Don't Laugh

A few weeks ago, I was having lunch in a campus-area dining spot, and was sitting near a group of undergrads who were having lunch together. During lunch, one of the students got a phone call that seemed to be related to a job opportunity or internship; the phone conversation mostly consisted of the the student's answering questions about courses, other work experience, and career goals. The student's tone of voice was serious and the topics were of a professional nature.

I don't know why the undergraduate (UG) didn't just run outside as soon it was clear that this was an important call, but UG did not leave. UG remained sitting with friends, who were silent for a while, listening to their friend answer questions, but then they started trying to make their friend laugh. Even if UG hadn't run outside with the phone when the call first came, why did UG stay even when the friends started making embarrassing sounds in the background and making gestures and comments to make UG laugh, with some success? Maybe it wasn't as important a phone call as it seemed to me, an ignorant eavesdropper, but I was puzzled as to why UG stayed, clearly having trouble remaining serious and focused on the phone call.

It reminded me of a time when I was talking on the phone with a potential postdoc (PPD). We were in different countries, so it had not been possible for us to meet in person, and this was our first conversation other than e-mails. The conversation occurred at a pre-arranged date and time, and was specified as an interview. It started fine, but then it was clear that someone in the PPD's vicinity was trying to make them laugh. I could hear some muffled sounds in the background, and then the PPD would try not to laugh. It made the conversation difficult because I kept hearing the PPD's stifled laughs, completely disconnected from our conversation, and sometimes I had to repeat a question because the PPD was distracted. The stifled-laughing/muffled-background sound wasn't a brief, one-time interruption; it was protracted and it was really annoying. 

I suppose I could have said something, ranging from "Could you please stop that? It is annoying," to "Do you need a minute to find a quieter place for us to continue this interview?", but decided it wasn't worth it. (Question for readers: Would you have said anything?). I asked myself, "Is this a deal-breaker?" and decided it was not. Even so, it was puzzling to me that the PPD thought this was appropriate behavior during an interview.

One of these incidents involved an undergraduate, one a graduating PhD student; one is male, one is female; one is from the US; one is not. And yet the two incidents seemed otherwise very similar.

Something else that I wondered about these two incidents, aside from not understanding why anyone would risk losing a career opportunity for such a stupid reason: What do the interviewees think about their friends who interfered with their interviews? I think ultimately it is the responsibility of the interviewee to avoid or stop these background jerks, but since they didn't in these two cases, were they at least angry with their friends, assuming that these interviews were at all important to the interviewees?

Wrong and Stupid

In Scientopia today, I present and discuss a reader's question about what a search committee can and can't consider in deciding which candidates to interview, with a particular focus on a common issue..

Woman of Few Words

Reminder: Don't forget to send in your entry for The Cover Letter contest! There are some great ones so far, but I am sure there are more creative examples lurking out there somewhere. 

Sometimes it seems like I could start 93% of my posts with "Not long ago, I was talking to a colleague and.." One might think that I spend a lot of time talking to colleagues. One might be right about this.

In any case, today is one of those 93% of times. Just imagine the usual beginning, blah blah blah..

.. and he reminisced about the time, many many years ago, when I gave an interview talk for a tenure-track faculty position in his department. He says he remembers my talk vividly. I do not remember my talk, vividly or otherwise. I remember the topic of my talk, but that's about all I can come up with for memories of that event.

Fortunately, my colleague's vivid memories are positive ones. One thing he remembers, however, is how short my talk was. In fact, it was 15 minutes shorter than any other candidate's talk. He says it was unusually short. Despite the passage of time, that sort of horrifies me, even though I know the interview had a happy ending (spoiler alert: I was offered the job).

My colleague hastened to tell me that he liked my talk -- and remembers it -- in part because it was short. According to him, I had something to say, and I said it, no more and no less. Everything I said was interesting. (<-- doubtful)

I could probably provide more insight into why my talk was so short if I could remember it more, but in general, talks that are unusually short are much less common than talks that are painfully or inappropriately long. Perhaps I benefited from that fact.

Unusually short talks may result when:

- The speaker freaks out mid-talk and decides to skip over a large(ish) section of the talk. (I don't think this has ever happened to me, but I have seen it.)

- The speaker speaks really really fast and therefore covers the planned material in much less time than intended. (This is not typically a problem for me, and it doesn't seem to have been an issue in my historically short talk).

- The speaker did not practice the talk and greatly underestimated the amount of time it would take to cover the material. (I always practiced my interview talks.)

- The speaker forgets to say a lot of things that s/he intended to say. I don't speak from notes, but I do typically have projected images as visual guides, so in order for this to have a significant effect on the length of a talk, there would likely be lots of forgetting of little points, not a wholesale forgetting of a major component of a talk. (Maybe I did this? I don't remember..)

I really don't know, but I can think of two other things that might have come into play in my case. One is that I had recently given a similar talk to an audience that interrupted me a lot with questions during my talk. If you go from such a setting to one in which you are not interrupted at all, it can affect the length of the talk considerably. Maybe I scaled my talk back, accounting for time for questions during the talk, but there weren't any (?).

Another possibility is that, for this particular talk, I remember that I merged several research projects into one integrated talk. I took some things from my PhD research, some things from my postdoctoral research, and some things I had been thinking about not long before the interview. I wrapped them all up together in what I hoped was a coherent package, and then.. well, I don't remember, but it seems that in the merging, I made the talk shorter rather than longer. That is, I distilled the essence of various projects (perhaps too much), hit the highlights without elaborating on anything in great detail, and gave some idea of where I wanted to go with this type of research in the future.

It seems to have worked in that case, but of course a danger of this approach is appearing as if you are not an expert in anything in particular and prefer to skim the surface of a range of topics. I was fortunate to have a friendly and interested audience in that case, but I can easily imagine this going the other way, and having the primary impression of my short talk be that I didn't have much to say.

It probably matters whether some in the audience know a great deal about your research topic, or not so much. In the case of my epic short talk, the faculty were conducting a search in a field that was not well represented in their department, so maybe it also worked in my favor that I didn't bore them all with the gory details of the research.

Mostly, I think I was just very lucky. A too-long talk is not a good thing, but a too-short talk also has many pitfalls. So, what to do? Perhaps the perfect talk is the slightly-shorter-than-most-people's-too-long talk.

Rah Rah Rah

In a semi-recent conversation with a colleague from another university, I asked him about the results of a search that was conducted in his department. He told me the names of the candidates who were interviewed, and I was very impressed with the list. How did his department choose between Awesome Person X and Awesome Person Z, for example?

My colleague admitted that, at that point, the decision got a bit random because the department liked everyone they interviewed. But, alas, their Dean did not think that they should hire everyone that they interviewed, so they had to make some difficult decisions. This is a far better outcome for a department than a failed search, but is of course painful in other ways for those involved.

