Reviving this, because it's a good one. Humanities specific.
Trailing spouses are rarely of interest to students or the department. Don't try to saddle us with them. Please don't waste our time with an interview if you will not take a job without one, and/or are looking for leverage with your current department/admin. We don't want to meet you.
We have better things to do. We will remember you, but not fondly. Word to the wise, small talk with grads may result in some illegal questions.
If you (are super pedigreed and) pull one of these:
On one occasion, I kept asking a candidate the above questions (in different, tactful ways) and their only answer was "I will teach courses on my specialty and I want to encourage graduate students to study my niche specialty and I really want to see more people in the field studying what I study."
Forget it. Shrubbery and Ravioli's posts are really good. (The pedigreed part just makes this response more obnoxious. And I mean super-, the fanciest awards and postdocs. Your competitors have those too. Hyper/Over-specialization doesn't make you special
in a good way.)
Be aware of major issues and trends in the
discipline. If you are so highly specialized that you can't meet anyone else on a common disciplinary level, you will get bad reviews. Even in a grad program, there is use value in being a generalist of sorts. This, I think, is a form of collegiality. If you can't make the smallest of talk across fields, you aren't able to advise [interdisciplinary work], or sit on committees in a useful capacity. You are a waste of money. Even if there are multiple people working in your area, it behooves you to be able to do this. If your work can relate to other departments, if you have time to do research about possible connections with extra-departmental faculty, that is impressive. Be interested in the institution, not just the department.
If there is opportunity, explain how key elements of your work are relevant to, or can contribute to research across fields. In relation to shrubbery's comment above, your answers to diversity questions (asked in several tactful ways) better not be BS. If you pay zero attention to diversity issues in your sub-field, or with regard to the student body, forget it. Even worse, you try to resolve your ignorance of diversity issues by self-identifying. (see also, crash and burn)
You can't lose the job in your meeting with the students, but you can alienate us and inspire negative word of mouth and lobbying against your being hired. Lastly, you can get the job even if you commit some of the fora's cardinal sins of interviewing -- like disclosing the real reason(s) you want the job, or to leave your current position. I wouldn't recommend it, but there may have been far more glaring faults in other highly qualified candidates.
BTW, the hour usually goes faster than you think. Get everyone to intro themselves with field interests, make a comment on the topic and that can eat up time right there. Then ask what they like about the program and what they might like to see added---not "what is wrong?" but "what else would you like to see added?" Every grad student can come up with something they want done differently and will tell you at length.
Yes, this is gold. I was impressed by the candidate who skillfully led the conversation back to issues that helped them look good and were equally relevant to students. Good time managers stand out in all sorts of circumstances beyond interviews. It's a leadership quality when done well.
