Some Tips about Academic Job Interviews Michael F. Schwartz Department of Computer Science, University of Washington Revision 2 - Nov. 1987 These are some tips I picked up from personal experience and from talking with other people about their experiences. They are primarily oriented towards tenure-track academic job interviews, although some of them are also relevant to interviews for research-track academic positions or industrial research lab positions. Obviously, your advisor can give you much better advice for your specific field/interview season/special circumstances, but I found the following tips useful. Choosing Places to Visit: - Make sure to go to a spectrum of places: from highly competitive/prestigious down to "sure fallback". Try to make sure that the fallbacks are actually places you would be happy accepting a job from in case none of the others make offers (although it's sometimes hard to know that you would be happy accepting a job from some places before visiting them). - Don't prejudge geographic area too much: I often found unfounded bias in my original attitude. - Interviewing serves not only to find you a job, but also to get yourself known more, and to make you some potential contacts. As Al Spector said after his own interviewing season, "...there will be few opportunities to visit many places and (1) have them pay the bills, (2) receive their undivided attention, and (3) have them intent on describing their work to you ... visit as many places as you can for which you have the time and stamina, but do not visit any places at which there is no possibility of accepting a job." I'd say somewhere between 6 and 12 places is about right. It seems that about 50% of the places where you apply will actually invite you for an interview (depending on your circumstances), and only some of these will actually make you a job offer. Plan accordingly. - Talk with people who attended or visited places you're thinking about going, and ask for their impressions. - Keep after places that you're interested in if they don't get back to you after a while. Sometimes it's just that they're disorganized and busy, and your file fell between the cracks. It helps to have contacts to check on things. Preparation: - Apply early (e.g., in early December). Also, try to interview early (February-March, or a little into April). People get burned out going to interview talks towards the end of the season, and people get busy as the school quarter/semester progresses. It's depressing to give a talk to an almost empty room. - Try to keep all your interviews within not too long of each other. That way you'll more likely get most of your offers around the same time. This isn't critical, but it will make things easier for you and it will keep you from having to "sit on" offers for too long, and thus will help the schools out too. On the other hand, don't do interviews so close together that you get burned out. - When scheduling an interview, ask the host to arrange for you to talk with some grad students in the department (see "Talking with people" below). - Talk with some advanced students in your own department to see what's currently going on in research areas outside your specialty, so you'll be able to converse at some basic level about current work with people doing research in these areas. - Think about what research you're going to work on next; you'll definitely be asked about this. The work should probably include something related to your current work, to show some continuity and dedication, but should also include other directions, to show you have broader interests than just your thesis. Showing that you have good ideas and inititiave is important. Preparing for the Interview Presentation: - I prefer typeset slides because I think they look more professional. Some people prefer to hand-draw slides (with large lettering and thick pens) so they can change them on the road (both to improve them and to change the talk as they get bored presenting it time after time). My feeling is that the typeset slides look better, and you can always hand draw some slides on the road if you need to; having some hand-drawn and some typeset slides doesn't look terrible. Bring along extra pens and blank slides for this. - Use colorful pictures and charts, etc., to keep the presentation lively. A few useful multilayer slides can help keep things interesting, but don't overdo it. - As a general rule, your talk should be general enough at the start that everyone in attendance will be able to get some notion about what your work is about and why it is important, and the talk should progress to enough technical depth that only a few people will really grasp it completely all the way to the end. - Don't have too much on your slides. The text there is to remind you to say things, rather than to list information. - Practice your "slide-projector style": don't block anyone's view, don't force the audience to tell you to focus, don't cover up parts of the slides, don't fidget around nervously, etc. Get the timing right. Be lively but not unprofessional. - Practice the presentation a couple of times in front of a critical audience before taking it on the road. - Don't get side tracked too much. If questions start taking too long, defer them until later, if possible. Maybe hint at the answer to satisfy the asker until you're ready to get to the answer. If you find you always get side tracked in the same places during the actual interview presentations, you might consider rearranging some things so that the audience will better understand where you're headed and when you'll get to various points. Advice about Burnout: - Watch what you eat: starchy, sugary foods tend to zap your alertness. Similarly with wine at dinner. Save coffee for when you really need it. - Long days are a burnout. Try to get a half hour off between the final meeting and going out to dinner to go back to the hotel. Take a shower or nap, or, if can find time, get some exercise. - Get plenty of sleep each night -- try to go to sleep extra early. Talking with People: - Try to discern what the department is looking for in a candidate. Use the information to sell yourself, as well as to store away in deciding whether you want to go to the place. Also, try to determine whether they're looking for the best applicants they can get vs. applicants in some particular area, and find out how many positions they have open this year. This will help you in determining how likely they are to make you an offer later. - Be careful what you say about other departments (especially if you're interviewing with them too). Don't put down other places. Word can get around. - The main thing to look for is people with whom you can do some good cooperative research (and whom you can bounce