[Some might wonder whether such a deep pool puts the Selected One at a disadvantage in negotiating for start-up etc., but it does not seem to have done so in this case. The candidate ultimately chosen accepted the job and got a rather nice start-up package, not to mention a tenure-track position in a department that is very enthusiastic about their new colleague.]

One thing that struck me about my colleague's response to my question about How They Chose is the extent to which "passion for research" seems to have been involved in the decision. I am all for Passion For Research (PFR), but using this as a decisive factor semi-worried me for at least two reasons:

(1) One of the interviewees not selected happens to be very passionate about research; in fact, every much so, in the best sense of the term. And yet, my colleague told me that this candidate's PFR did not come through as well as it did for some of the other interviewees -- perhaps the ones who were less nervous? There is no point in discussing whether that is fair or not; clearly this department had to decide among an excellent group, and other than drawing names from a bucket, how are you going to decide? But still, are those who are less nervous at an interview necessarily 'better' -- more poised, more likely to be successful researchers (in the long term), more likely to be better teachers? Maybe, but I would guess/hope that the real answer is 'no'.

(2) Perceptions of PFR can also be used to select those who display this trait in a different way than the majority of those making the decision. That is, a group of men might use this to prefer male candidates over female candidates, but not in any obvious way. This struck me as a possible example of 'unconscious bias'. In fact, the job went to a man, and the apparent runner-up was also male. Why didn't the female candidates score as high on PFR?

How do you display a strong and convincing PFR during an interview anyway? I don't think it is enough to say, "Research is my Life", even if you say it many times. I don't think it is even enough to talk about how you think about Research every waking moment, including while flossing your teeth. That would unconvincing (and weird, and disturbing).

It is more likely something that is conveyed by how you speak about your research, in both formal and informal settings during an interview -- your tone of voice, the words you use, your body language, your apparent level of enthusiasm in discussing your past, present, and future research. For some people who are particularly nervous, shy, awkward, and/or reticent, this type of evidence of PFR could become quite subtle, particularly if others are more obviously cheerleadery about their research passions.

So, I'm not saying that my colleague's department should have done anything different -- in fact, they made a great hire -- but I think it is something that faculty and administrators need to be careful about during the hiring process.

Failing the Search

Today in Scientopia, I discuss Why Some Faculty Searches Fail.

Well Suited

Here is what I have learned so far from the comments in my recent Scientopia post about What To Wear for an interview for a faculty position, keeping in mind that for some fields there is only one comment, and some comments didn't specify field:

Unless you happen to know that your field or the institution at which you are interviewing is rather formal and is festooned with people wearing suits, you apparently can't go too far astray by wearing comfortable "business casual" attire. As I hoped, commenters seem to agree that there is a wide range of acceptable professional garb, so everyone (men and women) should be able to find something in which they feel comfortable, confident, and unselfconscious.

In the following fields, at least one commenter cautioned against wearing a suit as "overkill", especially with a tie (men), or noted that you will look like a sales rep (men) or administrative assistant (women), and that's not good:

• BIO-EVERYTHING (CHEMISTRY, ENGINEERING, MED, FIELD, GENETICS, INFORMATICS)
• EARTH SCIENCES
• ECOLOGY
• MATH
• PHYSICS
• ASTRONOMY (but see comments and list below for indication of lack of agreement)
  

It might be OK or expected (depending on subfield/geography) to wear a suit in ASTRONOMY, CHEMISTRY, COMPUTER SCIENCE, ENGINEERING (many sorts). (agree/disagree?)

Speaking as an old(ish) professor who has seen many interviewees wander through my departments over the years, I can say that I don't notice what interviewees or any visitors are wearing (men or women), with the exception of the woman whose feet were bleeding in her uncomfortable new shoes. In that case, I only noticed because she kept slipping the shoes off.

It would be great if others continue to comment and provide more data, but can we now consider this pressing issue mostly dealt with, resolved, sufficiently addressed, and/or defanged, at least in this corner of the blogosphere?

Dear Search Committee

Last week in The Chronicle of Higher Education, there was an advice column that provided a how-to guide to writing a cover letter for applications for faculty positions. In this particular case, the focus was on 2-year colleges, institutions with which I have no direct experience. I have friends, colleagues, and former students who teach at such institutions, but have never worked at (or applied to work at) a 2-year college.

Perhaps this reflects my ignorance, but I was dismayed at some of the advice about writing cover letters. Some of it was excellent and practical -- don't emphasize your research when applying for a teaching position, do your homework about the institution, provide the most relevant information about your background etc. All of that is good.

This type of advice is what filled me with dismay:

Be sure to address the cover letter to a specific individual by name, even if no individual is named in the job ad or application instructions. Apparently, certain people, who are nameless, want candidates to seek out their identities so that the cover letter can be addressed to "Dear Ronald Zook" instead of "Dear Search Committee". If this information is not available on any webpage, applicants are supposed to make some phone calls.

Why do I hate this advice? I do not like the fact that someone on a hiring committee would really care about such a trivial issue. If you want the letter addressed to you by name, put your name somewhere prominent; don't play games. If there is an administrative reason why your name is not listed anywhere, then don't make it an issue. And why should the letter exclude the other members of the committee and be addressed only to you, the head of the committee? Does the greeting really affect your impression of a candidate? Is that reasonable? OK, maybe if the greeting is something like the e-mail we get from some of our students (e.g., Yo! Proff! or Hey!), maybe that would be unprofessional, but "Dear Search Committee" should not be a reason to start forming a negative impression of a candidate. "

Ask for an interview. I had no idea it was so easy. Actually, it seems that asking for an interview doesn't necessarily get you the interview, but not asking for one is apparently bad. How strange. I personally would find it obnoxious and pointless for someone to write in a cover letter (as advised in the column in question): "May I travel to [name the city] to discuss this position with you in person?". This would be seen as deeply strange in a cover letter to my department. Is there really such a difference between 2-year and 4-year institutions? I could be very wrong, but I would have thought that both get large numbers of applications for most positions and that this particular approach would not be fruitful. When someone applies to my institution, I assume they want the job unless there is other information that shows this is not the case.

I have saved the two weirdest ones for last:

Below your signature and printed name, type the word "Enclosures". Otherwise, the idiot search committee members may not know that you have included your CV and other application materials.

Print the letter in black ink on good-quality white or ivory paper. Paper? What is that?

I do not mean to denigrate this well-meaning writer who is seeking to help applicants, but I am bothered by the fact that some of the cover letter advice implies that hiring committees focus on minutiae and that an application can be downgraded by things that have nothing to do with the applicant's qualifications or degree of interest in the job. Applicants should not have to worry that committees are mulling over their choice of font or whether they get the greeting or sign-off words exactly right for the unknown preferences of the unknown persons who will be reading the application.

In my experience with hiring committees, it does not work that way. We look at the substance of the application, we make allowances for inexperienced applicants, and we expect there to be wide variation in the approach applicants take to their cover letter, from terse but informative to long, pleading, and repetitious.

