How to Best Prepare for Job Interviews at Schools with a Primary Emphasis on Teaching

A philosopher at a ranked PhD program writes:

I and some of my colleagues have the sense that we could do a better job helping our grads apply for jobs where the emphasis lies on teaching.  I would appreciate any advice from people who have served on Search Committees seeking to fill such jobs.  In particular, what are the elements of a really stand-out dossier, and a fantastic initial APA or phone interview?

Usual commenting rules apply, though as long as you have an e-mail that confirms your identity, it is not necessary to post your full name in the comments section.  Post only once please!  Comments may take awhile to appear.

Comments

[Andrei Buckareff]

I just served on a search committee this academic year and interviewed candidates at the Eastern APA. This was my first time serving on such a committee. I have to preface my comments by noting that we did things differently than what I experienced when I was interviewed by schools that focus on teaching when I was on the market. The main difference was that we interviewed candidates for 40-50 minutes, and the interviews were conducted in a hotel suite. Most of the schools that interviewed me in the past either did phone interviews or interviewed candidates at a table in the giant interview rooms at the Eastern. Also, most such schools only interviewed me for 20-30 minutes. So what I write reflects how things are done by Marist at the Eastern APA (in particular, how they were done in December 2007).

The structure of our interviews went roughly as follows:
Step One: 15-20 minutes on research.
Step Two: 15-20 minutes on teaching.
Step Three: 5-10 minutes of us telling the candidate about the department and college.
Step Four: 5-10 minutes devoted to answering any questions from candidates.

Regarding step one, we were most interested in how well a candidate could explain his or her research to three non-specialists in the candidate's research area(s). We were most interested in candidates who could effectively summarize their projects, motivate interest in them, and engage with persons who know far less than they do about the topics they are researching. Our concerns at this point were not divorced from our concerns about teaching. If a candidate cannot communicate well and do philosophy with three professional philosophers, that is evidence that she or he will not do well with students. Since we were interviewing candidates in Early Modern, I was most interested in whether or not each candidate could tell us why we should care about what she or he is working on. Fetishism about a figure in the history of philosophy without being able to explain how understanding how that person's work can help us do philosophy today is a sign that the candidate has not thought very hard about the value of studying that figure. Again, there is concern here for having a candidate who can communicate the value of the study of the history of philosophy for us today.

Regarding step two, we typically ask candidates many standard questions about pedagogy. For instance, we ask each candidate about his or her views on the role of the instructor in the classroom. We ask candidates what courses they are interested in teaching, typically asking them to describe how they would teach Early Modern Philosophy. We also asked each candidate how he or she would teach courses in introduction to philosophy and ethics (since both courses are required at Marist and each professor typically teaches two sections of intro or ethics each semester). Here we are looking for candidates who have thought about and can clearly articulate her or his views on the role of the instructor, course goals, and how to achieve them when teaching.

Steps three and four are more for the candidate than for us. However, one can get a sense for how interested (or not) a candidate is in coming to your school.

I hope that helps. One must keep in mind that if an interview is going well, the interviewers and interviewee often get lost in conversations about the candidate's research, pedagogical issues, and whatever else comes up. This is not a bad thing. From our standpoint, it was a sign that the interview was going well.

[Ken]

I've had interviews at places where teaching is the primary responsibility and I have taught at such places. Still this is largely anecdotal and unscientific.

One thing to note is that there is a lot of self-selection in primarily teaching institutions. Graduates of highly rated departments do not often apply to small colleges or state regional universities with names like (North/South/East/West) (Kentucky/New Jersey/Nevada/ ...) University. But, faculty at institutions where teaching comes first still typically want good philosophers. They typically want intelligent colleagues who will be active in the profession, even if not “stars.” So, candidates from middle ranked departments will more likely be more numerous.