ideas off for your individual efforts). Ideally there should be several junior and several senior people with related research interests. Be wary if you'll depend on just one person, as he/she could leave; it could be work out ok, but just be aware of it. - There are a variety of ways people will respond when you talk with them. Some people will be genuinely interested in your work, and will want to discuss it. Some people will miss your talk and ask you to give them a summary; be prepared with 1, 5, and 10 minute synopses for them. Others will want to pick holes in your work or otherwise challenge you (e.g., by posing a problem for you to solve) to see how you'll respond. Others will be interested in your peripheral/related research interests. Many will want to tell you what they are doing. Others will have so little in common with your technical interests that it may be hard to find technical things to talk about. You should be prepared to talk with them anyway, although you might suggest some non-technical activity (e.g., a tour of the department, campus, or nearby housing). - Make sure that you at least tell some people about your thesis work, your breadth of research interests, and your future plans. - Give copies of your recent publications (and maybe your Vitae, if it has an impressive update since they last saw it) to your host. Pick up some of their technical reports and their graduate and research brochures. - Get a tour of departmental facilities. - Talk privately to some young/new faculty members. Are they happy? Optimistic about tenure (or good jobs to go to next)? Money? Time? Find out what happened to people who left the department. Does no one get tenure? (Also, see "Tenure" below). Get phone numbers/email addresses for future correspondence. These people can become good contacts in the future, even if you don't end up taking the job. - If something seems odd, figure out why, and ask questions to follow up on it. - If you find a lag in a conversation, ask the person what he/she is working on. - Ask about housing costs, livability, recreational/cultural activities, etc. You should probably save these questions for when you're out to dinner with people, since that time is usually less technical anyway. - Talk with some grad students. Are they of high quality? Are they happy, inspired, proud? Are they hurting for funding (more than usual)? Do they feel forced to work on things they aren't interested in? You might ask some of the students where they're from, to get an idea of whether the department attracts students from all over or just the locals. Also, ask the students how they like living there (if that's important to you): students are more likely than the faculty to tell you the truth about how crummy the town is, since they don't have as much vested stake in your coming to the department. - You may want to write notes about some of the people with whom you speak. It all gets to be a blur after a while. Questions to Ask of Department or Recruiting Chair: - Ask about salary and benefits. What are representative salaries for tenured faculty? If they ask how much you expect, try not to give them a number. Tell them its negotiable, etc. Get an idea from others what to expect. Is funding guaranteed during the first summer (or two) if you don't get a grant the first year or so? Is there travel/discretionary money during the first year? You won't have a grant the first year, but you may be presenting a conference paper, etc., and hence will need some money. - Is there good institutional support (e.g. college- or university- or state-run research fund/endowment)? You might save this question for the Dean if you're to see him/her. If you do see the Dean, also be prepared to answer hazy questions like "What strengths do you have to bring to our institution?" - What kind of industrial support is there? An industrial affiliates program? Ongoing contacts/projects with companies? - What kind of fringe benefits are provided by the university with respect to housing, retirement, medical benefits, etc.? While some of these questions may seem like small-change issues, if you want to you should ask. I found that this stuff isn't too high on my list of priorities, and that the differences among institutions wasn't so great, so I quit asking it after a few times. - Equipment: Will you get a workstation in your office? What about equipment you'll need for your research, such as a set of workstations for distributed systems research, or some multiprocessors for parallel computing research? What about personnel, especially systems programmers and electronic technicians? - Administrative burden: How much committee work would you be doing? Is there a lighter load for the first year? How much influence would you have into things going on in the department? - What is the teaching load? What's the release-recapture ("buy-out") policy? Do people need to buy down their teaching load just to have enough time to do research? Is it frowned upon to buy down too far? If not, there may be a class division between the grant-rich faculty and those who have to do the "grunt work". - What is the PhD/M.S. breakdown of students? Is the M.S. program a lead into the Ph.D. program, or a mill for producing industry-oriented M.S.'s? - How are students funded? Some places fund students from a common pot. This is nice for new faculty who don't have grant money to pay for RAs yet. It's a way for the more senior faculty to help the junior members get started. Some places have a large undergraduate program, guaranteeing lots of TA funding for graduate students (but also shifting alot of the department's energies away from the Ph.D. program). - When talking to the chairperson, try to get an idea for how well he/she runs the place (in terms of getting good support for people there, having good ideas and good direction, having political savvy and good contacts, etc.) This is very important. Tenure: - Ask about chances for tenure and examples of who got it recently. Maybe ask "how many papers would you say I need at review to get tenure?" (There are other considerations, of course, the most important being external letters). Maybe ask how they rate different types of publications (journal/conference, survey/original work, single/multiple author, lead/secondary author, work with full professors/peers, work with old thesis advisor, etc.) Many places don't count conference papers at all in the tenure formula, and most expect you to get your own research program under way (i.e., produce some single author papers and multiple author papers with people other than those with whom you worked in grad school). - Ask what percentage of the cases where the department decided to give someone tenure were reversed at the college and university levels. This is both an indication of the amount of autonomy and strength the department has, and of how hard it will be to get tenure. Try to determine how strong the department's rating is relative to the university's rating. Weak departments within strong universities often have alot of trouble getting their tenure recommendations approved. - There are generally 2 classes of tenure mechanisms: 1. Places that try to hire only people who look like a good bet for making tenure, and then evaluate their progress. 