Not That Kind of Doctor - Remote Interview
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01/19/2023
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Preparing for a phone or Zoom interview can be nerve-wracking, especially when it's your first step into the academic job market. In this episode of "Not That Kind of Doctor," Guy and Nick dive into the nuances of navigating that crucial first contact with a hiring committee. Whether it’s a Zoom call or a phone interview, we discuss strategies to present your best self and make a lasting impression.
We share our personal experiences, from the anxiety of early career interviews to the wisdom gained from years of sitting on both sides of the interview table. If you're entering the job market or preparing for an interview, this episode is packed with practical advice to help you stand out.
đź“Ś Key Takeaways:
How to prepare effectively for phone and Zoom interviews
Tips for managing your time and staying focused during the interview
The importance of telling your story and building on your application materials
Strategies for reading between the lines and assessing department culture
How to ask insightful questions that leave a positive impression
Whether you're a seasoned academic or a graduate student on the job market, this episode offers valuable insights to help you navigate the interview process with confidence.
#AcademicJobMarket #ZoomInterviews #PhoneInterviews #NotThatKindOfDoctor #ProfessionalDevelopment
How do you approach academic interviews? Share your tips and experiences in the comments below! Don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more discussions on academic life and beyond!
Remote Interview - Not That Kind of Doctor with Nick Husbye and Guy Trainin
www.youtube.com/@tltenotthatkindofdoctor
Searchable Transcript
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- [00:00:00.160](bright music)
- [00:00:09.158](laughing)
- [00:00:10.110]Well, we'll talk about the therapy implications
- [00:00:13.080]of that later.
- [00:00:14.640]But right now, you know what we're gonna talk about?
- [00:00:17.460]What are we gonna talk about?
- [00:00:18.990]So we've already talked about navigating the job market
- [00:00:20.743]because it is, as of recording this, it is January.
- [00:00:25.080]We're about to start our semester,
- [00:00:27.000]which means that the hiring season, part deux,
- [00:00:30.930]is about to start. Yes.
- [00:00:32.100]And so we've talked about how to navigate
- [00:00:36.960]that system, looking for postings.
- [00:00:39.690]Now we're gonna talk a little bit about what happens
- [00:00:43.080]when you get some interest and you get a Zoom call
- [00:00:46.050]or a phone interview as kind of a first way into it.
- [00:00:50.400]So on this episode of "Not That Kind of Doctor,"
- [00:00:54.630]we're gonna talk all about getting ready for that
- [00:00:58.710]first bit of contact with the interview committee.
- [00:01:01.448]And for me, also the terrifying part.
- [00:01:05.490]As the somebody who's got to be on that call,
- [00:01:09.270]as a young scholar, that was terrifying to me.
- [00:01:12.330]I lost a lot of sleep over at my time.
- [00:01:16.050]I did my big job search straight out of school
- [00:01:21.660]over 20 years ago.
- [00:01:22.500]It was a phone interview,
- [00:01:24.420]and that was one of the scariest things
- [00:01:26.653]I can think about, 'cause I couldn't see people
- [00:01:29.580]and because my first language is not English.
- [00:01:32.760]So just worried, "Am I going to actually understand
- [00:01:36.150]what they're saying?" was a big, big worry for me.
- [00:01:39.240]So that's really on the table, as well.
- [00:01:41.730]So we're gonna talk all about that in this episode.
- [00:01:43.980]I'm Nick Husbye.
- [00:01:44.940]I'm an Associate Professor of Elementary Literacy Education
- [00:01:47.610]here at UNL.
- [00:01:49.320]I'm Guy Trainin, I'm a professor here at UNL,
- [00:01:52.350]and I've been here for over 20 years.
- [00:01:56.160]So I've seen a lot of junior faculty
- [00:01:58.200]and a lot of graduate students that I've worked with.
- [00:02:00.750]And a lot of the conversations we have
- [00:02:03.300]is based on that experience.
- [00:02:05.400]So we're gonna to dive right in because
- [00:02:09.060]once you've started sending out your application materials
- [00:02:12.900]to a variety of institutions,
- [00:02:14.700]and you've really targeted them,
- [00:02:15.990]chances are you're going to get some traction
- [00:02:19.800]around interest in who you are, and what you do,
- [00:02:22.770]and what you could be doing at that particular institution.
- [00:02:25.830]And normally the way that the overarching
- [00:02:30.330]academic job market works is there's
- [00:02:34.110]an initial review of those materials by the committee,
- [00:02:38.760]and then they winnow it down to a smaller pool,
- [00:02:44.340]and they do some kind of filtering interview.
- [00:02:50.670]It's normally either a phone interview or a Zoom interview.
- [00:02:55.200]So it's about 20 to ish minutes, half an hour maybe.
- [00:03:00.420]To give people a chance to talk through
- [00:03:04.470]expanding some of the work that they've already done
- [00:03:07.890]to get a bigger and better idea about who they are,
- [00:03:12.510]what's going on, and what kind of fit might they be, right?
- [00:03:20.340]And personally,
- [00:03:21.300]I tend to think about these first conversations as
- [00:03:26.520]exactly that, it's meant to be this filtering,
- [00:03:28.987]"what kind of fit might they be" kind of conversation.
- [00:03:33.180]Yeah.
- [00:03:34.013]So it feels like they're interested in,
- [00:03:37.230]fairly general like,
- [00:03:40.237]"Who are you? Why this institution?
- [00:03:44.370]Talk to us a little bit more about your teaching.
- [00:03:46.650]Talk to us a little bit more about your research.
- [00:03:50.100]What kind of strategies do you have for collaboration?"
- [00:03:54.150]So those kinds of general questions.
- [00:03:58.851]And I think that it all goes back
- [00:04:01.440]to that call that you answered.