Do not be surprised or offended, if a candidate does not receive (many) questions about research. If a candidate is interviewing with a department of six or fewer faculty, there is a reasonable chance that the candidate will be the person in area X. So, that might be their philosopher of science or philosopher of mind or expert in Kant or whatever. So, in such cases, there is a good chance that the interviewers will not be up on the latest developments in your area. So, be prepared to describe your research, if asked, in a way appropriate to your audience. (At even smaller departments of three or four, do not be surprised to have on campus meetings that include non-philosophers, e.g., folks in religious studies, psychology, or English.)

Having a conference presentation or two and a paper published is probably not a bad thing. There are some who think that there is a trade off between teaching and publishing, but they are less likely to be at the initial APA conference.

Teaching undergrads has a lot more to do with having a good rapport with them than keeping up with every issue of J Phil. So, being congenial and articulate and informed and interested in teaching undergrads matters a lot. If you don't like teaching or have contempt for the students, you will be unhappy and so will they. Many times small colleges will ask for things like statements of teaching philosophy. I'm not sure what one learns from these, but maybe they are measures of a candidate's interest in a primarily teaching job. How to prepare to show one likes teaching? If one likes teaching, think about why one likes teaching, spell it out, and tell the interviewers.

There is also an interest in faculty not pushing off committee and service responsibilities on others. In the grand scheme of jobs a faculty member must perform, committee work is pretty thankless, so it is often irksome when folks do not take their fair share. The worry at primarily teaching institutions might be that one is spending too much time on research, but more likely too much time on golf, tennis, gardening, watching movies, etc. How to prepare for this? Maybe do some grad level committee work. Maybe organize an event, work on a grad journal, work on a journal staff. Maybe get involved in a conference working the registration table or “serving tea,” to use a much snubbed task mentioned on another blog. A lot of committee work is thankless drudgery that the department has to do. One can't get a job by loving the drudgery and loading up on it, but refusing to do work that is beneath one will not be popular.

So, back to the original questions, what is a good phone/APA interview? Candidates should show some understanding of what the teaching-emphasis job is like, an interest in doing it, and the ability to do it. I don't have stock questions I ask to probe for this, so I don't have stock answers or “things to say” to get through this. But, maybe having given these issues some thoughts before the interview will help.

[Andrei Buckareff]

I forgot to mention the features of a good dossier. This differs from school to school (and from person to person). I was most interested in teaching experience and evidence of productive research.

All of the candidates we interviewed had publications. All of them had experience teaching their own classes. All of them either had PhDs or had their defense date scheduled. And all of them had excellent letters.

I can say that I totally ignored self-selected comments from student evaluations. I just looked at the numbers.

Regarding CVs, I prefer CVs that put the candidates research achievements first. Also, a succinct abstract (less than 150 words) on the first page under the dissertation title is nice. Of course, this should not substitute for a more detailed abstract on the final page.

Succinct statements on research and teaching are preferable. If you have more than one page, single spaced, trim it.

The cover letter should not be more than one page.

Finally, I prefer shorter writing samples. My suggestion to candidates is that they send one writing sample that is the length of an APA colloquium paper (around 3000 words) and a longer piece (no more than 25 pages with notes and bibliography). I am more likely to read your 3000 word piece carefully than the longer piece--especially since I have to look at another 200 or more applications.

[Tim O'Keefe]

Well, this is pretty humdrum advice, not something that will make you have a stand-out dossier, but I'll give it anyway:

If you include student comments from teaching evals in your dossier (which you should), make sure that you include all student comments, both good and bad, from any class in which you include any comments. Don't cherry-pick; it just makes you look bad, as even profs you have overall bad evals will usually get a least a few student rave reviews. If the format of the evals doesn't make it obvious (e.g., if the students hand-wrote their comments and you typed them up for purposes of legibility and space), note up front that you're including all comments.

On the other hand, especially if you've been teaching/TAing for a while, I don't think it's necessary to include evals for all classes you've ever taught/assisted. SCs have limited time, and I think that e.g., numerical summaries for the past several years, plus written comments for all classes taught in the past year, would probably be just fine. You can always include a note that reviews from older classes are available upon request.

