I assumed I was out of the running.  I went to the convention anyway (other interviews, etc.).  After all my other interviews were done (standard, no brilliant stories), I killed time by going to a few panels.  After one panel, I couldn't find a bathroom, so I decided to go back to my hotel room to use the facilities and divest myself of handouts from the panels and swag/purchases from the book display.  I use the facilities, then notice the message light on the room phone is blinking.  I check my messages, and hear, "Hello.  This is Department Chair from X University.  We would like to interview you at 3:30 today in room ABC."  I look at my watch, it's 3:25.  The message had been left at 2:45.  Thank goodness I was wearing an interview-appropriate blouse, so all I had to do was change from jeans into a skirt and jacket.  I went to the interview (five minutes late, because it was hard to find the room, but thank goodness for mirrors in the elevator), and was extremely flustered (wouldn't you be?) and of course unprepared.  I didn't get a campus visit.

[joelp]

this was last year, and enough time has elapsed that I dont care if they can immediately recognize me. I was invited for an on campus interview at a regional university facing a severe budget crisis. The highlights:

- I was told I would have to teach a 50 minute class. When I asked for more information about that (number of students, level, part of an ongoing class or stand alone lecture, etc) I was told that they didnt know, and the only thing was that it would be good if it was related to the area they were hiring in, but not mandatory.
- Right before I flew, I was told that [Italian sounding name] would pick me up at the airport and drive me to my accommodations. I got there at 10:30 at night and no one was waiting for me. I waited for 20 minutes and no one showed up. After I found someone at the now deserted small airport, they told me that [Italian sounding name] was not a person, but a car company that had its kiosk outside the airport.

- The car company takes me to where I am staying. No food, no restaurants around. It's a bed and breakfast. This is a scenic area that attracts a lot of honeymooners and newlyweds. I am assigned to the "pretty in pink" suite (yes, the suite had that name). Once inside my room, I notice a white noise machine. I'm intrigued. Soon enough I notice why it's there, as it's a romantic b&b in an old house with paper thin walls and floors.

- Next morning, I meet with provost. He is leaving. He tells me master's program in my discipline has been canceled and will not come back. He tells me salary there is very low, but health insurance is very good. He knows this because it took care of embarrassing health problem his wife had.

- I go to lunch. One of the members of the SC is a lecturer. The university has just announced they are letting all lecturers go. This particular lecturer tells me how he is using the department's internship program to get a job outside academia.

- Dean had the wrong time for my meeting. He interrupts my meeting with the department chair to ask if I could meet with him then. The dean is new and interim. I am the first person he is interviewing as a dean ever. He asks me stuff about my research, but is absolutely clueless regarding all the issues one would expect to talk with a dean about.

- I go back to the rest of my meeting with the dept. chair. She proceeds to tell me that the pay is indeed terrible, and that once she is no longer chair she will go back to tutoring high school kids during the summer to make extra money. She also asks about my wife, is a bit put off by the fact that my wife is also a phd, but says that if my wife is ok with working outside academia, she can help, as she knows a lot of people in the service sector of the city. After this meeting is done, and all I have left is a dinner with other professors, I finally receive my schedule for the day, which was actually the sign up sheet for all the events.


- At dinner with assistant professors, they actually don't know the master's program has been canceled. They also talk about how foolish they feel after having just encouraged students to do it. At this point, I joined them in the b*tchfest, having decided I wouldn't take a position there even if offered. I am not offered the position.

[pinkmouse]

I check my messages, and hear, "Hello.  This is Department Chair from X University.  We would like to interview you at 3:30 today in room ABC."  I look at my watch, it's 3:25.  The message had been left at 2:45. 

I've had calls during a conference to attend interviews, but not at 45 minutes notice. Regardless, this is insane.
Would anyone who has been on a SC like to cop to having done this?

[harlow]

The setting: small unknown-outside-the-state college about 2 hours from major city. The Dean spent our entire half hour meeting dissing the well-respected urban university where I'd been adjuncting while in  grad school.

[harlow]

 This was the same place (see above) whose rejection letter said that the candidate they hired was the only competent one; the letter also contained several grammatical and usage errors. 

[post_functional]

Ouch.  Ouch, ouch.

The TT job at an urban CC that I harangued everybody with questions with back in August did not come up all trumps for me, so I can unload a bit.  My SC interview and teaching demo went just great.  Could not have been better.  When I got to the interview with the president, however, he/she told me that my really excellent, elite background schools were much too effete to equip me to cope with the realities of his/her student cohort at Urban Nightmare Community College, and that my socratic teaching style was better suited to guiding discussion groups under a willow tree under a sunny day than being in one of his/her demanding classrooms.  He/She didn't know anything about my field, professed this openly, and tried to ferret out whose side I would take in an ongoing dispute between him/her and his/her faculty.  I was not offered the job, and later found out it went to an inside candidate who has been deployed to function in an ancillary service for the department that was not even listed in the job description.

Fortunately, though, I have just accepted a great new job at a great place working with great people I know well and really like, teaching subject matter I enjoy and am deeply committed to!  Despite the not-terribly-good experience at the CC, I was still disappointed not to get the job, because a job is a job is a job and the fresh new smell of mint on my newly minted doctorate isn't smelling as fresh as it did last year, and I was eager to get started on my academic path.  People kept assuaging my disappointment by telling me "it just means something better and more suited for you is coming around the corner."  I dismissed this as so much happy talk, but it really worked!

[southerntransplant]

I might have posted this elsewhere.

Talking to the Dean at a major R1 in the big Southern Peninsula State. Dean asks me what I am actually known for in my field. I describe the various things I've done and what my reputation is. He asks about my dissertation, which at the time was 10 years in the past. I describe it, saying how I modeled some complicated equations. He then asks, "These equations - you derived them yourself?"

I stopped short of saying that I outsourced them to another country. But. Just.

I got an offer but turned the job down, and in hindsight, the decision was prescient.

[lilyb]

 I arrive at my first interview ever, a very nervous ABD, but then I had my well-researched dissertaton spiel to start me off on solid ground. So I thought. There were at least 10 faculty members there lined up in rows classroom-style. Sitting front row center is a guy who's a dead wringer for the Dieter character on SNL--black turtleneck, glasses, hair all spiked up--but he's glaring at me with a look of hatred that completely rattles me. I get half-way through said spiel and completely forget the name of a major theorist who informs my dissertation. I just blank, and pretty much freeze. Helpful SC members start throwing out the names of likely theorists, with me saying, "no, that's not him, etc." and then someone kindly looks in my materials and supplies me the name. It just went downhill from there.
Now that I'm on the other side of the interviewing fence, I try to be as un-Dieterish as possible, especially for the young'uns.

[alleyoxenfree]

In a phone interview with Famous Civil Rights figure, I was asked a slew of illegal questions.  Realized I would not take that job with hu, and wondered if that was the method of scaring off candidates hu didn't want there.

Went to another interview approximately a two hour drive away.  Having spent a sleepless night, I arrived in town with just enough time to make a hasty trip to a deli I knew to use the bathroom, check over clothing, and arrive looking calm at interview, congratulating myself on how prepared I was and what a pro I had become at interviewing.
Only to find out from admin that I was two days early (and had the time wrong to boot).  Fortunately, admin was extremely discreet and I returned on the right day.