This post is part of our blog series The Unwritten Curriculum. Check out our posts in this series (How to apply to grad school, The grad student life, How to submit a paper, Demystifying the qualifying exams, How to do a remote postdoc, How to apply for a tenure track faculty job in ecology, and Paths to ecology I, II, and III). Please see the companion post How to give a great (job) talk.
A faculty job interview typically consists of a few parts: a job talk, one-on-one meetings, and meals with other faculty and students. It is typically a grueling, two-day experience with travel days on either end. The process can seem very daunting but keeping in mind what the interviewers are looking for and why the process is set up the way it is can be very helpful for perspective.
First, what are they looking for? The hiring department is looking to select their future colleague for the next 30 years. They want someone whose research is exciting, creative, original, and ground-breaking; someone who is a great communicator, thinker, and teacher; who they would enjoy working with on committees and teaching; whose research and teaching will bring exciting opportunities for students; whose is likely to be successful at obtaining competitive funding, publishing papers, and most importantly, making a scientific impact and societal impact. Sometimes departments or universities are looking for other specific things, which should be specified in the search ad. It is important to see yourself and conduct yourself as a future colleague. This can be hard if you’re a postdoc. Envisioning your fully fledged research program five years or more down the line can be hard, but it is worth trying to do this for yourself as a way to build your confidence and prepare to convey this vision to the people you meet.
Second, why is the process set up this way? The typical faculty job interview is 1-2 full days of meetings, a seminar, and meals with people in the host department(s); it is a grueling couple of days that often starts with someone picking you up at your hotel for a breakfast meeting and ends with someone dropping you off after dinner. Host departments may try to fill every available minute in your schedule with activities, including meals. The goal of all of this is for as many people to get to know you on a personal level as possible; it is a sign of the group’s enthusiasm and investment in the candidate. It also gives you a chance to get to know the group and envision whether this is the kind of place you’d like to be if offered the job. I tried to focus on the mindset that this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to have a whole department of people focused on your work; everyone attends your talk, asks questions, and thinks deeply about what you are doing and is invested in getting to know you. That said, you are welcome to ask the person coordinating your schedule to accommodate any specific needs you have, such as dietary requirements, lactation breaks, or just a breather during a long day. During your visit, people will understand how busy the schedule is and should hopefully offer bathroom, water, and snack breaks but if they don’t, feel free to ask!
To me, a successful job interview is all about preparation. Having your talk in the absolute best possible shape it can be in; knowing who you are meeting with, what their scientific interests are, and how they overlap with yours; thinking through what questions you might ask and how you might respond to common questions. All of this preparation is under your control and will go a long way to building your confidence going into an interview. You can’t control the outcome, and there are often hidden preferences and dynamics you’re not aware of that may determine who is offered the job and who is not, but in my view the best possible outcome of an interview is that you leave feeling like you did the absolute best you could and showcased your best self.
The job talk
This is hands-down the most important part of the interview. If you don’t give an outstanding job talk you are very unlikely to get the job offer. This is your chance to showcase who you are as a scientist, what key discoveries your work has made, and your vision of where your research program is going in the future.
It is important to tailor the structure and content of the talk to the audience: Is it a broad biology department or an ecology and evolution department? What is the specific field or sub-field advertised in the position? Are there prominent experts in your field of study in the audience? Are most of the topics and methods likely to be new to most people?
Keeping this in mind, though, the most valuable advice I ever got on giving great talks is to always talk about your best work. You are under no obligation to talk about every project you ever did, to structure the talk in the order of your dissertation, or to cover every area of your interests. What is most important is choosing 2-3 key research findings and spending the time you need to clearly build up the story for each one: what is the importance of this problem, what was known before, how did your unique approach move the field forward, what was your key result, and what is the implication of that result? If in the process of telling the story, you can describe work you did along the way to build up the approach, all the better, but keep in mind that it is much better to clearly convey one memorable and important result than to show many results without clearly explaining them. The audience wants to see how your work changes the way we think about an important problem, not a laundry list of all the papers you’ve published or projects you’ve done.
For a job talk, it is important to reserve 5-10 minutes at the end to discuss the future directions of your research program. This may include revisiting the key results you presented and describing how your future research will build on those findings and what new questions they inspire. If it’s a natural fit, it can be nice to tailor some of your future research directions to a local field setting, research station, or university resource, but don’t stretch it too much.
Please see the companion post “How to give a great (job) talk” for more specific advice.
The question-and-answer session after the talk is also very important. Here, people can see what it is like to candidly talk science with you and see you think on your feet and demonstrate the depth of your knowledge. Be prepared to give further detail on how the methods work and how the results are interpreted. Be open to off-the-wall questions, which often reflect someone trying to connect their ideas and experiences to your work. Try your best to respond to the spirit of the question and to be honest about what you know and don’t know and what the limitations of your work might be without being defensive. Be willing to say when you don’t know, but also to steer difficult or ambiguous questions in a direction that you are comfortable addressing (e.g., we don’t yet know X but we do know closely related thing Y…). Always acknowledge the effort it takes for someone to publicly ask a question, and thank them for their question (and, unless they have a microphone, paraphrase and repeat the question for the audience).
One-on-one meetings
These meetings are all about getting to know you as a potential future colleague, and you getting to know them. You should consider all meetings (one-on-one or group and faculty or student) to be interviews and behave professionally and collegially. Many faculty interviewers will strike up a casual conversation, but some will have a more formal structure, asking you prepared questions related to your science and your future plans. The best way to prepare for these meetings is three-fold.