- [00:04:04.620]So there was an ad and there were a lot of details,
- [00:04:07.890]and we talked about this, so if you haven't heard it,
- [00:04:10.200]go back and talk about going on a academic job hunt,
- [00:04:15.690]parts one and two,
- [00:04:16.523]because we talked about how do you read that?
- [00:04:18.690]And really often this 20 to 30 minutes,
- [00:04:22.140]besides getting a general sense,
- [00:04:24.210]it's the opportunity for the committee to ask
- [00:04:27.420]without asking directly about fit.
- [00:04:29.880]So anything that isn't clear in your materials
- [00:04:33.000]and they're like, because I've had this,
- [00:04:34.740]you sit as a committee and you're like,
- [00:04:35.947]"I think they've got this, but do they really?"
- [00:04:39.630]And this is an opportunity to ask that more directly.
- [00:04:43.980]So you still have to think about that ad,
- [00:04:46.920]and what were the things that maybe
- [00:04:50.070]they are not clearly seeing in your materials
- [00:04:53.190]that you want to highlight.
- [00:04:55.710]And I think that idea of,
- [00:04:59.310]what are the things that they might not be clearly seeing,
- [00:05:01.650]it leads into something that,
- [00:05:05.460]when I'm coaching grad students for
- [00:05:08.820]a phone interview or a Zoom interview,
- [00:05:11.880]I always remind them that,
- [00:05:13.950]this is your opportunity not to reiterate
- [00:05:16.830]what's already in your package.
- [00:05:18.090]Like they have already read your application materials.
- [00:05:21.390]This is a chance for you to expand upon them.
- [00:05:24.150]And if they're asking questions that seem duplicative,
- [00:05:28.500]like in your head you're like,
- [00:05:29.347]"Oh, I've already addressed that."
- [00:05:31.500]Obviously you didn't 'cause they're asking that again.
- [00:05:34.170]But this is your opportunity to build on that
- [00:05:38.910]and build kind of the story around your materials
- [00:05:42.810]and who you are as a teacher and a researcher
- [00:05:47.640]within that particular space.
- [00:05:50.280]So like I know for me as someone who's
- [00:05:54.510]been on search committees,
- [00:05:58.260]the least effective initial interview
- [00:06:03.000]is the one in which I learned nothing new
- [00:06:05.580]about the candidate.
- [00:06:07.350]You know, like part of,
- [00:06:10.050]I think one of the most important things
- [00:06:12.210]that any candidate can do is,
- [00:06:17.100]build a story around who they are and think about how
- [00:06:23.670]you're connecting with the people
- [00:06:25.260]on that search committee.
- [00:06:26.093]Because essentially you're looking for someone
- [00:06:29.550]to fight to keep you in the pool.
- [00:06:31.830]Yeah.
- [00:06:32.663]Really is how that's working.
- [00:06:33.960]So you're looking to
- [00:06:36.990]really establish reasons to move you on to that next phase.
- [00:06:42.690]And for me, and this is a refrain I have often
- [00:06:46.020]about lots of ways we interact in academia, but
- [00:06:51.540]you want to, this is the opportunity to talk about examples
- [00:06:55.980]and excerpts, for example, from a study you've done
- [00:06:58.920]or from your dissertation study,
- [00:07:00.180]whatever you have going on that is relevant to this.
- [00:07:03.420]But tell a story, tell a very specific story.
- [00:07:07.020]So an interaction with a child and what did it look like.
- [00:07:10.440]Because we read those articles
- [00:07:12.180]and they tend to be very general,
- [00:07:13.800]they tend to be descriptive in the,
- [00:07:15.397]"This is what we did with all of the kids."
- [00:07:17.310]But telling a story about an interaction with a child,
- [00:07:19.830]or with a teacher, or whatever the format it is.
- [00:07:23.190]This is your opportunity to tell us that your research,
- [00:07:28.080]if that's what we're talking about,
- [00:07:29.070]or your teaching, if the question is about teaching,
- [00:07:31.290]an example from teaching, but hyper-specific contextualized
- [00:07:35.670]is really an opportunity to say, and I feel it in all of,
- [00:07:39.390]I mean the way I think about it is, I feel it in my bones.
- [00:07:42.150]I live this.
- [00:07:43.950]This is, I'm not just describing general things.
- [00:07:46.440]I'm actually doing the thing that I'm talking about.
- [00:07:49.471]And that's a really important piece.
- [00:07:52.080]Like you have to ground that story making.
- [00:07:55.260]It's that frustrating, an adage of like, "Show, don't tell."
- [00:08:01.290]Yeah.
- [00:08:02.123]But this is your opportunity to do exactly that.
- [00:08:04.980]Yeah.
- [00:08:05.813]And also to,
- [00:08:09.047]and a caution on the flip side of that, right?
- [00:08:11.250]Too, because my other pet peeve when I am in, on a committee
- [00:08:17.520]and we're doing these initial screening interviews is
- [00:08:21.180]there's a finite amount of time.
- [00:08:22.620]Yes.
- [00:08:23.453]Right? So be aware of the fact that like,
- [00:08:25.860]they're probably a committee, any given committee,
- [00:08:28.140]is probably talking with 12 other folks.
- [00:08:33.030]And so it's always a red flag for me when it's,
- [00:08:37.717]"Oh I don't, I don't watch my time."
- [00:08:40.620]Yes.
- [00:08:41.453]Like one of the things that, you know me.
- [00:08:45.068](laughing) Yes.
- [00:08:46.860]One of the things that I normally do on
- [00:08:48.780]like a phone interview or a Zoom interview is I ask
- [00:08:51.300]at the beginning, at the onset, even maybe in an email
- [00:08:54.660]in the invite, "How long do we have?
- [00:08:56.970]How many questions are you asking?"
- [00:09:00.360]And I set my timer.
- [00:09:02.160]I don't ask about like what the questions are,
- [00:09:05.400]but I want to make sure that like.
- [00:09:09.060]Yes.