[Barry Lam]

Departments should instruct candidates that at a minimum, candidates should prepare something to say about possible courses they will teach in their AOS and AOC. Otherwise excellent candidates will seem uninterested in teaching if they seem to have not even considered what would go on a course syllabus in a class in their AOS/AOC. On top of this, it is helpful for candidates to give some explanations of why a given text/philosopher works well with students, and talk about any experiences a candidate may have concerning challenges in designing/implementing a course in their AOS/AOC (or even hypotheses about this, if you are a graduate student). These may sound like no-brainers, but you would be surprised at how much a candidate can impress a teaching institution with thoughtful responses to such questions.

[West Coast Public U Philosopher]

I was recently on a search committee at a large, public teaching-oriented university. With respect to research, I second what other commenters have said: Candidates need to be able to describe their research and its significance to philosophers outside the candidates' area of specialization. Most all the candidates we seriously considered had publications and/or presentations, but what we were really looking for was a program of research that projects well into the future and would be realistic given the other demands our university places on TT faculty. A candidate who, for instance, stated that she planned to publish two books and half a dozen articles in top ranked journals prior to tenure has unrealistic expectations about what would constitute an achievable research agenda at a university like ours.

With respect to teaching, experience matters, of course. But the candidates who leave the best impression do three things: One, they are enthusiastic enough to persuade me that they will still be interested in teaching a decade or two from now. Most every candidate we interviewed had a great deal of experience in the classroom, but I wanted to know whether their enthusiasm would last after teaching three courses (about 100 students) per quarter year after year. Second, every candidate had enough experience to be competent in the classroom. But at my university, a great deal of emphasis is put on development and improvement as a teacher. So I was looking for an indication that the candidate is mindful and reflective enough about her teaching that she'll improve over time. Evidence for this might include a candidate's level of self-awareness as a teacher (her strengths and weaknesses, e.g.), her interest in a particular aspect of pedagogy (writing, the use of technology in teaching, etc.),or her involvement in prior teaching-related professional development (workshops or seminars, etc.). Lastly, we need people who are genuinely versatile: Everyone teaches intro to philosophy, practical ethics, and critical thinking, and you will often teach in areas adjacent to your specialization (a political philosopher teaching philosophy of law, a philosopher of science teaching epistemology, etc.). Thus, in response to 'your specialization is X, but could you teach Y?' candidates need to say more than that they're willing to teach Y. They should show that they've given Y-teaching some careful thought beforehand.

[Sharon]

Perhaps this is only relevant for schools interested only in teaching, such as community colleges, but I will post it anyway as there may be some interest. First, these institutions are unlikely to be at the APA or advertise in JFP. Grad students who think community colleges might be an option for them should be using alternative means of finding out about these jobs. Here are some suggestions: the Chronicle of Higher Education, community college job registries (California has one, for instance), or, if you are looking in a particular geographical area, check the actual websites for community colleges in those areas. Second, most of the comments already posted above apply. Though community colleges are likely to be worried if the candidate looks too research-oriented, everyone wants a lively and engaged colleague and so research is appropriate to include in one's dossier. You are very unlikely to be asked about it in a job interview however. Third, we have been impressed with candidates who have had some training in teaching. A number of graduate schools now provide such training rather than just assuming that TAs will pick up how to teach from being a TA or being thrown into a classroom (that was the preferred method of training when I was in graduate school). We are particularly looking for candidates who have experience in pedagogy other than lecture and who know something about assessment techniques.

This is very community college specific and perhaps not what the original poster was thinking of but there are lots of community colleges out there and they increasingly have PhDs teaching at them.

[K J Norlock]

Kudos to the original poster for even thinking to ask how to prepare their students for the teaching-centered jobs in the market! Good on you.

