War stories from academic job interviews

I've had nine academic job interviews in my career. Here is my won-lost score:

• 3 successful interviews (Loyola University, SUNY-Albany, Arizona State University)
• 4 unsuccessful interviews in good faith.
• 2 unsuccessful interviews in bad faith. A "bad faith" interview, as defined here, is one where there is no possibility that the candidate will get an offer. One or more candidates are brought in so that the department can claim to have examined several candidates, when in fact they are set on a particular person from the start (and you are NOT that person). {{Warning for new PhDs: you are the main fodder for this kind of episode, so don't take it too hard if it happens to you.}}

First, some generic advice. A commenter on my prior post ("How to give a bad conference talk") asked my advice on job talks. You just need to give an excellent presentation, longer than at a professional meeting, and one that explains a bit more of what you are all about intellectually and professionally. Much more important, in my mind, is how a candidate interacts personally with people in the department. You should read up on the faculty and programs, and be prepared to talk about them intelligently. Read this very complete and excellent list of job interview questions. I always took the attitude that an interview was a chance to learn about a program, to make new contacts, and to talk shop with a bunch of typically interesting colleagues who will either be very interested in you, or at least will probably pretend politely they are interested. If you don't get an offer, you at least have benefited from the experience.

As for my experiences, the juiciest episodes are better explored over a beer sometime. I will sanitize things and only tell a few tales here, using anonymity to protect the guilty. I am still peeved about the bad faith interviews (not that I would like to work at either institution!). In one case, a small but high-quality program, no one seemed at all interested in my work. They had someone there on a temporary line, and clearly wanted to hire this person full time. It is not uncommon to have one applicant already in a department, and rumor ALWAYS says that this person must have the inside track.  But in several searches I know well, this was not the case. The searches were rigorous and unbiased, really looking for the best person, whether or not there was someone already in the department with a temporary position.

My other bad-faith interview was in a large prestigious department in a major university. A bunch of the people I talked to spent most of their time saying how great Dr. X is. (Do you know his work? Isn't it good? Have you heard what he said about this or that? Oh, and where do you work?) Before I finished, I asked someone outright if they planned to make an offer to Dr. X, and got a positive reply. I felt good when Dr. X. turned them down.

Several years later this same department asked me again to interview! I made darn sure they indeed had a real interest in me before I went. Yes, I was a serious candidate. I thought the interview went well; I talked to lots of people (more than on my first trip), who seemed very interested in what I had to say. I was told they wanted to make an offer, and had to do a tenure review (I was tenured elsewhere at the time) in order to make an offer with tenure. I sent them all my publications, etc. And that was the end of it. I never heard back from the department, to this day (some 20 years later!). Maybe my email  tomorrow will contain a belated job offer (or a rejection!). After quite a while with no news, I ran into someone from the department at a meeting, who said they were sorry the job didn't work out. When I evidently looked puzzled, they said, "Didn't the chair contact you?" Nope. Still waiting for that one...... (Note that I am counting this one as a "good-faith" interview, perhaps too generously).

It turns out I did not pass their tenure review, because I had not yet published a book. It was a "book department": no book, no tenure. Now, every time a book comes out, I am tempted to send a copy to that department. I have published more books now than any archaeologist in that department. But I guess I just wasn't good enough for them. Actually, this episode may have been a blessing in disguise. I had an offer from Albany at the same time, but I might have been tempted by the prestige of the other university. Albany was a much better fit for me (and a much more congenial department overall), and I flourished in ways I would not have at the other place.

One more interview story. It's too long to go into detail here, but I will mention one notable aspect. This was one of my unsuccessful, good-faith interviews. A question from a graduate student after my talk effectively destroyed the entire conceptual foundation of my talk. Absolutely buried me! Deader than a doornail. The interviewee's worst nightmare. As soon as the question was posed, I realized I was sunk. Yet I had this flash that the answer to the contradiction was just at my fingertips, but I couldn't bring it in. I did not get an offer (surprise, surprise). Later I figured out how to resolve the conceptual contradiction that burned me, and got some mileage out of it in a couple of articles. In the acknowledgements of one, I thanked an anonymous graduate student for asking the right question at the wrong time. But after that experience, I was bullet-proof at interviews. There was nothing anyone could do to me as harmful as that experience, and I was much more relaxed at interviews.