- [00:09:09.893]I personally can get through all of the questions,
- [00:09:12.420]that they want to honor that committee's time.
- [00:09:14.760]That's a demonstration of like my professionalism.
- [00:09:19.410]Yes, and I've seen people in that interview
- [00:09:23.517]lose a lot of respect by going,
- [00:09:27.090]by answering for a really long time,
- [00:09:29.010]forcing the committee to really tell them,
- [00:09:30.847]"We need to move on to the next question."
- [00:09:32.910]And my pet peeve, okay, if we're completely honest, is,
- [00:09:37.800]I know some people process the question while talking.
- [00:09:41.430]There are good ways to do that and sometimes it's effective.
- [00:09:44.340]But if you've got a 20 minute phone interview,
- [00:09:47.190]that is not the time to process
- [00:09:49.110]by talking through the question.
- [00:09:51.270]I really encourage, if this is your style,
- [00:09:54.600]and I have no problem with that style,
- [00:09:56.700]you have to do a lot more prep work.
- [00:09:58.500]So that happens a little bit less,
- [00:10:00.480]and you take a little bit more time to think,
- [00:10:02.640]maybe about the answer, at the beginning of answering
- [00:10:04.920]and then have two or three points you want to deliver.
- [00:10:07.560]Because if you meander, what we get at the end is
- [00:10:11.430]you're a little bit unfocused and
- [00:10:14.070]you haven't thought about this problem really
- [00:10:16.980]in an organized way.
- [00:10:18.330]We're likely to ask things that are at least adjacent
- [00:10:21.000]to what's on the ad.
- [00:10:23.340]So we expect you to be ready, and that's part of that.
- [00:10:26.790]That is though the scary part.
- [00:10:28.860]For me, again, as I said at the top of the show,
- [00:10:33.390]you're not seeing body language.
- [00:10:34.890]Zoom is a little bit better, but zoom is uneven.
- [00:10:37.290]You can be asked for a Zoom,
- [00:10:38.640]and then everybody's got their cameras turned off.
- [00:10:40.860]So this is no added information.
- [00:10:43.500]And that's not helping.
- [00:10:45.000]But even so all you're seeing is usually faces,
- [00:10:48.360]and so you are not sure how people are responding.
- [00:10:51.240]And that's really hard to read the room.
- [00:10:53.100]And for us as, especially as teachers,
- [00:10:55.470]most of us are educators.
- [00:10:56.700]Most of the people that are looking for a job in our area
- [00:10:59.910]are educators.
- [00:11:00.840]They've taught in Higher Ed, usually in K-12.
- [00:11:03.840]We are used to reading the room
- [00:11:05.550]and suddenly there's no room to read.
- [00:11:07.170]And that's really, really difficult.
- [00:11:08.700]And that's why thinking about time is really important,
- [00:11:11.550]because you can't read the impatience
- [00:11:14.400]that you do if you're sitting in a room and you're like,
- [00:11:16.627]"It's time for me to shut up
- [00:11:17.940]because everybody has moved on."
- [00:11:19.950]Right.
- [00:11:20.910]And so I think that brings me to another
- [00:11:22.980]like tip that I personally find useful,
- [00:11:25.470]but is kind of counterintuitive is,
- [00:11:28.740]so you've done your prep.
- [00:11:30.060]You know that there's going to be general questions
- [00:11:32.310]that they're gonna ask.
- [00:11:33.277]"Why this institution? What's your research agenda?
- [00:11:36.000]How do you see it evolving?
- [00:11:37.140]How do you teach students with diverse needs?
- [00:11:39.270]Talk about your research and teaching,
- [00:11:41.280]strategies for collaboration, courses you might teach."
- [00:11:43.230]Like those are pretty general questions.
- [00:11:44.940]So once you have those kind of mapped out,
- [00:11:47.430]before you move into that Zoom or phone interview,
- [00:11:53.970]after a question is asked, write that question down
- [00:11:58.770]and really quickly jot down what your like,
- [00:12:02.010]your three big things that you want to talk about are.
- [00:12:05.070]'Cause I find that that helps me.
- [00:12:07.440]Stay focused. Stay focused.
- [00:12:09.930]And that along with my timer,
- [00:12:12.690]I know I have this amount of time to talk about
- [00:12:14.610]these three specific things that are really important
- [00:12:18.090]to who I think I am as a teacher and a researcher
- [00:12:20.790]and I want to convey to that committee.
- [00:12:24.330]And so it seems counterintuitive 'cause you're quiet
- [00:12:27.720]for a minute or two.
- [00:12:29.130]Yeah.
- [00:12:29.963]With each question.
- [00:12:31.530]Or maybe 30 seconds, it's probably not even a minute.
- [00:12:34.020]But like I feel like that results in me being able to
- [00:12:38.700]respond more qualitatively than I would if
- [00:12:44.700]I just did, if I just went off the cuff, right?
- [00:12:49.050]Yep. Absolutely
- [00:12:50.340]It also allows me to track like
- [00:12:52.350]what all is in this question.
- [00:12:55.560]If I'm writing it down to make sure that I've answered
- [00:12:57.930]Yeah. Everything.
- [00:12:59.040]And my strategy is a little bit different and that is
- [00:13:01.920]I quickly write three points I wanna make
- [00:13:04.560]while I'm thinking.
- [00:13:06.390]And I do pause for about 15 seconds or so.
- [00:13:09.660]And I know for some people it's awkward.
- [00:13:11.820]I, maybe because I grew up in a different culture,
- [00:13:14.490]I don't find that awkward.
- [00:13:16.500]And so I just wait and write a few things down.
- [00:13:21.240]And that allows you not just to stay focused,
- [00:13:23.130]but it also allows you, when you get to the end
- [00:13:25.470]of your two, three minutes for each question,
- [00:13:28.080]probably not more,
- [00:13:29.610]to go back, look at this quickly as you are summarizing
- [00:13:33.300]and say, "Here are the three things or the two things
- [00:13:35.460]that I really want you to take away from my answer."