Having graduated from a Big Ten which did not prepare students for this, and having then served on three search committees here at my undergraduate lib-arts college, I can safely say that many of us in the "undergraduate industry" are looking for someone who demonstrates the ability to hit the ground running. Of course experience helps here, but the preparedness indicated by multiple robust sample syllabi goes a long way to making up for possible lack of opportunities to teach. It is routine, at our interviews, to ask many questions about what goes into an applicant's course creation, what texts, what assignments -- not because we plan to control the contents of their courses, which we'd never do, but because their reflective and considered answers indicate how much they've thought about how to most effectively teach a course, survey History of Modern Philosophy, or manage to introduce Political Philosophy. Guiding your graduate students (especially those without experience designing and teaching their own courses) in syllabus creation, and urging them to include syllabi in applications to teaching colleges, will greatly help their chances that we'll interview them. Note that many colleges don't ask for such samples, but will likely welcome their arrival anyway, as long as there aren't, say, more than a dozen! One or two are good, three or four even better, especially in small departments where professors may need to wear many hats. (It's been a pleasure of mine to develop ten different courses, indicative of what applicants may ultimately have to do.)

Writing samples for the same schools should put the applicant's best foot forward whether or not they are samples of the applicant's publication(s). If the applicant is (hopefully) far along on the dissertation and finds it better than their first, wobbly publication, then by all means insert an excerpt from the diss rather than a weak publication. However, I must say that some evidence of publication and presentation is extremely good to offer, since search committees look for evidence that at the end of the tenure track, the applicant will likely have enough publications for tenure and manage to do research while teaching. (Other schools may not expect this, but mine's fairly far down on the USNWR rankings for lib.arts colleges, #87, so I assume that if we require publication, those above us surely do as well.)

Job talks at small and undergrad-only colleges are routinely attended by students as well as faculty, and applicants are well advised to take the opportunity to demonstrate interest in the students, which should be obvious but may not seem so when one desperately needs to impress the search committee members. Believe me when I say that many of us are most impressed with applicants who notice the students, engage them in question and answer, aim the talk at a level accessible to undergrads, and attempt to connect with them in personal and direct ways. This does not mean abandoning one's obscurely specialized research, but if one can't find a way to teach the obscure to students, well, then one ought not to apply to teaching-centered institutions.

Last, a caveat on the syllabus-inclusion I urge above. This should go without saying, but sadly doesn't: Advise your students to review their syllabi before sending them to teaching-centered schools, and consider removing language that indicates the teacher resents teaching or feels bitter toward all students. I feel silly even typing this, but it's true, I've reviewed sample syllabi in which teachers sound deeply angry at the bare idea that students might dare to email them or drink water in class. Rules can be stated clearly on syllabi without being poisonous.

[Becko Copenhaver]

If there is a student present at an on-site or phone interview, be sure to ask the student some questions and direct your answers in general so as to include the student.

Don't contrast teaching and research. Talk about how the two mutually support one another.

If it is a liberal arts campus and you do not come from a liberal arts background, educate yourself about what the liberal arts are and have something sophisticated to say about the value of a liberal arts education.

And to reiterate what has already been said: if your answers about whether and to what degree you value teaching do not actually reflect your goals, you may still get a job but you will be miserable.

[Inside the Philosophy Factory]

I've been at a Community College for 5 years and have been on three search committees. Here are a few hints and tips...

1) In your cover letter and on your CV, be precise about the amount of teaching you've done. We don't like to guess about your experience teaching and we have enough candidates with clear letters and CVs that we don't have to.

2) When you get to the interview, understand that we won't hire someone who seems to be condescending to us, so at least act interested in doing the job. You'd be shocked at how many candidates we interviewed acted as if they were doing us a favor. I'm sure they were shocked not to be hired.

3) Be careful to watch your time limits in your teaching demonstration and don't leave us feeling as if we've been lectured AT. Rather, the teaching trend in community colleges is 'active learning' (what that means, I'm less and less sure of every day) but --- what it doesn't mean is that you shower us with your brilliance and we sit passively to recieve it.

