First Person

Lessons Learned on the Interview Circuit

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By Harry Lancaster

Once again, I'm waiting. The job applications are out, and I'm left on hold, the numbing sound of new-age music playing in my ear, interrupted sporadically by a pleasant voice saying, "Please stay on the line. Your application is important to us."

Now that I've seen searches from the other side (I currently have a full-time teaching position at a college that does not offer tenure), I can appreciate why I'm waiting. Job applications, it seems, are always due at the same time that students have major projects due, so that search committees are faced with both a pile of job applications and a pile of student papers. Job applicants, not wanting to jeopardize themselves, keep their mouths shut, jaws clenched; students, though, have no reservations about badgering faculty members with questions like "Have you graded our papers yet?" It's no surprise that the search-committee members handle their students first, pushing that stack of applications off until the holiday break, or maybe the week after ...

All of which leaves me in limbo. And as I wait I find myself doing what I always do while waiting at the doctor's office or the barber's: flipping through old, worn publications. At the doctor's office, this means riffling through the pages of Time magazines offering in-depth analyses of the booming Internet economy. Thankfully, while waiting for responses to my job queries, I have found something more personally engaging to sift through: my personal catalog of past interviewing experiences. That's a good inventory to revisit, I think, because as I wait I might as well remind myself of what I've learned from my own history of what I call preliminary interviews -- those telephone or conference interviews that necessarily precede the big one, the campus interview.

My first academic job interview came during what would be my penultimate year of graduate school. I had, in a fit of enthusiasm, applied for positions at a couple of colleges -- a good experience in that I began thinking about how to write a clear CV and structure an effective application package. None of the places I applied to even bothered to write me an "Are you kidding?" letter. Lesson learned: Be realistic.

However, I did get an unanticipated phone interview that year. A former professor at my alma mater called and encouraged me to apply for a position there as director of teacher education. A liberal-arts college, it did not have an education major, but it did have a teacher-training program that I had gone through myself. I applied and secured a phone interview.

On the day of the interview, there I was, sitting at my desk -- wearing a coat and tie (so I would sit up straight and sound professional) -- with my CV and notes of possible answers scattered on my desk around me (for quick reference, though I don't recall ever checking them). I picked up the telephone on the third ring (not wanting to seem too anxious, you know!) and the interview began. It went, as I recall, very cordially, but it was clear to me that I was out of my league. No job, but a nice rejection. In hindsight, I think the committee interviewed me only as a courtesy to the professor who recommended me. Lessons learned: It's good to have connections -- and even better to have the right skills for a job.

My job search began in earnest during my final year of graduate school when I landed four conference interviews. My first such interview came as a surprise: A professor during the conference contacted me to say that Unknown State U was doing some interviews, and that she had used her contacts to sign me up for one the next morning. Fortunately, I had extra copies of my CV on hand. That interview was great for me because I realized maybe five minutes into it that there was no way I was going to work at USU. The pressure vanished. The interview became a practice session for me, and I enjoyed the chance to rehearse my answers and try out a few questions of my own. (Incidentally, I never heard anything more from USU.) Lessons learned: While connections can help, you have the right to say "no."

My second conference interview was much more of what I expected -- for one, I wanted the job. I was well prepared and had a productive hourlong conversation with the two interviewers. I had done my homework, and it showed. The twist to the interview came when they invited me to a social gathering that evening. I of course attended only to discover that the guest list included not just the college's faculty and local alumni but also the other candidates whom they had interviewed at the conference. I knew one of my competitors, in fact. The evening threatened to get ugly, with the candidates all trying to impress the college's representatives with our wit and wisdom, doing it as graduate school had trained us to do -- by trying to shoot down everything the other guy says and thereby show off how smart we are. Thankfully, after embarrassing myself only a bit, I realized the silliness of my efforts, and I found the other candidate whom I knew and we spent the rest of the evening talking about kids, teaching, and how little fun the job search was. Neither of us got the job (though we noted, with some satisfaction, that the rejection letter had a typo). Lesson learned: Being prepared is a good thing, but that doesn't mean there won't be surprises.

The third conference interview was with Desirable Small College. I had sent DSC a very thorough application packet -- the usual CV and cover letter but also a teaching portfolio and some translations of poetry I had done for a class I was teaching. In the interview, I was impressed by how thoroughly and attentively DSC's search committee had read everything I sent. The questions were pointed and specific: "Why did I choose this word in the translation?" "In your teaching portfolio, you propose a class organized a particular way. Why?" I thought I handled myself well, but I got no job offer from that interview. Lesson learned: Interviewers prepare too.

My final conference interview that year was again with my alma mater, although at least this time it was for a position in my field. I thought the interview went well, but again I received a rejection. This time I wrote one of the committee members -- my former professor -- and asked how I could make my interview more successful. His reply was that I actually had had a strong interview, but that the committee members had decided that they did not want to hire an alumnus. Lesson learned: You can't go home again, or at least I can't.

I did eventually get beyond the preliminary stage of the phone/conference interview. I did get some campus interviews, and I did get a full-time job. In fact, I'm on my second one, and hoping to land my third. So at least, as I wait, I know that there is an end to the process, that the end doesn't always end in "no," and that at some point, someone will answer the phone and assure me that my job application really is important to them.