2. "Quota" or "6 year post-doc" method (mostly east coast/high prestige/Ivy League schools): Places that hire people for a while, rarely tenuring anyone, and keep moving in new people. Tenured faculty are usually famous people hired with tenure from other institutions. The promotion process usually involves a national or international search at the time of the promotion meeting to see if there is anyone better in the individual's particular specialization. If there is, the department is often required by the university to try to hire the best person, and if it can't get that person, it will often let the candidate under review go rather than promote him/her. Harvard and Stanford are prime examples. One good thing to do is to scan down the faculty list to see the mix of assistant vs. associate vs. full professors. 11 assistant, 1 associate, and 10 full professors could be a sign. In the case of such a department, the question for you to to ask yourself is "Is this place a good enough environment in terms of people to work with (and reputation) to warrant the fact that I'll almost surely have to leave in 5 or 6 years?" Another question to ask yourself is "Am I willing to make another career (and possibly geographical) move after this time period?" It may well be worth going to a place like this, if it suits your goals, stamina, and temperment. Follow-up: - Write letters to places you were especially interested in, thanking them for the hospitality and showing enthusiasm at the prospect of joining their department. - If a place doesn't get back to you after a while, call them and ask how things are going. Deciding Where to Go: - You should choose a place that maximizes your flexibility, i.e., where you'll do the best possible research and get the best results as fast as possible. That way you'll have the freedom to move to a different place if this one doesn't work out for you (with respect to colleagues, geographical/personal reasons, etc.). This can mean either a different academic institution or an industrial job (e.g., if you don't like to teach or academic research isn't for you). For industry, if you did good academic work, you may be able to "cash in your fame" for higher salary or more interesting/independent work. - The bottom line is thus finding good colleagues and a supportive environment (good institutional support, good help with funding, good departmental leadership, stimulating research going on, reasonable teaching and administrative loads, etc.) Try not to worry too much about the place you'll be living. You'll be so busy the first few years that it shouldn't matter too much, and you may not be there permanently anyway. On the other hand, if you find it depressing, it could affect your ability to do good work. - Look at departmental reprints to see if senior professors worked with the younger people, or only with other famous elders and connections from years back. - Look at who has passed through for seminars. Do they attract good people? - The decision between several places may be really difficult. It may seem like the most important decision of your life -- that first position out of grad school. While it is an important decision, try to have some longer term perspective about it. Think back to all the times in your life when you felt like you were making the most crucial decision of your life, and think about how there are still plenty of options for you, notwithstanding how good the decisions that you made were. The key point is that almost no decision is 100% critical. There are usually more options in the future. Negotiating: - Without being pushy, you should try to get some basic guarantees. It helps if you can make the point that one of the other places you're seriously considering has offered you something similar to what you're asking for from them. Some fairly standard items are: - 2 summers of guaranteed support (in case you don't get grants at the beginning). Make it clear that you plan to pursue your own funding sources aggressively, but that you'd like a guarantee in case they don't come through at first. - A workstation in your office. - A terminal/modem at home. - Whatever else you reasonably need to do your research. - The department will usually pay for you to move, and will often also pay for a house hunting trip. - Make sure to get the official offer letter (i.e., not just the verbal offer) before turning down any of the other places, just to make sure (a) they really have a position and won't hit a "funding crisis" (or something) at the last minute, and (b) you get the items you negotiated for in writing. After You've Accepted a Position: - Maybe write to people at places where you're not going, telling them where you're going, thanking them for their effort, saying you'd like to keep in touch, etc. This is a good way to help maintain specific contacts with some people that you'd like to keep in touch with. Maybe ask to be put on their technical report list if you're interested. - Maybe write down some thoughts about your interviewing experiences to pass on to your colleagues. - Finish your thesis before going away at all costs! If necessary, you might even see if you can start work a quarter/semester late, so you can finish your thesis before starting. You'll have plenty to do when you start work, and trying to finish your thesis at the same time is very inefficient: you'll never again have such a concentrated period of time to work on your thesis, and you'll waste lots of time getting back into gear, not to mention the antipathy you'll feel at the thought of picking the old rag back up. This can cost you valuable time -- time that you really need to spend getting research done, getting papers published, and building your external reputation. It could very well make the difference between getting tenure and not. - Start thinking about your first grant proposal and gathering references. Try to get started writing it (although you'll hopefully get some helpful direction with this from your more senior colleagues when you start work). You need to come into an academic position "with a running start," and the November NSF deadline comes up fast. - Try to find a little time to take off before starting your new position. You may not get much free time for a while.