4) As questions you can't find on our website.

5) Have a plan for how you are going to handle a 5/5 load with up to 250 students. How would you modify your ethics section to teach 50 students of various levels of preparation? How would you teach a logic section of 40 students, some of whom are very intelligent and others of whom are just barely literate? Don't let the 5/5, 250 student load shock you, or at least don't let it show.

6) Understand that diversity is more than a class with different skin tones. Understand that 'differing levels of preparation' goes well beyond some of the students not doing the assigned reading.

[tired of blogs]

Teaching colleges come in a variety of flavors. I would definitely tailor your file for each type at least. I've served on search committees at a top-half SLAC for a while now, and it's generally a positive if applicants have something enlightening to say about their interest in and understanding of what liberal arts colleges tend to mean by the liberal arts. We do often tend to suppose that applicants who attended similar schools have ideas about this even if unstated, but not having attended a SLAC is no bar to employment (I myself went to a massive state university for undergrad and had only a postdoc at another one to show before I got a tenure-track position here). Small places are also likely to require you to teach a wider range of classes than you're likely to have taught in grad school, so it's helpful to stress anything that would prepare you do that. I think that the cover letter can be important; any trained monkey can write a statement of teaching philosophy that hits the basics, so make sure it's clear that you really are interested in teaching -- and a particular kind of teaching -- by committing yourself to it in your cover letter (not that you should send the same letter to research institutions, of course). When you're doing a teaching demonstration at a teaching-oriented place (which is highly likely), it's good to involve the students in it. Don't let any faculty in the room take over unless they're really pressing the point. But don't suppose that running an active learning classroom just means taking a seat and asking students what their reactions to the reading are. Spend a few minutes setting the context for the discussion, then demonstrate that you can get them to ask good questions and think collectively about the answers before you jump in with The Truth. Don't be afraid to ask questions to which you don't know the answer, as it will force you to be more spontaneous and involving -- and interesting.

[Timothy Hall]

A good question, this. I too came from a Leiter top-ten Ph.D. program to a liberal arts college. I could have been better prepared to get the job I did, certainly.

That teaching is very important here is obvious. Probably that’s not specific enough to be helpful, though. Some further remarks can help bring things into focus.

Here, all the bills get paid by tuition and the endowment, with some help from research grants from the sciences. The students and their families are our bread and butter, without question. So it is important to attract very good students from families with means to pay a substantial share of the asking price. It’s important to attract enough good students that the college can remain selective. It’s also important that students leave the college feeling warmly toward it. They will then be inclined to give generously later, help our present students get jobs, or otherwise be active in our alumni network.

From a departmental point of view, then, teaching is important because the college expects it. It’s important that we attract majors, and it's important that we get high course enrollments. If we don’t do those things, we will have a harder time getting leaves replaced. We might have trouble getting tenure-track lines replaced.

It’s important, too, that each person in the department carries her share of the load. If someone is just doing a passable but poor job teaching—which happily doesn’t happen here—then the rest of us would have to take up the slack. Majors would have to be attracted from other courses. Other professors’ courses would have to have higher enrollments. Other faculty would have to take on more advisees.

So, we would aim not just for good teaching in a candidate. We would try to get an excellent teacher, if we could.

What does this mean, specifically, for candidates and letter writers?

First, teaching evaluations by students are very important here. There are worries about the use of these evaluations in the professional literature, to be sure. But, for hiring purposes, these concerns are not relevant to us. It's just a fact that the evaluations are very important in our college’s evaluation process. Indeed, the evaluations are by far the most important thing in evaluating teaching. Standardized forms are given to all classes, and the forms are expected to be stored and available all throughout a professor’s junior career. The forms are looked to in detail at every evaluation. Junior faculty have trouble being reappointed, or tenured, if the course evaluations are not strong.