- [00:13:37.740]So even if you meandered a little bit,
- [00:13:39.570]there's a way to pull everybody and give them a solid,
- [00:13:42.367]"This is what I really care about."
- [00:13:44.730]But you've gotta be ready for that,
- [00:13:46.710]and you've gotta really think about the strategy.
- [00:13:50.220]And I want to add two more strategies really quickly.
- [00:13:53.460]I dunno if it belongs here or not, but I think one is,
- [00:13:55.950]as a non-English speaker, or if you have a disability,
- [00:14:00.810]especially around hearing,
- [00:14:02.250]and I have a few colleagues that are like that
- [00:14:04.557]and graduate students,
- [00:14:06.540]I activate the closed captioning,
- [00:14:09.750]and I tell the committee that I'm going to do that
- [00:14:12.090]because it asks whoever initiated it if they can.
- [00:14:15.510]It is, you know, maybe 80% accurate.
- [00:14:18.990]So sometimes it's really funky,
- [00:14:20.370]especially talking about scholars
- [00:14:22.020]or really long academic words
- [00:14:25.500]that don't always get captioned correctly, but it is support
- [00:14:30.120]that allows you to track a little bit better
- [00:14:32.520]and gives you something else to focus on.
- [00:14:35.700]Especially again, right now,
- [00:14:39.120]I do phone interviews and I'm fine.
- [00:14:41.220]But when I just came
- [00:14:43.020]and I was four years in the United States,
- [00:14:46.080]I was petrified by it.
- [00:14:47.430]I don't know that I wasn't able to do it,
- [00:14:50.250]but just the fear that I will miss something
- [00:14:52.830]and misinterpret the question is really, really large.
- [00:14:58.020]The second strategy, and that's a postmortem almost,
- [00:15:03.780]but post interview kind of thing, and that is
- [00:15:07.890]after that, debrief with somebody really quickly.
- [00:15:12.570]Because you can learn,
- [00:15:13.530]you're probably gonna have more than one of that
- [00:15:15.450]and some of them are going to hit the mark
- [00:15:17.190]and some of them not.
- [00:15:18.510]But you want to debrief quickly to think
- [00:15:20.970]before you lose what has happened during that interview.
- [00:15:24.930]What are the things I can do better?
- [00:15:26.640]Where are the things that I wasn't ready
- [00:15:28.530]and I could have done better?
- [00:15:29.610]What are the strategies that will help me do better
- [00:15:32.100]next time?
- [00:15:32.933]And I think that's critically important because
- [00:15:35.160]when I was going out into the work world
- [00:15:36.810]about twenty, twenty five years ago,
- [00:15:38.460]phone interviews were kind of rare.
- [00:15:40.650]There were no Zoom interviews.
- [00:15:41.820]Now with Zoom, it's everybody go to, to sort a mid-level.
- [00:15:47.400]So in most of the searchers more than 15, 10, 15 years ago,
- [00:15:51.930]we had a list of three coming out of the pool
- [00:15:55.080]with no intermediate often.
- [00:15:57.690]And now it's almost ubiquitous
- [00:16:00.660]that you have that middle group that has, you know,
- [00:16:03.900]9 to 12 candidates and you're choosing 3 out of those,
- [00:16:06.810]which is usually what gets back to campus,
- [00:16:09.330]with a campus visit,
- [00:16:10.290]which we're gonna talk about at another time.
- [00:16:11.910]So you're going to most likely have multiple of those
- [00:16:15.720]and you want to learn from each and every one.
- [00:16:17.370]Right.
- [00:16:18.390]And deliberately learn
- [00:16:20.340]because there are things we learn just by doing
- [00:16:22.290]and we're like, "I'm never gonna do that again."
- [00:16:23.970]But you actually want to debrief.
- [00:16:26.070]Yes and you want to have some kind of tracking
- [00:16:30.360]if you are, if have multiple phone interviews,
- [00:16:33.840]track kind of the questions that get asked
- [00:16:38.010]because they do fall into kind of these common piles, right?
- [00:16:42.030]And so you can think through how you've
- [00:16:45.630]differentiated for different universities,
- [00:16:50.010]which is always helpful.
- [00:16:53.730]But yeah, the,
- [00:16:55.950]it's really a place for them to get a sense of you,
- [00:16:59.610]what kind of colleague you would be.
- [00:17:02.310]What kind of additional skills would you bring
- [00:17:04.230]that aren't necessarily as elevated
- [00:17:07.080]in the materials that you've submitted.
- [00:17:09.060]But it's also this opportunity
- [00:17:11.910]for you to get some information about the department itself
- [00:17:15.179]Absolutely.
- [00:17:16.230]And that's one of the reasons why
- [00:17:17.430]the time management piece is so important because
- [00:17:21.180]you want there to be time to ask some questions
- [00:17:26.910]about that particular space,
- [00:17:29.130]that particular university or college,
- [00:17:31.620]and that particular faculty, right?
- [00:17:34.290]So, and this first it's a bit like dating.
- [00:17:37.800]Yes. Right?
- [00:17:39.279]Very much like dating.
- [00:17:40.112]This is like you have your dating profile
- [00:17:43.260]and those are all your materials,
- [00:17:44.093]and this is like the first meetup.
- [00:17:45.990]So there's certain things that you wanna avoid.
- [00:17:48.570]Like you don't wanna walk in being like,
- [00:17:50.557]"So how much do I make?"
- [00:17:52.171](laughing)
- [00:17:53.190]That's essentially like, "So hey, what's your retirement?"
- [00:17:55.920]Yeah.
- [00:17:56.760]Like, you don't say that on the first date, I mean.
- [00:17:58.980]Probably not.
- [00:18:00.180]I have not dated in a while.
- [00:18:01.980]Right, I mean, and when you date in your forties
- [00:18:04.080]it's a little different
- [00:18:05.610]because you are like, "What's the situation?"