Of course we want the cover letter to be articulate and useful, but beyond that, an applicant can go wild and use a sans serif font, sign off with "Warmest regards" instead of "Sincerely", and address us impersonally. Many (most?) of us won't notice, won't care, or will be able to deal with it without developing a deep loathing of the applicant. Just don't ask for an interview.

Phoning It In

Some institutions of higher learning use the Phone Interview for an initial screening of candidates on the medium short list (for various positions at various levels) before deciding on the short short list of candidates to interview in person. For some positions (e.g., a sabbatical replacement or postdoc), the phone interview might be the only interview, especially if the candidate is on another continent and there are financial and/or time pressures to fill the position.

I have been on the interviewer end of quite a few phone interviews, but I have never been the interviewee. I use "phone" here rather loosely -- some of these interviews have involved a conference call using telephones, whereas others have involved various forms of video conferencing, in which some or all of the people involved can see each other on a computer monitor or on a big screen via projection.

I do not like phone interviews, although I realize that they are necessary in certain situations. Last summer and fall, I did quite a few phone interviews whilst I was traveling and I found this very logistically challenging. For one of them I ended up sprinting through the streets of a European town when my cell phone died and I couldn't find a functioning pay phone. Working out a mutually convenient time for a call involving people on 4 continents was also interesting.

More typically, I am in my office or a conference room for the phone interview, and a group of faculty collects for the event.

Here I summarize the pros and cons of phone interviews for the interviewer; feel free to add items from the point of view of the interviewee if you have experienced an e-interview:

PROS

- cheap and efficient!

- you can take notes without making the interviewee self-conscious

Hmm. Is that all the pros or am I unjustly biased by my dislike of talking on the phone?


CONS

- conversations are more awkward without the in-person cues you get to help guide the conversation; during phone interviews, people inadvertently interrupt each other often and there's a lot of "Sorry, go ahead" kinds of conversational fragments

- the extent of interaction is much more limited; you feel like you have to get all your questions in during the one conversation and there is less of an opportunity for the discussion to evolve

- embarrassment: During a recent slew of phone interviews, one of the people involved could not distinguish between the voices of the two American women and this created a few difficult moments before I learned to say "This is FSP and I am wondering..".

- my own personal preference: Did I mention that I hate talking on the phone? I think I would actually prefer an internet chat interview -- has anyone done this?


I wonder if there are people who are eliminated from consideration because of an awkward phone interview, whereas these people would do really well in an in-person interview; or vice versa. Or are phone interviews an effective method of reducing a long list of qualified people to a shorter list or even to one preferred candidate?

I must say that in the phone interviews I have done in recent years, I am always relieved when I can hang up the phone, but I have in every case been very pleased with the candidates selected via this interview method.

Perhaps this method of interviewing will become even more common owing to the financial allure of e-interviews, but it's difficult to imagine that it would ever take the place of the 2-3 day interviewfest that most places currently use to select human beings as colleagues.

Grad Interviews

There have been several requests lately for a post on interviewing at or visiting grad schools as a prospective student, along the lines of my recent series of posts on faculty interviews.

These interviews/visits may vary from field to field, so I hope that readers will contribute additional information, specifying if possible their academic discipline.

My philosophy can be summed up quite simply. During my interaction with visiting students, I try to give a clear picture of the research opportunities and dynamics so that, if admitted, they have information to use when making a decision. Those who express an interest in my research field also meet my grad students.

When I meet with grad candidates, I don't grill them with aggressive questions. I want to see some degree of focus, but the student doesn't have to know exactly what they want to do for their thesis research. I want to be able to have a conversation about the research possibilities in my research group/department/university, and it's nice if the student asks a question now and then so the conversation isn't a monologue.

Many (all?) of the visiting students have or will end up with multiple appealing offers, as they should. For these students, the visit is a mutual checking-out of/by applicant and department.

I think that I have quite flexible parameters when it comes to evaluating a visiting grad student -- i.e., in terms of their personality and level of sophistication -- but I do have some limits. For example, I am not perturbed by shyness, although I am not as accepting of someone who considers "What are your interests?" to be an aggressive question. I am not disappointed by an inability to ask brilliant questions, but I do want to see some evidence of an interest in research. I am happy to talk about something other than science and find out about the outside interests of a student, but I think it unwise for a student to skip out on part of the organized group activities to check out the rec center (for example); I recommend finding another time to gaze at the elliptical machines and trail along on the boring lab or campus tour as scheduled.

Just as with interviews for a faculty position, I advise grad applicants to BE REAL. Give clear and sincere answers to any questions you are asked, ask any questions you want to ask, and take a careful look around and see if you are visiting a place you would really want to be.

****

There was also a request for information on timing of interviews, offers etc. This is going to vary a lot with institution/discipline. Anyone care to comment? I can say that it's likely that, at my institution, the process is going to be more protracted than usual as we deal with economic uncertainties.

Interviewing Info IV

What is the most important part of the interview? The talk? The meeting with the chair and/or hiring committee and/or dean? The individual meetings with faculty? The 45 second elevator talk you have with the Famous Professor who is too busy to meet with you or attend your talk? All of the above? Or does none of it really matter because they've already decided and/or the decision will be based on an intangible sense for how well your research specialty/personality fit with the department?

Answer: Yes and no.

And how's this for another annoying non-answer: All of those things are important, but at the same time, you don't have to be amazingly awesome every second of your interview and you can even have a few less-than-great interactions and still do well overall.

For example, I have seen successful candidates who gave rather boring or somewhat inadequate talks but then did really well in other aspects of the interview. So maybe they haven't yet learned how to give a good talk (and might need some proactive help learning how to teach), but they are clearly creative, interesting, motivated people with good ideas and a sincere interest in being part of the department.

And I have seen very polished talks given by people who had nothing to say beyond what was in the talk.

So the talk is important -- in fact, it is quite important for those whose only glimpse of you is during that talk -- but it's not the only factor.

Clearly there are many factors, and there is a large degree of randomness in how a candidate is evaluated and perceived. Keeping in mind that my own evaluation method is likely different from that of other faculty because we are all individual special scary people, here's how I make my decisions during faculty searches:

- I have an initial general impression from the application files. We invite candidates based on this initial information, so that's the typical starting point. This impression may or may not end up corresponding with my final opinion and in fact doesn't seem to influence my final evaluations much, if at all. Whether or not I thought a particular candidate should be interviewed, I try to start with a positive attitude about each one, on the assumption that any one of them might eventually be my colleague.

- If I'm on a hiring committee, I might meet the candidate early-on in the interview, e.g., during breakfast the first morning. In many cases, however, my first view of a candidate is at their general talk, so the talk is the next data point in my overall evaluation. In the talk, did the candidate provide a general context in which we can understand the research or did he/she just dive right into the methods/data? Whether or not I personally think the research is interesting, did the candidate explain it well, present convincing results and interpretations, summarize the key points, possibly indicating future directions? Did the candidate handle questions well after the talk? (That last one is of course very subjective; I recall one candidate talk in which some faculty thought a candidate was "combative" but others thought s/he was "confident").