So, I would like evidence that a candidate is not just going to teach well, according to her colleagues. I would like evidence she is going to receive good evaluations from students.

The more specific and the more comprehensive you can be, the better. A few chosen evaluations won’t carry much weight with me. In such a case, I’d assume that the comprehensive picture isn’t that impressive. Be as specific as possible about the candidate’s numerical averages. Describe as long a period of time as is practical. Better still would be a copy of the numerical summaries of the evaluations over time. Even better would be summaries that included totals of the various detailed questions on a standard form. The usual remarks about the usefulness of comparisons apply. How do the averages compare to other graduate assistants, or to other visiting professors?

Still, information beyond the evaluations is important, too. If a candidate has been especially helpful mentoring students, that’s good to know. If she made a special effort to convince a promising student to apply to a top law school, and the student got in, mention that. If the candidate has students keep in touch with her after courses are over, that is also very helpful to know. Part of the point of the small liberal arts college is the opportunity for precisely this sort of rapport, after all.

Enrollments, too, would catch my eye. If a t.a. or a visiting professor had high enrollments, if she was the kind of person students flock to in droves, tell us. Again, be specific.

Is the candidate charismatic, in a way beyond what the evaluation totals tell us? Is she the sort of person who always has eager students around, waiting outside of her office? Tell us.

As far as teaching experience goes, I myself would not worry that a candidate has not yet taught her own lecture course. If she has a very good record as a t.a., strong evaluations, a good teaching letter, and does well on a campus visit, then I’d figure she’ll do well with her own course. In a tenure-track job we would allow a year, or maybe three semesters, to get courses developed, anyway. The important thing is that I be confident that the candidate can do it, and on her own.

Every candidate should try to come up with some good ideas for courses in the advertised areas. Likely, our department already would have some specific courses in mind to be taught by our new hire. We would be likely to ask about ideas for those courses. A candidate shouldn’t draw only on a rote list of texts or topics, even one into which a lot of thought has been put. What’s the draw of the course? Why would you want to take it? Why would we? (This is something I wish I had worked harder at in my interviews.)

Here is one place where teaching institutions will vary. Ours is just inside the USNews top 20. We get very good undergraduates. For schools around this level of selectivity, think about courses that will be challenging and intriguing to smart, well-prepared students. Worry less about motivating students to whom philosophy has never occurred as a worthwhile course of study. Worry more about impressing students who can be hard to please.

Candidates would be well-advised to think about extradepartmental strengths of the institution,and ways they might take advantage. Is there a good museum at the place? There’s a natural resource for a philosophy of art course, or a philosophy of history course, or even a political philosophy course.

Another thing. A significant part of this job entails meeting parents, the president, trustees, alumni, and other august persons. This is something that I didn’t expect before I arrived. It was head-smackingly obvious that it was important after I got here, though. So, at the risk of seeming indelicate, we really can’t afford to hire people who are too weird. We understand that few philosophers were prom king or queen, myself included, but it’s important that you can handle professional social situations like this competently. So, for candidates, if you’re really hard to deal with, or exceptionally awkward, or hostile, suppress these tendencies as much as you can. And, though you might think this would go without saying, dress for success. For letter writers, any hints that the candidate is easy to get along with will be reassuring.

A lot has been said about job talks, here and elsewhere, so I won’t say much about job talks. I will say that teaching institutions very a lot in the research expectations. Be sure you know your audience, and prepare your talk accordingly.

Here, we have high expectations for research. We’d try to get to the strongest researcher we could, probably even at some cost in teaching ability. A lot of the faculty around campus, and the overwhelming majority of our recent hires, are from top graduate programs. All of my colleagues in the philosophy department could be tenured at strong research institutions. You don’t have to do this well to be tenured here, once you’re hired. But the market being what it is, we can ask for a resume that predicts overperformance relative to our tenure standards, and we can get it. It’s hard for candidates, but good for departments.

So, for candidates and letter writers, do not talk down your research. Prepare your research file as you would for any research job.