First, read about the people you will be meeting with ahead of time, check their websites, skim through their publications and recent research, and get a general sense of what they do. Your interview organizer should give you the meeting schedule at least a week in advance, but if they don’t, you can ask for a list of who you will be meeting with. Since I found it hard to remember everyone, I prepared a little cheat sheet for each place I visited with names, photos, and brief blurbs for each person on my schedule that I reviewed in the morning before my meetings.
Second, consider some likely questions people will ask you and how you might answer them. These include: describe the first grant proposal you will write (the science, what program, and how you would spend the money); what are the first few projects you would start when you get here; what classes would you like to teach here; how large of a lab would you like to have; what interests you about this department/university; how do you see yourself fitting into this department; where do you see your research program going in 5, 10, 30 years (yes, someone asked me where I saw myself in 30 years on an interview once; I did not have a good answer); what activities will you do to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion in your lab/department. Since some of these meetings may take place before the job talk, be prepared to give a brief and compelling overview of your research.
Third, most people you interview with will give you a chance to ask questions of them, and it’s a good idea to have a few thoughtful questions ready. Here are a few suggestions. Ask about their research, especially their recent research that isn’t published yet: this is a great way to get a conversation going and to bring out people’s excitement. Ask what they like about the department and university. Ask specific questions about their research if you know the work well and think you can start an interesting discussion, but don’t force it. Ask about what surprised them or challenged them when they first started their lab. Ask about the process of recruiting and funding grad students in the department. Ask about their experiences with undergraduate teaching at the university. Ask about whether there are any exciting new initiatives or programs going on at the university that might be a good fit for you (even better if you can research this beforehand and ask them about specific programs).
Keep in mind that meetings with grad students are still part of the interview, though candidates have a tendency to be more at ease and more candid around grad students. This is perfectly fine—in fact, having a good rapport with grad students is a great strength—but make sure you don’t veer into gossip or say things you wouldn’t say in front of a group of faculty.
A few words of parting advice
As I said in my post on how to apply for a faculty job, “CC the C”: consciously control the controllable. You do not have control over flight delays, unstated preferences a department or faculty member may have, or whether you spill coffee on your outfit during the first meeting of the day, but there is a lot you can do to prepare for the unforeseen. In addition to preparing for the talk and meetings as described above, think about what situations might be challenging or derailing for you, and try to prepare for those. Here are some things I did to help me feel more in control:
Tried on outfits and shoes ahead of time to make sure they were comfortable and I felt professional in them.*
Packed extra clothes, small sewing kit, lint roller, medicines for pain relief, upset stomach, and sleep aid (which really helped with jet lag), eye drops, headphones, travel pillow, and ear plugs for the plane and hotel, a book or music to help unwind and go to sleep, chargers for all devices, and coats and umbrellas depending on the weather.
Planned to give my presentation from my own computer (to avoid any Powerpoint conversion issues) but also carried a thumb drive with .pptx and .pdf versions saved, brought my own adapter, charger, and slide changer/laser pointer to use during the talk.
Carried my own bottle of water and snacks during the day.
Other notes:
Alcohol will often be offered at dinners, but you are not obligated to drink if you don’t want to, and even if you do, you are not obligated to keep up with others’ rate of drinking.
No one should ask you about your age, marital and family status, citizenship, disabilities, race, or religion; these are illegal under federal law (though you can disclose the information yourself if you choose to). Probably the most common violation of this policy is people asking about marital status, for the purpose of finding out whether the university would need to make a partner hire if the candidate was offered the job. This information is very much off limits because it could unfairly influence the committee’s decision about who to offer the job to (i.e., by creating the perception that someone without an academic partner will be ‘easier’ to recruit). If someone asks you these off-limits questions, it is perfectly reasonable to say you don’t feel comfortable answering, to hide the truth or outright lie, or to otherwise change the subject, and to report it to your interview host or someone you trust after the interview.
People may also ask you where else you are interviewing. This is not strictly off limits, but it’s not very appropriate because it puts the candidate in an awkward spot. If you are comfortable sharing, feel free, but again it would be reasonable to skirt the question if you’d rather not share. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a committee knowing you have other interviews; if anything, it makes you seem in-demand and like they will need to move quickly to get you, and I do think there’s a subtle psychology to people wanting to get the person that they know others also want.
*What to wear to a job interview was hard for me to figure out. I had only had male advisors, and I noticed that their ‘uniform’ tended to be some form of casual button-down shirt, slacks, khakis, or nice jeans, and no tie, but that I didn’t see a corresponding ‘uniform’ for me. I asked some female postdocs I knew for advice, and arrived on what I felt like worked well for me: the Rachel Maddow principle. Teri Gross interviewed Rachel Maddow and asked why she always looks so hip and stylish when she’s out and about in public but her on-screen outfits are much more understated and bland. Rachel said that when she’s on-screen she always wants to make sure people’s attention is on what she’s saying and not on her outfit, so she chooses things that don’t draw attention to what she’s wearing: simple, well-fitted shirts and hairstyles with minimal accessories. I adopted this principle for job interviews, with solid-colored tops, black slacks or simple skirts or dresses (not overly tight or short), black leather shoes or ballet flats, and simple classic accessories, though sometimes now when giving talks I throw in a few more pieces of flair. I realize that this advice will be really specific to the person, and the bottom line is, you should wear what you are comfortable in and makes you feel confident and professional. If that means bright colors, accessories, patterns, makeup, go for it! You do you! But suits are not typically the norm in ecology departments, and would probably be overkill in most settings, while very casual t-shirts and jeans are probably too informal for the occasion.
Lots more great advice is available online, compiled on Dynamic Ecology here.