- In some departments/institutions, there is a second talk. There are different ways that the two talks are organized, including: (1) one is general, one is more specialized; (2) one is research, one is teaching; (3) one is a classic research talk, one is a 'vision thing' talk or discussion. Whatever the format of the second talk, I find that it is extremely useful for getting a better impression of a candidate's abilities and potential. Most people can get up and give a decent 50-minute talk on something related to their research, but you start to see the energy and creativity more in a second talk.

- During the individual meeting, typically in my office, I am not interested in grilling the candidate or making them outline their research plans in detail for the next 10 years. I just want to have an interesting conversation about something related to their research or mine or even just something interesting in Science. If there's time, I'm also happy to give my general perspective on the department/university -- there are things that I really like about this place and think are somewhat unique and worth discussing -- or to describe my research group and how I've organized it in terms of number of students, funding, and so on.

When I was a young professor, I had some truly bizarre individual meetings with faculty candidates. The bizarreness related in part to the (erroneous) assumption that because I did not have tenure yet and/or was a young-looking female, I didn't have a role in the hiring decision or, if I did, that my opinion wasn't as important as that of my senior colleagues. The fact that I was the only assistant professor in my department for a while (and a very rare FSP) probably enhanced this (erroneous) assumption by some candidates.

This (erroneous) assumption manifested itself in different ways in different candidates: some were openly patronizing or rude (a rather shocking thing to do even if I hadn't had a vote in the hiring decision), and others treated me as a source of inside information to help them impress the more important professors.

One hapless candidate started talking about people I had never heard of and saying that so-and-so was doing really well this year. I thought we were having a conversation about scientists in the candidate's field, and said that I wasn't familiar enough with this field to know these people. It turns out that the candidate had studied up on the university's athletic teams, learning the names and positions of key players and their scoring records, and thought it would be good to practice on me first before attempting this with the senior professors. I was stunned that (a) anyone would bother to do this, under the (erroneous) assumption that it would matter, and that (b) anyone would admit to having done this bizarre thing, much less admit to "practicing" on me because I was only an assistant professor.

All this is to say that my general advice is to BE REAL. Sure, go ahead and read up on the webpages about faculty and their research interests; this will help you learn about a place and also give you some conversational fodder for some of the individual conversations that might otherwise drag a bit. But don't pretend to have interests you don't, don't try to psych out the hierarchy of a department, treat everyone with respect (including students and staff), and try to enjoy the variety of people you meet.

But let's not forget one other chance for candidates and faculty to interact:

- Social events. Perhaps this reflects my own neuroses and lack of social skills, but these are my least favorite part of an interview. I found them extremely stressful as an interviewee, and I don't particularly enjoy them as an interviewer. Breakfast meetings are the worst, perhaps because I am not a so-called morning person.

On rare occasions, however, these can be very fun. I recall some interviews at which I got along really well with some faculty and we ended up having a great time at dinner or lunch or whenever.

In general, though, these events can be kind of weird and awkward. They are technically still part of the interview, but at the same time, you're all supposed to socialize and chat, in some cases for hours (but not about spouses or children!).

Unless a candidate reveals some truly disturbing behavior at a meal or other social event, I don't tend to consider this part of the interview to be as important as some of the other parts. If I had a great conversation with someone when we were talking in the department, but later I find their views on wine or weather to be dull, I will still have a very positive impression of them as a candidate.

By the time the exhausting interview is over, you and at least some of your possible future colleagues will have spent a lot of time together. It is likely that you and several other candidates all did well during the interview, and then the final decision comes down to factors beyond your control.

The faculty will discuss their impressions with each other, get input from students and postdocs (in some departments), and may then quickly reach consensus or spend hours/weeks bitterly divided.

In my experience, whether or not the person who shows up to take the job was the unanimous choice of the faculty or the choice of a small but powerful faction, we old faculty are interested in helping our new colleague get started, wish him/her well, and want him/her to succeed. Everyone should start with a clean slate when starting a new tenure-track job, no matter what happened during the interview process.

My wish for members of my own research group when they are out on the interview trail is that they feel good about their interviews, whether or not they get an offer. Of course I want them to get offers and have many enticing options, but if you come out of an interview feeling like you did your best and you had some positive interactions with faculty and students, that's an important thing for your confidence, and for your next interview(s).

Interviewing Info III

Here are some more random thoughts about interviewing for a faculty position, based on questions from readers. I was hoping for some really strange questions, but I don't mind discussing some of the classic ones:

What should you wear to an interview for a faculty position?

The answer to this will certainly vary depending on the specific field. There may be some fields in which suit-like garb is the norm, and others in which a person wearing a suit will seem bizarrely dressed. I have three things to say on the issue of Interview Attire:

1. Look around your own department and at conferences and see what faculty wear when they need to look particularly professional. If you were alert to this issue during any faculty searches conducted while you were a grad student or postdoc, perhaps you have an idea what interviewees in your field typically wear.

2. If you're going to dress up a bit, at least wear something nice and comfortable. I remember one interviewee whose heels were bleeding profusely into her nice new shoes during her interview. I discreetly asked her if she wanted a bandage or if there was something else I could do to help her, but she refused all assistance and said it didn't hurt. There is no way that did not hurt. My advice: Try not to acquire physical scars from interviews.

3. Others may disagree, but I think that unless you wear something wildly inappropriate, what you wear does not matter much. If you dress slightly more formally or informally than is typical, this isn't going to detract from your awesome interview talk and the strong positive impression you make with your energy and your ideas for cutting-edge research. Even so, although you should explore new frontiers in research, it might not be a good idea to explore new frontiers in interview attire -- there are probably sartorial limits that aren't worth pushing past in the interview, but, although I shall avoid defining these limits, I will say that I think there is a broad region of acceptable attire. I have seen successful candidates, male and female, interview in suits and in jeans-and-nice-shirt. It didn't matter.

Summary: Wear something that is professional-looking within the norms of your field but that also makes you feel confident and comfortable.

Can you push the start-date back for starting a faculty position?

This is of course not an interview issue but, like salary and start-up, a once-you-get-an-offer issue. You may have other alluring opportunities, such as a postdoc you want to do to help launch your subsequent faculty career, and it might be in everyone's interest that you have this experience. Or, it might be essential to the department that you start as soon as possible.

If this issue comes up during an interview, you can be open about your options, but these types of conversations shouldn't really take place in detail until you get an offer and start negotiating. Your getting an offer or not should not depend on whether you can start by a certain date.

If the department insists that you start by a certain date, you can take it or leave it. If the department is more flexible, that's great. Either way, this is a post-interview issue.