- [00:18:08.640]But that's not where this goes
- [00:18:11.880]in this particular situation.
- [00:18:13.440]It's thinking about like positive interactions
- [00:18:18.480]because again, you wanna build up those like relationships.
- [00:18:24.030]Yeah.
- [00:18:25.020]Even if they're,
- [00:18:26.400]I like to call 'em like skinny relationships.
- [00:18:28.620]You want to ensure that you're having positive interactions.
- [00:18:33.060]So,
- [00:18:34.200]thinking about like
- [00:18:37.200]the department and ending on that quality note,
- [00:18:41.190]I always like to, if there's a student on the call,
- [00:18:44.970]and I normally ask when I'm invited via email,
- [00:18:49.680]like one, can you tell me how many questions,
- [00:18:52.470]how long do we have, and who's going to be on the call?
- [00:18:56.160]And I do a little bit of digging.
- [00:18:58.200]Yeah.
- [00:18:59.033]Who are they? Who are the faculty?
- [00:19:01.890]Who is the student, yada, yada?
- [00:19:04.050]And if I only have time for one question,
- [00:19:06.660]I usually direct it to the student.
- [00:19:09.900]And that's. Okay.
- [00:19:11.730]Well and that's specific, because I
- [00:19:14.850]normally the student
- [00:19:17.640]is going to give me some really good information
- [00:19:21.060]about how that department works
- [00:19:23.370]because they're not necessarily, they're of the department,
- [00:19:26.010]but they're not faculty within the department.
- [00:19:30.630]Yeah.
- [00:19:31.500]And so it also recognizes that I'm aware of
- [00:19:36.090]as a candidate,
- [00:19:38.220]the important role of that student on that committee.
- [00:19:41.160]Right? So like, if I have time for one,
- [00:19:42.630]that's normally where I'd go.
- [00:19:44.190]If they're there.
- [00:19:45.060]If they're there.
- [00:19:46.080]The other thing I want to grab that metaphor of a date
- [00:19:51.120]because that whole job search is like dating,
- [00:19:54.660]and whether you're going to make a commitment or not.
- [00:19:57.930]And you have to remember that the committee
- [00:20:00.210]is also trying to accommodate you.
- [00:20:04.137]And the message that the committee is going to send
- [00:20:07.020]is about who we are, right?
- [00:20:08.580]Who the committee and who the department are, is.
- [00:20:11.790]And they want to attract you because if they want you,
- [00:20:14.400]they want you to want them.
- [00:20:15.810]It's exactly the same thing as dating.
- [00:20:18.810]I mean, sometimes it's like,
- [00:20:19.807]"I don't like you, you don't like me.
- [00:20:21.360]We all go our separate ways."
- [00:20:22.860]But their goal in that same interview
- [00:20:25.020]is to find out a few things about you,
- [00:20:26.760]but also to send that positive message.
- [00:20:28.500]So ask the kind of questions that would invite that.
- [00:20:32.160]And this is where you've got to think
- [00:20:34.950]and you've got to get some advice about
- [00:20:37.200]how do you walk that line of, "I know about you,"
- [00:20:41.070]but not cross that line to making assumptions about
- [00:20:46.830]who I'm gonna work with.
- [00:20:48.000]And I've talked about this before, or that,
- [00:20:52.140]I can call it the cringey space,
- [00:20:54.030]but it's really an intercultural space where
- [00:20:58.440]at least we're talking about getting a job
- [00:21:00.480]in the United States.
- [00:21:01.380]And that is very different than other countries.
- [00:21:03.900]In the conversations you're gonna have,
- [00:21:06.300]in the kind of questions you're going to ask,
- [00:21:09.060]and things that you can and can't discuss.
- [00:21:12.060]And that is a really important piece that is not out there.
- [00:21:17.670]And you want to find out about it.
- [00:21:19.890]So for example, not asking about retirement.
- [00:21:23.220]Not necessarily discussing salary or anything like that.
- [00:21:27.360]A, it's early.
- [00:21:28.350]B, in American society,
- [00:21:29.940]that's not something we put on the table.
- [00:21:31.710]That's a secret negotiation.
- [00:21:33.240]Whereas in other countries, I come from Israel.
- [00:21:36.090]For example, in Israel, there's a salary,
- [00:21:38.790]there's a salary ranking that is published.
- [00:21:41.820]Anybody can have access to it.
- [00:21:43.380]It's the same for everybody
- [00:21:45.510]with few exceptions for private institutions,
- [00:21:47.910]but most universities are public universities
- [00:21:50.070]and they have a scale.
- [00:21:50.910]And everything goes on that scale regardless of who you are
- [00:21:54.000]or how good you are or how bad you are.
- [00:21:56.250]So these are, you can ask that question
- [00:21:59.280]without it being out of place.
- [00:22:01.470]And I know that again, the way you interact,
- [00:22:04.590]and the language you use
- [00:22:05.700]are very, very different across cultures.
- [00:22:08.250]So if you do come from another culture,
- [00:22:10.208]try to get as much experience as you can.
- [00:22:13.020]Being on a committee is another one of those,
- [00:22:15.150]as a student, is another one of those.
- [00:22:17.280]To hear that, get a lot of advice,
- [00:22:19.320]and do a little bit of practice
- [00:22:20.760]so it doesn't register wrong.
- [00:22:25.110]Obviously, the committee on the other side
- [00:22:27.240]has to make allowances for that intercultural exchanges,
- [00:22:30.510]but they don't always.
- [00:22:31.500]I don't know that they always do.
- [00:22:33.150]And so there's a lot of things there has to be about
- [00:22:37.710]how you interact and how much you talk about.
- [00:22:41.220]And again, you want to clearly communicate,
- [00:22:44.107]"I've looked up what you're doing.
- [00:22:45.780]I know who this department is, I know where you are.
