Spring is interview season for aspiring presidents, provosts, and deans. It's when search consultants spend a lot of time sitting in meeting rooms at airport hotels watching candidates engage with hiring committees in the ritual dance of the preliminary interview. Even after 15 years of that, the author is constantly surprised by the approaches…

As both a serial search-committee member and an occasional job seeker, the author has observed that one of the most awkward parts of a standard academic interview often comes at the end, when the committee chair asks the candidate if he or she has any questions. During an interview, the questions candidates ask may be as important as those they…

When Brad R. Simpson visited the University of Connecticut for a job interview in February, he was struck by a vibe that he finds increasingly rare on college campuses. People, he says, were optimistic. At a time when he encounters many demoralized professors, as campuses across the nation slash budgets and freeze hiring, the University of…

It's the night before one of Javier Jimenez's big job interviews at the Modern Language Association (MLA) meeting. The 35-year-old graduate student, who is scheduled to earn his Ph.D. in comparative literature this spring from the University of California at Berkeley, is trying to ward off anxiety and abdominal pains. The mystique of the MLA, the…

Showing that one really "wants" the job entails more than just really wanting the job. An interview is part Broadway casting call, part intellectual dating game, part personality test, and part, well, job interview. When there are 300 applicants for a position, many of them will "fit" the required (and even the preferred) skills listed in the job…

This article reports that a five-year stretch of steady growth in the job market for academic historians is over. The number of job advertisements colleges have posted with the American Historical Association so far this academic year is down 15 percent from last year--the first decline since a slump that occurred in 2001-2002 and 2002-2003. The…

This article is for all those bright-eyed, idealistic job seekers who will be having their interview, totally oblivious to the interviewer's cynicism. The author is offering candidates an opportunity to stand out from the crowd, not based on anything they do but on what they "shouldn't do." In this article, the author offers his list of don'ts for…

An airport interview is an initial interview for a senior administrative position conducted at an airport hotel not too far from the campus in question. Meeting at an airport enables a search committee to interview a large number of candidates in a short period of time with a degree of confidentiality. At the conclusion of the airport interviews,…

Humor is a powerful tool. It can disarm an adversary. It can leaven the purposefully self-aggrandizing nature of a job interview. Perhaps most important, it can serve as a window to personality in the same way that a resume is a window to experience. In this article, the author emphasizes the value of having a sense of humor. He emphasizes that it…

In this article, the author describes his and a colleague's experience of selecting and interviewing candidates for a tenure-track faculty position. He relates how they thought that they had selected 18 excellent candidates until they met them for interview. The author found that the majority of those they interviewed knew nothing about the…

Candidates preparing for an interview at a two-year college in the US must keep in mind that their chances of getting the job depend more on their ability to speak the language of community colleges than on any other single factor. One of the main reasons why otherwise-viable candidates do poorly in an interview is that they do not understand…

Describes the harsh job search process for historians, exemplified by the "Pit," an interview fair held at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association. Offers insights from interviewers and interviewees on the "labyrinth"-like process for often undesirable teaching positions. (EV)

Increasingly, college career counseling centers are using the World Wide Web to provide career information, job listings, and telecommunications links for long-distance job interviews. The online listings tend to be specialized, and there is concern about accountability for them, but supporters find the greater availability of career information a…

"Chronicle of Higher Education" presents an abundant source of news and information for college and university faculty members and administrators. This March 18, 2005 issue of "Chronicle of Higher Education" includes the following articles: (1) "After a Loss, Silence?" (Silin, Jonathan G.); (2) "Is Frantz Fanon…

"Chronicle of Higher Education" presents an abundant source of news and information for college and university faculty members and administrators. This January 14, 2005 issue of "Chronicle for Higher Education" includes the following articles: (1) "Utopia College: A Distinctive Alternative" (Nemko, Marty); (2)…