Convention interviews are usually divided into four components:

1. questions about research

2. questions about teaching. These may very well predominate and will often take the form of specific questions like "what books would you use to teach ..."

3. They'll tell you about the school and the job

4. They'll let you ask questions

My survival advice for convention interviews is:

1. Be prepared. Be sure that you have researched the school so that you have ascertained their needs and can direct your remarks to what they appear to need. This includes knowing who's on the staff, who teaches what and how territorial the place is. You don't want to outline a course that someone else is already very invested in teaching. I prepare a cram sheet for each interview that records my research for the job, my analysis of their needs, and the anticipated questions I'll need to address. It also includes the questions I want to ask them.

2. Strike fast. Try to establish your candidacy in the first 5 minutes of the interview. The standard pieces of advice for business interviews apply here, too. Look people in the eye. Answer questions succinctly. Have ready good snappy short and medium length answers to the standard questions. DO NOT drone on for 15 minutes about the minutiae of your dissertation.

3. It's an old cliche, but try to relax and be yourself. Don't try to hide who you are. Be careful about creating different personas for different interviews at the convention. You will be seeing search committee members throughout the weekend and you need to remember who you are for each encounter. Believe in your skills and give it your best shot.

4. Dress distinctively (but don't violate too many conventions). After 2-3 days trapped in a hotel room interviewing, search committee members are completely fried or bored or both. It'll be hard to remember you if you looked and dressed like every other candidate.

If you are lucky enough to get a campus interview, a "flyback," the advice I gave earlier about marketing yourself for the specific institution becomes triply important. Do your homework. Read the catalog and all the literature you can get your hands on. Call friends or acquaintances who are familiar with the university. Pump your networks for the inside dope. Be prepared to be specific about how you might enhance any one of the department's programs or initiatives. The logistics are that they will generally fly you in for 1-2 days. The atmosphere of the campus interview (barring severe factionalism) is usually quite pleasant. You will most likely be treated well and given every consideration.

What should you expect for a campus interview at a Ph.D.-granting institution? Your presentation will most likely be the most important part of the interview. Have your remarks prepared, after ascertaining what they want, who your audience will be, how long they expect you to talk, and whether they want you to give a formal paper or an informal seminar on your research. How you handle questions will be closely evaluated. On occasion, depending on the circumstances of the search and what kind of folks your future colleagues are, the Q&A; session following your talk may get adversarial. Don't let them see you sweat. Be prepared to talk about your research often and in detail to different constituencies of the department and university. They must evaluate your prospects for passing a tenure review in 5-6 years. (It may help you to know that at some institutions, a tenure line will not be returned to the unit automatically after a tenure denial. Your success, therefore, may be vital to the unit's ability to maintain its present size and strength.)

Be ready to discuss how you would teach at least 3 undergraduate courses and 1 graduate seminar. Most of these should be classes you know they expect you to teach. One should be something special, entrepreneurial--something drawing on your strengths that could really enhance their curriculum and that other candidates would not be able to offer. The inability to talk knowledgeably about more than one course is unimpressive. Search committees will expect you to be prepared for these questions. If there is some kind of special initiative that the dept is working on, being ready to say how you could contribute to it will be impressive. For example, my department is using the World Wide Web for a lot of undergraduate teaching and we're building a virtual museum which serves as the base for this work. What skills or ideas could you bring to this project?

Although negotiations concerning the job will be conducted with the Chair or Head of the department at a graduate-degree granting institution, you may be booked for an interview with the Dean. If so, this will be an important interview; deans authorize offers. Be prepared to explain the importance of your research to someone who has no training in your field. Be able to demonstrate your "connectedness" and high regard within your field. If the Chair hires a star, the Dean will get credit for it. The Dean wants to know whether landing you will enhance his or her (university's) standing. If you can, use the Dean interview to educate him or her about the importance of your subject matter and, by extension, your new department to current scholarly doings. You may be asked to comment on all kinds of developments in higher education that the dean is interested in. There is no substitute for regular reading of the Chronicle of Higher Education at a time like this.

Be ready to sell your candidacy to the graduate students. Making the separation between being a graduate student and teaching them is not easy. Put some thought into how you will handle this before the interview.

Exercise good manners and display collegiality at all of the social occasions. There is NEVER a time when you are visiting that you are NOT being interviewed. It's an obvious point, but watch your drinking. It's surprising how many candidates get nervous and overimbibe--usually not to the point of drunkenness but enough that they don't feel very well on the second day. Do not let your guard down and confess things--fears, misgivings, shortcomings in your work, where you REALLY stand with your dissertation writing to ANYONE while you are there. Last year I was invited to the dinners for all five candidates for a position in a neighboring department and I was often the last person the candidate saw that day. Every single one of them said something to me that he or she shouldn't have.

Here are a few last bits of advice: Search choices are mind-bogglingly arbitrary. You must develop mechanisms for dealing with this aspect of the process. (I took to ritually burning my rejection letters in the fireplace after the first 30 or so piled in. Silly, but it helped). Thorough preparation for a campus job interview takes far more time than you may have. Plan ahead and manage your time to do the best you can. Don't stint on this part of the interviewing process.

Good luck in your job search. May you remember that there really was a reason you went into this business and get a chance to do what you do so well.