- [00:22:48.930]I know what you're interested in
- [00:22:50.430]and what the strengths are."
- [00:22:51.570]At least based, and this is where it gets a little mushy
- [00:22:54.690]it's based on your website
- [00:22:56.490]and based on a few of the profiles.
- [00:22:58.620]This has gotten better over time, but you're still lagging.
- [00:23:01.560]So people might be doing something else.
- [00:23:03.270]And this is a way to ask a question.
- [00:23:05.790]What else are you doing? Where is the department going?
- [00:23:09.270]Is one of those questions, because that may not be visible
- [00:23:12.510]on the department's website, for example,
- [00:23:14.220]because it was last updated a year and a half ago, whenever.
- [00:23:17.880]Right.
- [00:23:18.713]And so as you're
- [00:23:21.720]balancing out that kind of
- [00:23:24.696]♪ Getting to know you ♪
- [00:23:25.950]Like moment, right?
- [00:23:27.240]Like you can ask about things around like,
- [00:23:29.400]what do you enjoy about working in this department?
- [00:23:32.100]Like what is it, what is that you want for?
- [00:23:34.680]What sets your department culture apart from others?
- [00:23:38.220]Where do you forecast the department heading
- [00:23:40.830]in a year or so?
- [00:23:41.663]Like what are, what's your vision statement?
- [00:23:45.660]What are you working toward?
- [00:23:46.890]What are your strategies and tactics to get there?
- [00:23:49.770]And then what do you enjoy most about teaching students
- [00:23:52.050]in your particular department?
- [00:23:53.340]Are all kind of
- [00:23:55.650]generalized questions
- [00:23:58.830]that I think end on a really good positive note.
- [00:24:03.780]Yeah.
- [00:24:04.613]That allow you to get some information about
- [00:24:08.520]kind of what you're walking into.
- [00:24:11.250]And of course like,
- [00:24:14.760]just like any, just like dating, like,
- [00:24:18.750]sometimes these things might not be true.
- [00:24:21.060]Yes, I mean.
- [00:24:22.080]Right? Like there is the like, "Oh, we want you.
- [00:24:26.790]So we're gonna say what we need to,
- [00:24:28.380]in order to make that happen." Right?
- [00:24:29.700]We're trying to paint ourselves in the best light.
- [00:24:32.340]Yes.
- [00:24:33.173]And so sometimes there is a mismatch, but I find in,
- [00:24:39.360]I was counting up how many phone interviews
- [00:24:40.890]or Zoom interviews I've been on since graduating with my PhD
- [00:24:43.500]and it's like 28.
- [00:24:45.000]Oh.
- [00:24:45.833]Which is a lot.
- [00:24:46.666]Yes, it is.
- [00:24:47.499]I am old. We're not gonna talk about it.
- [00:24:49.873](laughing)
- [00:24:51.840]And like I could tell,
- [00:24:53.670]I could tell which departments I was like,
- [00:24:57.007]"Nope, that's not gonna work.
- [00:24:59.580]That's not gonna work."
- [00:25:01.230]And part of it is,
- [00:25:02.700]I think there were a couple where there were,
- [00:25:04.110]there was literally like sniping at each other.
- [00:25:06.930]Oh wow. Yeah.
- [00:25:08.460]On the phone interview.
- [00:25:11.070]And then others where like you hear
- [00:25:14.940]like one faculty member would say one thing,
- [00:25:17.100]another faculty member would say something else.
- [00:25:19.350]And when you read between the lines and you infer,
- [00:25:22.680]you get a sense that the dynamics aren't great
- [00:25:26.580]or delightful.
- [00:25:27.570]Yeah.
- [00:25:28.403]Right, and that's,
- [00:25:30.240]there's a difference between
- [00:25:34.410]reading, I'm fine with tension.
- [00:25:38.520]Yeah. Tension could be positive.
- [00:25:40.020]I mean we are intellectuals.
- [00:25:41.850]Exactly. I'm fine with tension.
- [00:25:44.100]I'm not fine with dysfunction.
- [00:25:47.280]That's hard, I think.
- [00:25:49.680]I'm trying to think if I'm a graduate student
- [00:25:53.430]who's on the job market,
- [00:25:54.840]I've been in graduate school for three or four years.
- [00:25:57.330]Maybe, like some of our students, like I was,
- [00:26:00.030]you come from a different setting.
- [00:26:02.130]Reading that is really difficult.
- [00:26:04.620]So pay attention to like, so having said that,
- [00:26:07.770]here's what I think you need to pay attention to if you can.
- [00:26:11.280]Pay attention to where there's slippage
- [00:26:14.340]between how faculty members are addressing the questions
- [00:26:17.670]that you're asking.
- [00:26:19.410]Are there differences? How does that function?
- [00:26:22.110]If you can pay attention to tone of voice
- [00:26:26.310]and you've got that, like that sometimes is helpful.
- [00:26:29.250]Like these are the kind of
- [00:26:33.690]like meta information that you can get
- [00:26:37.170]from these phone conversations because just as
- [00:26:40.680]you are trying to make them want you,
- [00:26:42.720]you're also trying to evaluate like,
- [00:26:45.150]is this a place where you could be successful?
- [00:26:47.340]Yeah.
- [00:26:48.270]And you, as the candidate,
- [00:26:50.160]you only have a question or two to make that happen.
- [00:26:53.940]So you have the quality of the answer to the question,
- [00:26:57.570]but you also have the qualities
- [00:26:59.580]of how the questions answered, if that makes sense.
- [00:27:02.790]And that's a higher,
- [00:27:06.660]that's a higher level of like analysis
- [00:27:09.780]keeping in mind that like
- [00:27:11.160]language analysis is the whole bedrock of
- [00:27:15.270]how I operate as a researcher.
- [00:27:16.620]So that comes a little bit more naturally to me, I think.
- [00:27:19.230]Yeah.
