First Person

Doing My Best?

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By Dana M. Zimbleman

Two years ago, I wrote a series of First Person columns offering advice on how to get a full-time faculty position at a community college. My credibility stemmed from having landed three full-time, tenure-track positions at two-year colleges in Alabama, Illinois, and Missouri and from serving on countless hiring committees. Now I return to the topic again, but this time as a job seeker.

Even though I am fortunate to have a great job here in Missouri, my husband and I want to move out West and purchase property with a view of snow-capped mountains or luscious vineyards. So for the past two years, I've been applying for jobs at community colleges in Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming. I've been called for interviews at roughly 80 percent of the institutions where I've applied, and in many cases the colleges have paid for my interview expenses. Unfortunately, I have yet to be offered a full-time job.

I'll concede it's a little humbling that I, a Dear Abby of sorts for the community-college hiring process, cannot report instantaneous success.

But my situation makes perfect sense, in many respects. As someone with almost a decade of full-time experience, I am knowledgeable about the community-college environment. And I am completely confident in my abilities to put together a super application packet. On paper, I know look great. So it's no surprise that I am routinely a finalist for positions with anywhere from 60 to 100 applicants.

Why then have I been unable to land a job out West? My friends and colleagues have been quick to absolve me of any responsibility for coming up short. I've been told it's not my fault, that tight budgets, diversity initiatives, and a multitude of other matters are sabotaging my search.

One friend even suggested that people out West are biased against Southerners and especially against people with degrees from colleges and universities in the Deep South. His theory is that Westerners see themselves as sophisticated and progressive but conversely view Southerners as backward and narrow-minded.

As a native Alabamian, I would find that theory extremely disconcerting if I actually believed it. I've heard about the "Southern bias" ever since I was in graduate school. I didn't buy it then, and I don't buy it now.

It is not logical to assume that folks on hiring committees are thinking: "Let's waste our time and bring this redneck from Alabama in for a campus interview. We're not going to hire her, but let's pay her expenses out here anyway."

I know my friend meant well, but I've always wondered if job applicants who use conspiracy theories to rationalize not getting hired are simply incapable of doing an honest self-assessment of their strengths and weaknesses as candidates. It's much easier to believe that the problem rests with the process or with the people who are running it than with ourselves. Or maybe notions such as the Southern bias theory make getting rejected for the position we want less demoralizing.

Now I'm not saying there aren't numerous problems with the hiring process or that qualified people haven't been mistreated. I've served on enough hiring committees to know that things occur that defy all logic. I've worked with colleagues on hiring committees who've treated interviews as a popularity contest and behaved as though we were picking a prom queen instead of a college professor.

That said, I cannot accept that the process is too flawed for me to get a job until I'm confident I've done my best from the application phase through the interview. And I'm not convinced I have.

The truth is, I am a very weak interviewee. I've had only one or two fairly good interviews in the past two years; the rest have been mediocre at best. In fact, I performed so poorly at one college in Wyoming, I feel as if I should return the money I received for travel expenses. I can only hope they felt pity for me and thought I was just having a bad day.

I am not blessed with the gift of gab. I come up with the clever comeback 10 minutes after a conversation is over. Although my writing voice is strong and assertive, I often cultivate a dazed, opossum-in-the-headlights persona during the question-and-answer portion of interviews.

Furthermore, aware of my shortcomings, I have sometimes overcompensated and tried too hard to be clever and funny. The result? I am no doubt perceived as childish and silly rather than competent and professional.

Don't mistake my self-criticism here for a lack of self-esteem. It's more a matter of looking at my performance as critically and objectively as possible. Academics are trained to approach ideas with a healthy dose of skepticism and doubt. Yet many think so highly of themselves that it would never occur to them that their performance at interviews was less than stellar. I've seen plenty of candidates perform poorly during the interview yet seem totally oblivious to their shortcomings. I feel grateful that I can critique myself honestly.

The first year I interviewed at two-year colleges out West, I fared especially poorly. Afterward, I thought a lot about my performance, not to castigate myself, but to try to get better. And I did. Last year -- my second on the job market -- I had two decent interviews and was the runner-up for a position in Oregon. Although coming in second was disappointing, it signaled that I had come a long way in a year's time.

What did I do to improve? I started to educate myself about pedagogical trends in vogue now on the community college scene. Quite honestly, since I had a full-time job already, I had gotten lazy and stopped reading journal articles that highlighted new instructional theories at two-year colleges.

Because I was stumbling over those theories at interviews, I started reading up on initiatives such as "service learning" and on teaching to various learning styles -- two topics that had come up regularly in my interviews out West. I began looking at publications like College English, Teaching English in the Two-Year Colleges, and others that discuss innovations in instruction.

The knowledge I gained allowed me to answer teaching methodology questions more intelligently. Moreover, being better prepared helped alleviate some of the crippling nervousness that I felt far too often during interviews.

Will I get a job in this, my third year of job hunting out West? I certainly hope so. But if I don't, at least I want to know that nervousness or a poor interview performance didn't undermine my chances. I'm not aiming for perfection; I'd just like to do my best for a change.