Most departments with which I have been associated have been very flexible about start dates. If a candidate has an opportunity that will help them launch their research program once they arrive, that's seen as a good thing and the faculty and administration are supportive of this.

Should you mention marital status and/or kids in an interview?

Much has been written about this, here and elsewhere. In fact, there was something about it in The Chronicle of Higher Education just this week. A decade ago, the answer was a definite No. It is illegal for you to be asked, and there was no benefit (and perhaps even a penalty) for mentioning such things, especially for women.

Today the answer is still No, but there is a but.. You don't have to mention anything about this and you still can't be asked, but in some cases universities are trying to be proactive (in a good way) to increase their chances of getting their top choices in searches.

How do you know if you are interviewing at a university that wants to help new faculty with families, e.g. by helping spouses find jobs (academic or not) and parents find daycare? Universities that want to help, not penalize, candidates whose job decisions involve (or may eventually involve) family issues may schedule a meeting between the candidate and a human resources counselor who provides the same information to all candidates (so the candidate doesn't have to reveal any personal information). Or you may find some information online about a university's policies about hiring academic couples or the availability of daycare on or near campus, so you get the information you need but don't have to ask anyone during your interview. You may also feel comfortable talking to certain faculty who have dealt with similar issues.

Whatever the case, you don't have to mention anything about your personal situation during your interview. It is not lying and it is not being unfair to the department to mention Dr. Spouse only once you get an offer.

If you want to talk freely about all this during your interview, you can do that. I don't mind being asked for advice about these kinds of issues by interviewees, although I prefer if those kinds of conversations happen after we have talked about Science and other research-related issues for a while first. Whatever your priorities are re. career and family, you are being evaluated for your research and teaching potential.


Tomorrow's topic: During a search, how do faculty decide which candidate they prefer? I will describe my personal approach to this.

Tentative topic for Friday: Once you've got a tenure-track or tenured position, what are some of the issues related to searching for and interviewing for other academic positions at another institution?

Interviewing Info II

When interviewing for a faculty position, when do you bring up the issue of $$$? Do you bring up the issue of $$$?

In every interview I have had, the department chair or some other administrator such as a dean of some sort brought up the topic of money: salary and start-up. I never had to figure out the best time to ask about money; this is the responsibility of the administrators.

If for some reason you interview at a place that does not proactively mention salary or start-up and these things are critical to you at this stage -- i.e., before an offer -- then perhaps the chair or another administrator will at some point ask if you have any questions, and then you can ask the money questions. In this case, I would start with very general questions -- What is the likely starting salary? Is this a good time to discuss start-up issues?

At an interview for a faculty position in Science, I think the most important money issue that the candidate needs to think about in advance is start-up costs. I don't know about other fields, but in Science, start-up costs are so central to any hire that the topic is a normal part of an interview meeting with the chair ± deans.

Therefore, by the time you go to an interview, you should have a pretty good idea of what you want/need in terms of equipment, space, personnel, and other items that can be added to the start-up package. Know what you want and what it will cost. You may not know a final number -- e.g., setting up a lab may require some renovations, and it is up to the administrators to come up with the relevant sum for that -- but you should know an approximate amount for the things you can determine, and you should have an idea of how much space you will need.

You might want to ask around to find out what other people in your field have included in their start-up packages besides the obvious items of equipment.

I used to prepare a dream-estimate and a bare-bones estimate, and I adjusted these as I acquired more information during the interview about availability of certain shared facilities and space issues. If you get an offer, you aren't locked into the number you gave at the interview, but it's good if you at least get the order of magnitude right.

Other financial details might be more appropriate for discussion if you get an offer, although you could do some research into these issues so that you are well informed. I know that different people have different priorities, but I always think it is strange when a candidate asks about retirement benefits and moving expenses and real estate prices and so on. If you get an offer, by all means ask away, but these questions can wait (and some of it you can figure out yourself).

I realize that $$ issues can be stressful, but this should not be a major focus of anxiety at an interview. My advice to interviewees is to focus on the talks and personal interactions and, although you should certainly be well prepared to discuss your start-up requirements, don't worry that you're failing some sort of interview test if you don't know exactly what to say/when about the financial side of faculty hires.

Tomorrow: There are other resources that can answer the common and most basic questions about interviewing for a faculty position, but here's a chance to ask about more random issues that you might hesitate to ask someone you know. I have a few things lined up for tomorrow's post, but feel free to leave a comment with additional questions of the unconventional sort.

Views on Interviews

It is the season of Interviews in academia. Some of my former students and postdocs are on the interview trail (some with success already; very exciting), and I have recently received several requests for a post on the topic of interviewing for a faculty position.

It's been a long time since I experienced an entry-level type interview for a faculty position as an interviewee, and all my recent experiences with interviews involve my being on The Other Side as a professor, although I have gleaned bits of information from grad students and postdocs who have participated in interviews. My opinions are of course limited by my experiences and by the conventions of my academic field and academic homes, but I trust that commenters can supplement the information and views I provide to give a more complete picture of the Interview process.

Topics were selected based on specific questions in the e-mails I received recently. Today I will start with the following, with more to come in the near future:

What do you say/ask as an interviewee when you meet with the students?

Background information: Many interviews involve a meeting, perhaps over lunch, between the candidate and graduate and/or undergraduate students. These students may be selected specifically to meet with the candidate or there may be an open invitation for any student to stop by at a certain time and meet the candidate. If such an event is not on the interview schedule, perhaps there will be some other chance for talking with students in smaller groups or individually.

If there is no scheduled interaction with students, this might tell you something about a department's culture/priorities and that may or may not be useful information. I had a few interviews that seemed to lack a scheduled meeting with students, so in each case I asked about it. Sometimes the answer was "There's no time for that" and sometimes it was "We can arrange that; thanks for mentioning it."

If there is an organized meeting with students, chances are they have a set of questions that they ask each candidate.

Some of the general questions are quite predictable: What courses will you teach? Do you want to advise a lot of students or have a small group? In some science/engineering fields at a university, a typical question is whether you will be setting up a lab. And some students may ask: Why do you want this job? Why do you want to come here?

At most of the universities with which I have been associated, grad students have been involved to some extent in searches/interviews. In many cases, the top choice of the grad student population as a whole has coincided with the majority view of the faculty, but in some cases it hasn't.

When there is a discrepancy between faculty and grad opinion, a possible reason is that a candidate was patronizing to the grad students. In general, I have found that grad students as a group are very hostile about the prospect of hiring a candidate, however awesome as a researcher, who is condescending and/or visibly bored/uninterested in talking with students. When you are interviewing, even if you are concerned that your extreme youth (or, at least, youthful appearance) might make you seem like a student yourself and you want to take steps to distinguish yourself from the students, an extremely bad strategy is to be patronizing.