- [00:27:20.190]But thinking about,
- [00:27:23.160]I always look at how faculty
- [00:27:24.270]are interacting with each other.
- [00:27:26.340]I always look at, like I said,
- [00:27:28.560]the slippage between how things are answered.
- [00:27:32.580]I look at how faculty either build or fail to build
- [00:27:37.050]on each other's responses.
- [00:27:38.730]I look at how they include,
- [00:27:39.810]if there's a student on the committee,
- [00:27:42.030]how they include that student in that process.
- [00:27:46.260]And I think those are things
- [00:27:48.450]that can give you some indicators into
- [00:27:51.480]like, "This is what we say we do,
- [00:27:53.340]but this is how we actually do."
- [00:27:55.890]Yeah.
- [00:27:56.723]Which is interesting.
- [00:27:57.556]And I think that what's important in this context
- [00:28:00.810]is again, that idea of debriefing with somebody else,
- [00:28:03.360]whether it's a mentor, another graduate student,
- [00:28:05.280]whoever you've got around you who's being supportive
- [00:28:08.010]and really is willing to listen.
- [00:28:10.020]That's where that debriefing goes.
- [00:28:11.790]Because I'll be honest, I have an enormous positive bias.
- [00:28:17.250]I'm always happy about the people I meet.
- [00:28:18.960]You really are.
- [00:28:19.793]I'm always excited about what they can do.
- [00:28:21.990]We just had a series of interviews and I'm like,
- [00:28:23.887]"I want all of you."
- [00:28:25.380]And I need to ask you.
- [00:28:27.104]And then he meets me and I'm like.
- [00:28:29.018](laughing)
- [00:28:30.690]And so I actually need a time to step away
- [00:28:35.940]and debrief about them and think about,
- [00:28:37.770]okay, so I know I'm generally positive
- [00:28:40.020]and I can see how we can support them
- [00:28:42.060]and how can they be successful.
- [00:28:43.410]But out of those 3 or 4
- [00:28:46.200]or 12 in the case of a phone interview,
- [00:28:48.480]which are the ones who rise to the top
- [00:28:50.520]and would actually be able to be successful
- [00:28:52.470]without us investing an enormous amount of effort
- [00:28:55.500]into making them so.
- [00:28:56.460]And I really do believe we can help almost everybody
- [00:28:59.040]and who would be the best fit for who we are.
- [00:29:02.340]Right, so I have to kind of debrief back to
- [00:29:04.770]who are we and what would be the best fit for us
- [00:29:08.100]with our culture.
- [00:29:09.660]And I've learned throughout the years
- [00:29:11.640]that I've got to actually physically stop and debrief.
- [00:29:14.610]Otherwise I'm like, let's have them all,
- [00:29:17.280]which is not helpful to them or to us, right.
- [00:29:19.830]And can set people for not being successful.
- [00:29:21.960]Not necessarily because they're not gonna be good scholars,
- [00:29:24.360]but because we are the wrong place for them.
- [00:29:26.370]Right.
- [00:29:27.291]And there are institutions that are very, very different.
- [00:29:28.920]And that's part of the thinking.
- [00:29:30.480]So when you are on the other side and you're thinking,
- [00:29:32.707]"Do I want to go there?
- [00:29:33.690]I mean there's that drive of, "I need to get a job
- [00:29:36.330]because I've gotta feed my kids, or my cats,
- [00:29:39.480]or my dogs, or myself." Right.
- [00:29:42.030]But there's the,
- [00:29:43.207]"Can I be successful in this kind of place?"
- [00:29:45.750]It doesn't mean it's a bad place necessarily.
- [00:29:47.430]It's just not the best fit for you.
- [00:29:50.100]So that's also on the table.
- [00:29:52.740]Right, and I think that's important
- [00:29:54.480]when thinking about the job market writ large is
- [00:29:59.370]it's kind of this like secret like,
- [00:30:01.687]"Oh who's going to this job?" Like everyone actually knows.
- [00:30:05.220]Yeah.
- [00:30:06.053]Right, it's like just approaching it that way.
- [00:30:07.200]And I was thinking about debriefs.
- [00:30:09.060]One of my friends and I, we interviewed for the same jobs.
- [00:30:12.270]And so.
- [00:30:13.560]That's great.
- [00:30:14.393]After every phone interview we'd be like,
- [00:30:16.087]"Oh my gosh, what was that question?
- [00:30:18.900]Like why did that happen?
- [00:30:21.930]Neither of us can go there." Right?
- [00:30:24.000]So like, or "Oh my gosh, that was amazing.
- [00:30:26.880]I really loved how they responded to that.
- [00:30:28.290]How did they respond to you when, da, da, da?"
- [00:30:30.570]So it's nice to have someone to compare notes with.
- [00:30:33.510]But that also feels kind of antithetical 'cause
- [00:30:38.010]here's why, 'cause the job market.
- [00:30:41.460]Is finite.
- [00:30:42.293]Is finite and so therefore it's like competitive.
- [00:30:45.787]"I can't let you know! I can't!"
- [00:30:47.700]No.
- [00:30:48.533]No, no.
- [00:30:50.760]Like it's going, like conversation is helpful, right?
- [00:30:55.590]And I do wanna say the teacher education,
- [00:30:59.730]and education in general, higher education market,
- [00:31:03.660]is considerably, I don't want to say less competitive,
- [00:31:08.520]but there are less candidates for each job
- [00:31:10.800]than many other realms
- [00:31:13.560]where there are 400, 500 candidates for each job.
- [00:31:17.910]For us, at least at where I've been,
- [00:31:23.040]there are 30 or less for each job.
- [00:31:27.450]There are actually relevant candidates.
- [00:31:29.340]There might be more files, but most of them are not.
- [00:31:32.809]If it's over 30 there there's a good number of them
- [00:31:36.240]that are not a good fit or not even an approximate fit
- [00:31:39.510]to the job.
