Inside Higher Ed today features an opinion piece by a lecturer about the excruciating awkwardness of job interviews:
[T]he banal yet innocuous questions faculty members do ask — “Where was I from?” “How did I get interested in this topic?” — become loaded with a significance out of proportion to their actual content. Together, my answers formed me into a certain candidate shape, one which may or may not be the proper and notorious “fit” that search committees frequently resort to in making their final decision. And I realized that despite our hopes to be judged according to what we have done and not who we are, what really gets evaluated on campus visits is not primarily a candidate’s skills but, rather, […] a candidate’s character. Has the candidate worked hard? Is she likable? Does she get along well with others? Can the candidate handle gracefully the at best inappropriate and at worst illegal question someone asks about her spouse and his or her career ambitions? Will the candidate hold her tongue in meetings with the insipid dean who is perversely proud of his lack of knowledge about the humanities? And while there is less fuss made about her drug history — although that is changing — how well will she get through dinner with only a glass of wine?
Having gone through this process myself six years ago, and more recently from the hiring side, I feel the author’s pain, and then some. I’m not sure there’s really any way to avoid the interview being a big carnival of stress, though, for a variety of reasons.
For one thing, as the author acknowledges later, the stakes are pretty high:
In many ways, of course, this emphasis on character is justified and even laudable. These are tenure-track jobs, which, if all goes as planned and tenure is granted, represent — failing financial catastrophe — an institution’s lifetime commitment to that employee. As such, faculty members in a department, especially a small department, need to feel certain that they can live happily ever after with a candidate for the remainder of their career. No one wants to share their workplace with a drunk who wanders the halls and sneaks cigarettes in his office, a faculty member who sits in his office in boxer shorts eating spiral ham with his fingers, or a crank who circulates vituperative, paranoid e-mails to the rest of the department. As you probably guessed, I have not invented these colorfully un-collegial colleagues, but they are very much real.
It’s not hard to find spectacular examples of academic hiring gone wrong, to the point of faculty members having restraining orders against one another. And less virulent craziness abounds. To the limited extent that you can screen this stuff out, it’s very much in the department’s interest to do so.
The bigger problem, though, is on the candidate’s end. Having gone through this recently, I can tell you that when I’m making idle small talk during a one-on-one meeting with a candidate, there really isn’t a hidden agenda– I’m just making idle small talk.
I usually go into “campus visit” interviews (of which I’ve done too goddamn many) with a couple of questions about teaching and research, and that’s pretty much all the material I have. I don’t see much point in asking detailed technical questions about the candidate’s research, because that’s what the job talk is for (there’s an obligatory hour-long seminar as part of most physics job interviews). And I don’t see much point in talking in detail about theoretical pedagogy, because, again, I’m going to get a sense of the candidate’s teaching ability from the job talk– if they can take current research and present it in a way that makes sense to an undergrad, then they can teach any of our classes.
That doesn’t leave a whole lot for the one-on-one interview. So, if there’s something about the candidate’s application that raises questions in my mind, I’ll ask that, but when I start asking questions like “So, how about that local sports team?” it’s because I’ve got nothing else. I usually end up offering to answer questions for the candidate (about the department, about the college, about the area), because I think there’s too much one-way information flow in the interview process.
The problem, though, is that from the candidate’s end, this looks like some sort of clever ploy to suss out their character. Because, well, it’s a stressful process, and even conversations that really and truly are innocent become invested with vast significance. There’s a Tenure Track Job (F/X: Heavenly choirs) riding on this, and you can’t screw it up, because all of your schooling has built that up as the alpha and omega of academic existence. If you don’t get the job, you’re a failure, and everyone will laugh at you, so you can’t show the slightest hint of uncertainty or weakness. At least, that’s how it feels.
Again, this comes back to the weight that’s placed on the Tenure Track Job. And as with the many other problems caused by the overemphasis on academic jobs, the ultimate solution is to reduce the stigma associated with leaving academia. If candidates approached these positions as just a job, rather than the Holy Grail balanced atop the Ark of the Covenant in King Solomon’s Mines, the whole process would be easier for everyone.
Of course, I have absolutely no idea how to get there from here… But trust me, if you find yourself applying for a position in my department, and I ask “How about that local sports team?” it’s ok to relax.