I have no idea how typical my experiences have been. Did I have an especially high number of bad-faith interviews? I don't know. I did enjoy most of the interviews, and I met people and learned things at all of them. And now, I hope, I am through with job interviews!

I was thinking that three out of nine was not too bad a record for interviews, but then I talked to my daughter Heather, who is in the business world. Every single job interview she has participated in has led to an offer! Oh well.

How to give a bad conference talk!

I just found that I had never posted this entry, written over a year ago.

I just got back from the Society for American Archaeology meetings in St. Louis. I have always been amazed at the low quality of many presentations at these meetings, starting at the first one I attended as an undergraduate. I am not just picking on students here; some of the worst clunkers are from senior scholars. It seems that many archaeologists must WANT to be boring and even insulting at conferences.  If that is the case, then I can be helpful! Here are some tips on giving bad presentations:

1. Read your paper from a prepared text. This will almost always result in a worse presentation than if you talk from notes, or talk from your slides. This is an excellent way to give a boring talk. But it is not fool-proof; sometimes reading produces a good presentation.
2. Go over the time limit. This makes the session chair mad, it shows a lack of respect for the audience and other presenters, and it makes you look less professional. Maybe this is what you want. If so, read on…..
3. If you want to go over the time limit, here are some good ways to do it:
1. Read your paper from a prepared text. Then when you have misjudged the timing (this happens in most cases), and your allotted time runs out, you still aren’t done! The best material is in the conclusions, right?, and so you can’t just skip them. Go on and forge ahead to gain all the benefits of running overtime.
2. Stop to explain a slide. If you have planned your talk (whether to read or talk from notes), and in the process you take time out to explain a slide, I guarantee you will not finish within the time limit. Yes, this is a money-back guarantee. Try it sometime and let me know if I am right or wrong.
3. Don’t bother to look at the clock or your watch during your talk.
4. Don’t waste time practicing your talk ahead of time.
5. Use a pointer to show something on screen (please don’t use the simple tools of powerpoint to emphasize sites or places or points with arrows, circles, etc.). Much better to wave your pointer (with an unstable hand) in the general direction and hope the audience can find the thing you are talking about, while wasting time.
4. Well, perhaps you are young and nervous and insecure and feel that something will go seriously wrong if you don’t read your paper. That is probably not the case, but if you feel this way, here is a way to make sure your presentation is bad: Write the text using the style of discourse you would use in writing a journal article. That almost guarantees that your talk will be stiff and boring and difficult to follow. Don’t write it out in the style of verbal discourse, and whatever you do don't be informal or clear; that might produce a good presentation and that is not our goal here. Postmodern obfuscatory prose can help you underachieve.
5. Here are some tips for making sure your slides are bad:

1. Have long paragraphs of text in the slide.
2. Use small font (or odd color schemes) so people can’t read the text easily.
3. Use complicated charts and graphs that can’t be comprehended quickly and easily. A table that fills the screen with numbers is a great way to put the audience to sleep.
4. Use a pointer to show the audience something that is painfully obvious on the slide. Needless repetition is good here, both for making you look unprofessional and for putting time on the clock to help you run over the limit.

1. Insult your audience! (this should be #6, sorry) If you don't think the tips listed above will be sufficiently damaging to your talk and reputation, you can step it up a notch and insult the intelligence of your listeners. One of my favorite tricks is to put a bunch of text up on the screen, and then read it out loud, verbatim. That insults me every time.

If you follow some of these tips, you will be sure to give a low-quality presentation at your next professional conference.