- [00:31:40.530]Whereas for example, in history in other realms,
- [00:31:44.100]there are often hundreds of applicants.
- [00:31:46.440]So your odds are pretty good in this job market.
- [00:31:49.020]And that's why you can be and should be more selective.
- [00:31:51.690]And we've had this conversation before
- [00:31:53.250]and I'm gonna throw this in here,
- [00:31:55.080]that in this job market, there's actually a decline
- [00:31:57.840]in the number of doctoral students
- [00:32:00.120]that are going out into the world.
- [00:32:01.410]That's been going on for the past five, six years.
- [00:32:03.840]Maybe some of it is connected to the pandemic,
- [00:32:05.820]but I'm not sure.
- [00:32:06.990]But it's definitely
- [00:32:10.230]it's definitely not a market that's saturated.
- [00:32:13.020]So you're not as much in competition I think.
- [00:32:15.750]And the amount of learning and becoming wiser
- [00:32:18.900]out of that debrief outweighs any competitive advantage
- [00:32:22.800]you would have to keeping your questions to yourself
- [00:32:25.260]or whatever it is that
- [00:32:27.210]you can imagine.
- [00:32:28.410]So we've been talking about,
- [00:32:30.120]you've got this Zoom or phone interview
- [00:32:32.670]and we hope that this general kind of talk has been helpful
- [00:32:37.230]in making that process a little bit more transparent.
- [00:32:39.690]We'll have a list of some general questions
- [00:32:42.527]'cause we talked about some of them in the program notes.
- [00:32:47.760]But as we're rolling on out,
- [00:32:50.220]what's your like final piece of advice
- [00:32:52.440]for people moving into a Zoom or phone interview?
- [00:32:58.110]Well the balance, don't freak out,
- [00:33:01.560]especially the first few times.
- [00:33:03.090]You'll be fine if you are prepared.
- [00:33:05.670]So you've got to be prepared. And that's the balance.
- [00:33:09.090]Don't freak out, but also don't be blase about it.
- [00:33:11.760]The fact that you've sent your materials
- [00:33:13.800]does not mean that you're ready for that interview
- [00:33:16.230]and you really, your materials are great,
- [00:33:19.500]but you've really got to do a most up to date,
- [00:33:23.730]remind yourself who the department is
- [00:33:25.650]and do all of your research so you're not coming in blind.
- [00:33:28.380]Because the committee will immediately know
- [00:33:30.660]if you have not bothered to find out
- [00:33:32.610]anything about the institution
- [00:33:33.990]and you don't know who is around the table
- [00:33:36.750]and what are they interested in,
- [00:33:39.240]and what the institution is doing.
- [00:33:42.030]That sends a very clear message.
- [00:33:43.290]I'm not that interested, right?
- [00:33:44.730]Going back to dating.
- [00:33:45.990]It's like you want to know something about that person,
- [00:33:48.390]but you don't want to get to the point
- [00:33:51.450]where you are actually wearing yourself down.
- [00:33:53.910]That's the balance.
- [00:33:55.560]And I think if I were to leave all you
- [00:33:57.480]with one piece advice is,
- [00:34:00.300]you are the best person for that job.
- [00:34:03.120]Yes.
- [00:34:03.953]If you don't believe that, why did you apply? Right?
- [00:34:07.890]And I find that when I work with grad students,
- [00:34:11.940]that's the thing.
- [00:34:13.320]That's why full on, camera, eyes, right here,
- [00:34:16.350]you are the best person for that job
- [00:34:18.810]because that's the thing I have to coach around the most.
- [00:34:21.660]Yes.
- [00:34:22.493]I find that, "Oh, I just want them to have
- [00:34:24.810]the person who's gonna be best for that job."
- [00:34:26.460]That's you.
- [00:34:28.200]At least when you are talking to them, it has to be you
- [00:34:31.050]because you're not getting that job if it's not you.
- [00:34:33.240]Right.
- [00:34:34.073]So if you're, so just keep that mindset like in that moment,
- [00:34:37.890]you are the Beyonce for that job, right?
- [00:34:41.451]Damn right.
- [00:34:42.284]So keep in mind when you have this initial interview
- [00:34:47.700]that you wanna be somewhat prepared,
- [00:34:50.160]but you wanna be flexible
- [00:34:51.780]in your ability to answer those questions.
- [00:34:53.640]You wanna make sure you're collecting some information
- [00:34:55.710]about who that faculty is
- [00:34:57.447]and you always wanna be foregrounding
- [00:35:00.690]the materials that you've already submitted.
- [00:35:02.310]But building on that story
- [00:35:04.290]to think about why you're the best person for that position.
- [00:35:10.590]I think we're good.
- [00:35:11.850]We are good.
- [00:35:12.683]That feels like a lot.
- [00:35:14.580]It was a lot.
- [00:35:15.540]But it's an important step because
- [00:35:17.850]this is where we are narrowing down from 12,
- [00:35:20.700]10 or 12 to 3.
- [00:35:22.920]This is one of those thresholds where you actually have
- [00:35:26.580]an input, a real input on what's being discussed
- [00:35:30.180]with your personality, with your knowledge,
- [00:35:32.220]with everything else.
- [00:35:33.060]Up until that point, it's all paper, it's all materials
- [00:35:36.750]and they have to speak for you better or worse.
- [00:35:38.790]But here it's your voice.
- [00:35:40.290]You get to speak for you.
- [00:35:41.123]You get to speak for you.
- [00:35:42.330]You can fix things, you can make things better,
- [00:35:45.540]or not so good.
- [00:35:47.010]So it's kind of like, may the odds be ever in your favor.
- [00:35:50.070]But hopefully with some of these tips and tricks,
- [00:35:52.590]you can shift some those odds.
- [00:35:54.720]And that's "Not That Kind of Doctor" for this time.
- [00:35:59.790]We gotta work on that.
- [00:36:01.007](bright music)
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