The candidate can also ask the students questions. It is good to have thought about some of these, in case there is a lull in the conversation (general advice that also applies to other parts of the interview process). These questions don't all have to be about the department and faculty; grad students are scholars who may be working on interesting things. Don't spend the whole meeting having a detailed conversation with a few students who happen to know something about your specific field of expertise, but perhaps you can have a general conversation about research topics of mutual interest. What is exciting in the field? What kinds of careers do the students want to have? Do they feel well prepared?

There are also things a candidate should not ask students. It is certainly legitimate to ask the students some general questions about the culture of the department, e.g. what do the students consider to be important issues in the department and university in terms of faculty-grad interactions? Or, what are their views on the position for which you are interviewing? This should not, however, devolve into digging for departmental gossip about who hates whom and who is a colossal jerk and who is insane. Keep the tone professional even if you want to know these things.

The meeting with the grad student can be one of the more interesting and enjoyable parts of the interview. Perhaps the grad students have a vote in the decision and perhaps they don't, but either way they are typically very interested in being involved in the process, are sincerely interested in meeting you, and can give you a good general sense for the department culture and atmosphere.

The best preparation is to participate in some of these meet-the-candidate sessions as a graduate student and get an idea for what these are like, or, if that's not possible to do before you have an interview of your own, you can ask someone who has been to a recent interview for additional examples of questions that may be specific to your field. And possibly there will be some additional useful suggestions in the comments to this post..

Hobby Horse

This post is related to yesterday's and takes into account some recurring themes in the comments.

When applying for an academic position -- grad school, a postdoc, a faculty position -- do you have to 'pretend' that you live only for research and have no personal life in order to be taken seriously?

Some may disagree, but my cosmic answer to this is No, of course not, but that doesn't mean that your application materials should contain information about your personal life. If your application statements are focused entirely on your background and interests, you are not pretending by omission that you have no other life. You are not entering an implicit contract in which you promise to have no other life. You are simply providing the relevant information that will form the basis of the evaluation of your expertise and potential.

There are exceptions. If an applicant has a personal issue that is relevant to the position for which they are applying or is necessary to explain something about the academic record, these issues should be mentioned in their appropriate context.

During an interview or visit, there are opportunities to discuss non-work issues. This is the time when you get get a sense for whether a program/advisor is a good fit for your priorities. Visiting students and postdocs can get a sense for what the expectations are for particular advisors/projects, and you can typically figure that out by talking to other students or postdocs rather than asking the advisor something red-flaggy like "So how much are you going to expect me to work?". Even a reasonably sane advisor who is happy to have advisees who have outside interests and don't work 24/7 would wonder about the motivation level of someone asking a question in that way.

There are many anecdotes, real and unreal, of applicants/candidates having to pretend they were monomaniacs focused only on research and uninterested in other human beings, particularly those of the infant sort, in order to get an academic position. I did not encounter this in my own applicant/candidacy experiences, but I have met people who believe in it fiercely. Example:

Many years ago, I had an interview at a college and, as part of the interview process, I met with a hiring committee that included faculty and administrators from various departments in the college, not just people in my field. I enjoyed my conversation with this committee, which was interested in my views of Science in general; for example, as it relates to other fields and to society, and how we teach students about Science. Soon after my interview, I was offered the job, but, because it wouldn't have been a good place for my husband, I turned down the offer.

Six years later, I visited a certain university as part of a lecture tour and had dinner with a science professor I had never met before. As soon as we sat down, he said "I know that you were offered that job at X College in 199x. I interviewed for that job too and they rejected me right away. So here's what I want to know. When that hiring committee met with you and asked you what your hobbies are, what did you say?".

I only vaguely remembered being asked about my hobbies by that committee, so I had to think about it for a few minutes. Finally I replied, "I don't really remember. I probably didn't say much because I don't really have anything I consider a hobby."

My dining companion said "I knew it! I knew I gave the wrong answer."

I asked him "How can there be a wrong answer? As long as you didn't say that you eviscerate kittens as a hobby or something else disgusting and illegal, how can there be a wrong answer?".

He said "For the last six years I have been kicking myself about this. I should have said that I have no hobbies. That would mean that I work all the time. Or, if I did tell them a hobby, I should have said that I read The New York Review of Books."

Me: Why didn't you tell them that?

Him: Because I don't read The New York Review of Books.

Me: Oh... So what did you tell them?

Him: I told them that I like fishing. What an idiot. I admitted to having a hobby and I admitted to having a non-intellectual hobby.

We argued about this in a friendly way a bit more, but I was unable to convince him that his fishing hobby confession had not cost him the job. I don't think he realized that he was being inadvertently a bit insulting by saying that if he had just given the 'right' answer to the insidious hobby question, he would have gotten the job offer instead of me. He was absolutely convinced that that committee wanted candidates with no hobbies or at the very least an appropriate intellectual one.

I do know of departments in which the vast majority of faculty are droids, and I even have one colleague at another university who only accepts grad students as advisees if their hobbies are on his personal approved list of acceptable activities (example: stamp collecting is bad), so I am aware that extreme/insane advisors are out there. Even so, most of my colleagues, postdocs, students have hobbies of various sorts. Many have families. An important part of life is learning to balance work and non-work. That's what most of us are doing.

Lots To Talk About

Recently, various people have asked me -- in person or by email -- about what to include or not include in an interview talk (or talks) in the specific case in which you have many possible things to talk about.

Even if your only talk-worthy research experience to date has been your graduate work, your research may have been sufficiently complex and multi-faceted that you are faced with a major decision about what to talk about. Things get even more interesting when you have had various research experiences (e.g., grad school + postdoc(s)) and have an even bigger decision about which research projects to talk about in an interview presentation. Perhaps it is obvious that one research project is the #1 best topic for a particular job, but what if it's not obvious? How do you decide what to talk about?

Although having various projects might make for a more complicated decision, having these options can result in a very interesting talk. I worked on very different things for my postdoc and graduate research, and I found that the interview talk that worked best for me (and was most fun to give) involved bits of both projects.

I was discussing this recently with a former student who has an upcoming interview at Awesome University and who had to make a similar decision about what to include in the interview talks. She will be giving two talks as part of the interview, and was considering talking about Project A in one talk and Project B in another talk.

My advice, which may or may not have been helpful or even good, is not to divide the research so neatly. I think it would be much more interesting to do a bit of integration of the commonalities of the two projects. Perhaps I am biased because I found that this worked well for me, but I think it will also be effective in this case.

In the case of one talk and two projects, you can do a bit of integration, then focus specifically on the project that is most relevant and/or cool.

If you have two talks and at least two projects, Talk 1 can still mostly be Project A and Talk 2 can mostly be Project B -- it is important to give a coherent talk, after all -- but if you can successfully integrate some elements of different projects in a Big Picture kind of way, then you show your audience (and the hiring committee) that you are driven by first-order questions and can see broad connections among topics and methods.