Convention interviews are usually divided into four components:

1. questions about research

2. questions about teaching. These may very well predominate and will often take the form of specific questions like "what books would you use to teach ..."

3. They'll tell you about the school and the job

4. They'll let you ask questions

My survival advice for convention interviews is:

1. Be prepared. Be sure that you have researched the school so that you have ascertained their needs and can direct your remarks to what they appear to need. This includes knowing who's on the staff, who teaches what and how territorial the place is. You don't want to outline a course that someone else is already very invested in teaching. I prepare a cram sheet for each interview that records my research for the job, my analysis of their needs, and the anticipated questions I'll need to address. It also includes the questions I want to ask them.

2. Strike fast. Try to establish your candidacy in the first 5 minutes of the interview. The standard pieces of advice for business interviews apply here, too. Look people in the eye. Answer questions succinctly. Have ready good snappy short and medium length answers to the standard questions. DO NOT drone on for 15 minutes about the minutiae of your dissertation.

3. It's an old cliche, but try to relax and be yourself. Don't try to hide who you are. Be careful about creating different personas for different interviews at the convention. You will be seeing search committee members throughout the weekend and you need to remember who you are for each encounter. Believe in your skills and give it your best shot.

4. Dress distinctively (but don't violate too many conventions). After 2-3 days trapped in a hotel room interviewing, search committee members are completely fried or bored or both. It'll be hard to remember you if you looked and dressed like every other candidate.

If you are lucky enough to get a campus interview, a "flyback," the advice I gave earlier about marketing yourself for the specific institution becomes triply important. Do your homework. Read the catalog and all the literature you can get your hands on. Call friends or acquaintances who are familiar with the university. Pump your networks for the inside dope. Be prepared to be specific about how you might enhance any one of the department's programs or initiatives. The logistics are that they will generally fly you in for 1-2 days. The atmosphere of the campus interview (barring severe factionalism) is usually quite pleasant. You will most likely be treated well and given every consideration.

What should you expect for a campus interview at a Ph.D.-granting institution? Your presentation will most likely be the most important part of the interview. Have your remarks prepared, after ascertaining what they want, who your audience will be, how long they expect you to talk, and whether they want you to give a formal paper or an informal seminar on your research. How you handle questions will be closely evaluated. On occasion, depending on the circumstances of the search and what kind of folks your future colleagues are, the Q&A; session following your talk may get adversarial. Don't let them see you sweat. Be prepared to talk about your research often and in detail to different constituencies of the department and university. They must evaluate your prospects for passing a tenure review in 5-6 years. (It may help you to know that at some institutions, a tenure line will not be returned to the unit automatically after a tenure denial. Your success, therefore, may be vital to the unit's ability to maintain its present size and strength.)

Be ready to discuss how you would teach at least 3 undergraduate courses and 1 graduate seminar. Most of these should be classes you know they expect you to teach. One should be something special, entrepreneurial--something drawing on your strengths that could really enhance their curriculum and that other candidates would not be able to offer. The inability to talk knowledgeably about more than one course is unimpressive. Search committees will expect you to be prepared for these questions. If there is some kind of special initiative that the dept is working on, being ready to say how you could contribute to it will be impressive. For example, my department is using the World Wide Web for a lot of undergraduate teaching and we're building a virtual museum which serves as the base for this work. What skills or ideas could you bring to this project?

Although negotiations concerning the job will be conducted with the Chair or Head of the department at a graduate-degree granting institution, you may be booked for an interview with the Dean. If so, this will be an important interview; deans authorize offers. Be prepared to explain the importance of your research to someone who has no training in your field. Be able to demonstrate your "connectedness" and high regard within your field. If the Chair hires a star, the Dean will get credit for it. The Dean wants to know whether landing you will enhance his or her (university's) standing. If you can, use the Dean interview to educate him or her about the importance of your subject matter and, by extension, your new department to current scholarly doings. You may be asked to comment on all kinds of developments in higher education that the dean is interested in. There is no substitute for regular reading of the Chronicle of Higher Education at a time like this.

Be ready to sell your candidacy to the graduate students. Making the separation between being a graduate student and teaching them is not easy. Put some thought into how you will handle this before the interview.

Exercise good manners and display collegiality at all of the social occasions. There is NEVER a time when you are visiting that you are NOT being interviewed. It's an obvious point, but watch your drinking. It's surprising how many candidates get nervous and overimbibe--usually not to the point of drunkenness but enough that they don't feel very well on the second day. Do not let your guard down and confess things--fears, misgivings, shortcomings in your work, where you REALLY stand with your dissertation writing to ANYONE while you are there. Last year I was invited to the dinners for all five candidates for a position in a neighboring department and I was often the last person the candidate saw that day. Every single one of them said something to me that he or she shouldn't have.

Here are a few last bits of advice: Search choices are mind-bogglingly arbitrary. You must develop mechanisms for dealing with this aspect of the process. (I took to ritually burning my rejection letters in the fireplace after the first 30 or so piled in. Silly, but it helped). Thorough preparation for a campus job interview takes far more time than you may have. Plan ahead and manage your time to do the best you can. Don't stint on this part of the interviewing process.

Good luck in your job search. May you remember that there really was a reason you went into this business and get a chance to do what you do so well.

Be yourself. 

@ SivaKumar Krishnamoorthy...Thanks for the wonderful advice. It will be very helpful for the academic position seekers..