There is an especially important point here for letter writers. Be careful with phrases like, “X is well-suited to a liberal arts environment”, or “X would flourish at a teaching campus”. In the letters I’ve seen, it’s hard to avoid the impression that these phrases are meant as code for a candidate not emphasizing research. Maybe there are schools where this kind of letter might help. These suggestions would definitely hurt tenure-track candidates at my school. At least, if you want to say that a candidate will do well in a liberal arts school, make clear you don’t mean that the candidate isn’t a very promising researcher—if you don’t mean that, anyway.

The best thing for a letter writer, I think, is just to tell us what you think about the candidate’s research, in and of itself. Let us make the decisions as to how to weigh that information in an all-things-considered assessment.

One last thing: we’re likely to have less flexibility in adjusting job requirements to candidate strengths than universities. If we need someone in ethics, say, or even more narrowly, ethical theory and political philosophy, say, chances are we really can’t hire someone outside of that area. This would be true however strong the candidate’s resume. So, if there might be some question, a bit of extra work explaining how the candidate can do exactly what we’re asking for would be worth it.

In the I’ve been involved in, the candidates have been very impressive. It’s not easy to get a job these days. It wasn’t that all long ago I was in the shoes of the applicants, and I sympathize. Good luck to all.

[cultcrit]

On student class evaluations:

- Nobody thinks 18-year-old undergrads should be on hiring committees, yet everyone wants to see student evaluation scores. The key, then, is to analyze, contextualize, and interpret the scores. Doing this for an application, I discovered chartable improvements in scores that I just thought were low, and I worked these into a narrative of professional development (and got the job).

- Even if all free-response evaluations are included, the applicant should again order them and place them in a context. I articulated goals for teaching, and then selected both positive and negative comments that were related specficially to these areas. I presented these "representative" or "sample" comments in a table, with columns for positive and negative, and rows for the relevant teaching goals. Granted, this is strategic, not scientific. But the "meaning" of a score is not cut-and-dried. For instance, numerical scores that appear low can be mitigated when juxtaposed with negative comments like "I don't like to read" and positive ones like "You challenged me to open my mind."

- Whatever you do, don't report low marks on student evaluations without comment. That says you don't care, and at a teaching institution, someone will.

Basically, treat student evaluation data like research-- make sense of it, say something about it, do something with it.

[claire Potter]

I don't know about the philosophers, but here are a few things I have noted in preliminary interviews.

1. Graduate students actually need to teach -- in an effort to get them through faster, many programs are asking students to teach less or not at all. A candidate needs to be able to talk about teaching in concrete ways, not hypothetically. Many people I interview have never taught their own course, and most give you the same platitudes about how they want to empower students. Tell me something real: for example, tell me about a class that screwed up, how your classroom blew up one day and a student accused you of being a homophobe, what a mess it was, and how you would do it differently the next time.

2. You would be surprised how many candidates show up at an interview without ever having looked at what our curriculum is, or what the requirements for the major are. You don't want to hear a student go on about a teaching field that is already well-covered -- the question is, what can you *add* to our curriculum; and you do want to hear some enthusiasm for rotating into courses that must be mounted annually. Particularly in a small department, faculty routinely teach out of their research field, and offering to do so spontaneously (as well as having figured out how the course would work) shows the kind of initiative and colleagueship you want to have in a new colleague.

3. You would be surprised at how many candidates who are at the top of their own programs, when asked whether they have any questions, want to know how our institution is going to enhance their research. That, my friends, is a question for another day -- the campus interview. When asked whether you have any questions, asking something about the actual work of the institution and where you might fit in.

4. My favorite "duh" moment in recent years was, in the course of a preliminary interview for an "X" studies job, advertised as "X" studies, I asked a candidate from a top research university how s/he would teach a course in "X" theory and methods. The candidate blinked, and said, "I haven't really thought about that." Bye-bye.

TR