If you have two talks and one project.. that's tricky, but perhaps one of your talks will be a general talk and one will be more specific, so you can talk about your one project in different levels of detail.

Being able to integrate components of different projects is a useful skill in general, and is an approach you can take throughout your career when giving invited talks about topics that may touch on various projects with which you are involved. It can be difficult to do, but that's just part of the fun.

Unmovable

Some of the comments on the last post bring up interesting related points: whether an interviewee is ‘serious’ about a position, and the role that a Significant Other (S.O.) has in the decision to accept or decline an offer of a faculty position.

When you get an invitation to interview, you might not know in advance if you want to be in that department or live in that area. When you visit, meet people, and learn about the area, you are checking the place out as much as they are checking you out. It can also be difficult to know in advance whether an academic setting is a good place for your S.O.; this is why many places invite the candidate and their S.O. (± other family) for a second (post-offer) visit.

What I have trouble understanding, however, is the situation in which someone goes through the time and effort of an interview, consuming lots of time and money by the interviewing department, but apparently does not know that their S.O. will never agree to move to the vicinity of the university or college that is conducting the interview.

From talking to colleagues over the years, I have heard of the following My- S.O.-Won’t-Let-Me reasons given for not accepting an offer of a faculty position:

1 – My S.O. doesn’t want to leave Our State/City. I always assume that this means that a certain really important conversation that ideally would have taken place before the interview didn’t actually occur until after the offer was made. The S.O. may well have good reasons for not wanting to move no matter how great the other place is, but if so, it would be best if that were worked out before so many people invested time and money in the interview process.

2 – My S.O. doesn’t want to live in such a [insert obvious physical characteristic that is known even before the interview: e.g., big city, rural area, Midwestern place, southern place, west/east coastal place, cold place, warm place]. Again, this is something that ideally would be discussed in advance, before getting on the plane to interview at the defective place, though I suppose it is always possible that someone could be geographically challenged or not realize that they have a cow phobia or cactus allergy, or something.

I know that this issue can be more complex than I am portraying it. Your S.O. might not really want to move to a place that is so X, but their reluctance might be overcome after a visit. That's something you might not know before the interview. In that case, it would be better to use reason #3 instead:

3 – Your U/City/State is not a good place for my S.O. to live/work, and we didn’t know this until I/we visited. This is a good reason. I think everyone can understand this reason, even if it can be disappointing. The other two I think are obnoxious reasons.

It is difficult to know whether any of these reasons for declining an offer are sincere – perhaps some people think that blaming their S.O. is a polite way to turn down an offer. If reasons #1 or #2 are sincere, though, I think that the candidates and their S.O. have some issues they need to work out and/or that they must not have given much – if any - thought to the people whose time they wasted by going through a process that had no chance of success. Perhaps you have to be on the other (search committee) side to be selfish enough to think about your own wasted time and effort. Even so, most of us accept the randomness and risk that comes along with a search process and know that the interview process is complicated and stressful for everyone, resulting in some less than mature behavior (on both sides).

Does any of this matter? I think so. I have seen the negative feelings generated by a perceived lack of 'seriousness' (commonly caused by Lame Reasons #1-2 for declining a job offer) linger and affect how someone is viewed within the scientific community.

2 Many

What do you think about the scenario of an interviewee being accompanied by a spouse or significant other to an interview for a faculty position?

* I am not talking about situations in which there is a clear need for such an accompanying person, e.g., someone to help with child-care. There are certainly circumstances in which an accompanying person is required or beneficial. *

The question is, what about the situation in which the accompanying person, who is not and will not be considered for a job at the university doing the interviewing, attends interview events: Goes to the interview talk(s)? Comes to ‘social’ events (e.g., dinner with the search committee)?

There may well be circumstances in which this level of involvement is necessary, but unless someone can convince me otherwise, I think that in the absence of extenuating circumstances (e.g., babies; disabilities), it is not appropriate for the accompanying person to participate in interview activities, including quasi-social events like dinner with the search committee.

At search committee-interviewee dinners, the conversation certainly need not be All Science for the entire meal, and it should also not be an extension of some of the more stressful aspects of the interview (Why is your research important? What research will you be doing in 10 years?). However, it should be possible to talk with the candidate about Science and other issues relevant to the interview without their spouse/partner getting upset about being left out of the conversation and/or getting anxious when questions get too interview-like.

Memo to accompanied interviewees and/or to those accompanying interviewees:

- Don’t kiss each other during dinner. Professors, especially those on search committees, cannot handle public displays of affection during meals.

- Don’t feed each other. Professors, especially those on search committees, prefer to think that candidates can feed themselves.

- Don’t tell cute stories about each other, including revealing affectionate nicknames and embarrassing childhood episodes. Professors, especially those on search committees, prefer not to know any of this until after an interviewee becomes an actual colleague. Then we definitely want to know.

- For female accompaniers: don’t single out the women on the search committee for girl-talk about babies and gardens while the guys are talking about Science. In some cases, the men on the search committee may have more to say about babies and gardens.

I am not making these examples up. My observation of behavior like this has led to my negative opinion on the issue of accompanying-persons.

If anyone who is reading this is freaking out because they accompanied their Beloved to some interview events, fed him/her from their own fork, smooched at dinner, and called the interviewee “pookiebear”, all in front of the search committee, fear not. If the search committee thinks the candidate will be a great research and teacher, that’s the most important thing. Even so, it would be best to let the interviewee meet/dine alone with the search committee, however terrifying that may be.

Double Interview

Earlier today, my husband encountered the chair of a department at a large private university. This chair said that he had heard that my husband and I were thinking about leaving our current university, and that he would like his university to be 'in the mix' along with the other places we are considering. OK, that's fine, the more the merrier etc.

The strange thing is that this place wants us both to visit at the same time. We would presumably meet with faculty individually, but would give consecutive talks and would attend social functions (meals) together. I'm not sure what we'd do with our daughter -- maybe they want her to give a talk too? -- but we can probably figure something out for a quick trip.

I'm not sure how I feel about this double visit. All the other departments have brought us in separately - both public and private universities - and have made it clear that we would each be valued as individuals. Perhaps a double visit is just an efficient way to take care of the situation. Or perhaps it means that this place thinks of us as a 'package' (which we are, I suppose). I will keep an open mind, see if the visit actually occurs, and if so, how it goes.

Breadth v. Depth

I don't want to stress out anyone who is going through faculty job interviews, but I've seen a number of interview talks lately, and wanted to make a few general comments about them. It has been very interesting discussing the architecture of these talks with my own students, especially those who are facing job searches in the very near future. They are looking at these interview talks with different eyes, seeing themselves (we all hope) standing up there giving talks like these, and that is kind of an awesome feeling.

* To anyone giving this kind of talk: The Talk is not the only chance you have to impress people. In fact, our department is considering offering a position to someone who made some classic talk errors (see below), but who impressed people otherwise, e.g., in individual conversations. *

Some of my students told me that it was obvious to them, even in talks that were far from their own expertise, when a candidate just wasn't ready for the questions, even ones that might seem obvious. They wondered if the candidates had practiced for a friendly but critical audience before the interview. Some people just get nervous and don't deal with questions well for that reason, but usually you can tell if that's the reason or whether they are unprepared for questions.

My senior grad students seemed most surprised that some of the candidates didn't bother to explain at the beginning why anyone should care about their research. They just dove into the details, perhaps to demonstrate deep knowledge of their specific research subjects. I was particularly happy about this reaction, as it is something I emphasize over and over with my students, even if they are just giving an informal talk in the department. Depth doesn't have to be at the expense of breadth -- it's all in the balance. I think this recent spate of interview talks was the first time some of them really saw how critical it is to get attempt this balance.

It is possible to get the balance wrong with over-emphasis at either end of the spectrum. I think there is a broad region of acceptable balance, but for some reason, many speakers seem magnetically attracted to one of the extremes. Getting the right balance is an art, and requires practice and a lot of advice and critical input.

I should start scheduling next semester's in-house talks right now -- I bet I'd get a lot of volunteers from the senior grad students.

Get A Job

Today I was perusing the recent issue of Physics Today, and read with interest a feature article on "Hunting for jobs at liberals arts colleges", by Suzanne Amador Kane and Kenneth Laws. There is much in this article that is applicable to any academic job search, including jobs at big research-focused universities.

First, a few things I disagreed with, as these come early in the article:

1."However good your PhD or postdoctoral mentor may be at research, the odds are that he or she knows relatively little about the small-college environment." In the first paragraph, the authors make the case that of 764 college physics departments in the U.S., 513 of them are at colleges or universities whose highest degree offered is the bachelor's. So.. doesn't it follow that quite a few graduate advisors and postdoc supervisors will have come from undergraduate-focused institutions? I realize that there are smaller numbers of physicists graduating from the undergraduate institutions, but even so, my impression is that graduates of small liberal arts colleges and other undergraduate institutions are legion in academia. I am one such SLAC graduate, and I am by no means rare or even in the minority.

2."Faculty positions at liberal arts institutions include a much more significant component of teaching and working with students than do similar jobs in research universities." OK, I know this is not a controversial statement, but it would be a mistake to assume that jobs at research universities do not involve substantial involvement in teaching and other educational activities (e.g., advising undergraduate students in research projects). In fact, I spend all of my weekday time on teaching or teaching-related activities (including graduate advising), and it is primarily at night and on weekends that I have time to do research (+ teaching preparation, grading, and such).

But let's focus on the excellent advice in this article for job applicants:

- In written statements and interview talks/discussions, show that you can articulate your research to a general audience. There will be opportunities to show how technically excellent and focused you are, but don't do this at the expense of showing breadth and awareness of the context of your research.

- Keep track of the materials/formats requested as part of the application, be concise in your cover letter and statements, and don't send a form letter. I have seen a surprising number of applications in which the applicant forgot to change University X to University Y. It's a detail (sort of) and everyone expects applicants to apply to multiple places, but it definitely undermines your message if you write a passionate paragraph about why you want to be at a different university than the one to which you are applying.

- A related point: tailor your cover letter to the specific place to which you are applying, and, if you interview, show that you spent some time learning about the place. This sounds straightforward, but there are some possible pitfalls:

- Don't dig too deep to learn about faculty and others. I have encountered a few interviewees who somehow learned my child's name and age, as well as other details of my career and life, and I just think that's weird. Another interviewee, who had no interest in sports, memorized the starting players and their statistics for the university basketball team. Don't be so insecure to think that there won't be anything of mutual interest that you can discuss with faculty and others.

- Don't treat the senior faculty with more respect than the junior faculty. This used to drive me crazy when I was an Assistant Professor. On more than one occasion, an interviewee would be obsequious to the senior faculty and administrators and patronizing to the junior faculty. Mistake. We all get a vote.

- Also: If you do a bit of research on a department, you won't make the semi-fatal error of assuming that a young-looking woman is a student (or secretary).

- And: I was going to write "Don't be a jerk at conferences if you are on the job market", but in fact, if you are a jerk, that's important information for prospective interviewers. Example: One year at a conference, I was at a social-professional event, and asked the organizer if there was anything to drink besides beer. He smirked and said to me "If you don't like beer, you should get out of here", then turned his back. When he arrived in my office a few weeks later as a candidate for a faculty position (I was on the search committee), he was very uncomfortable talking to me. I tried to put him at his ease, but the interview wasn't going well in general, so the whole thing was kind of unpleasant.

- And finally: It's fine to look into cost-of-living and other lifestyle issues, but I always think it's bizarre when interviewees have already contacted a realtor and selected neighborhoods and schools and such. There's plenty of time for that later, if you get an offer.

- Make sure your letter writers send their letters on time. Some of us write lots of letters of recommendation for lots of students, and it can be hard keeping track of deadlines and the nuances of different positions/schools. I don't mind if someone checks to see if I sent a letter or letters, and I don't mind polite reminders before a deadline. I like it best when I get an organized list of what letters have to be where when. If someone asks me "Can you send a letter to College X by December 1?", that's not enough. I need a copy of the job description and I need the address/email. If I'm writing 20+ letters for different students and different jobs, I am not going to go digging for the information myself.

- A related issue: I was recently concerned when a graduating Ph.D. student asked a research associate for a letter of recommendation instead of asking another faculty member. Junior scientists tend to take letter-writing very seriously, but, depending on the job/institution, the search committee might wonder why all the letters weren't from faculty. Maybe in some cases it's better to have a substantial positive letter from a postdoc, as opposed to a one-line letter from a Nobel laureate (<-- this really happened), but in general, get letters from faculty if at all possible. I have read about 150 letters of reference just this week, so I have more opinions on this issue for a later post.

- The CV: Don't list manuscripts that are "in preparation" -- no one will be impressed. Don't mix citations of abstracts/conference presentations with those for peer-reviewed articles. Put the peer-reviewed articles first. My personal preferences is for the most recent at the top, and then reverse chronological order.

- Whether you're interviewing at a small college or big university, ask to meet with students. You learn a lot about a place from talking to students, and having lunch or an informal discussion with students might well be the most fun part of your interview.

It is too bad that the article doesn't deal more with dual-career couple issues. Instead, the authors refer readers to a 1999 article in Physics Today. There is a website associated with this article, but some of the links are dead and/or useless, with some exceptions.

And finally: After an interview, send a brief follow-up letter to the relevant people (search committee chair and/or dept chair and/or search committee and/or others) to emphasize your interest, and to note any updates in your files (new publications, thoughts based on your interview and interactions with students and others). Don't be too schmoozy and uber-grateful - be succinct and sincere and professional.

That's a lot of information, but most of it is common sense stuff.