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Mathew
Shapiro (Economics)
Let me talk a little more concretely about the process of
going through the interview and the job talk. I orient this
toward getting an assistant professorship at a major research
university. That’s mainly what I know. The way we do
it in Economics is students send out applications in response
mainly to advertisements and sometimes in response to invitations,
and then we have a very organized annual meeting. For example,
my department will probably interview 40 people in the meetings
in New Orleans and these are half-hour meetings in a hotel
room scheduled back-to-back. And there will be half a dozen
faculty members there. Preferably from the field of the specialty
of the candidate but not necessarily because it depends who
goes to the meetings and whether they have other activities.
So, I want to talk about what – I imagine this is how
it goes in lots of fields and phone interviews can also be
conducted like this – so how do you communicate with
a search committee for this assistant professorship?
The first is – I think everybody does this – we
say, “Tell us about your dissertation.” And this
is your real chance. It’s a chance to convince people
that you’re doing interesting work and that you can communicate
about it, both of which are important because we are interested
in both research and teaching. Here’s what I recommend,
assuming it’s a half-hour interview. We give people two
minutes to summarize their findings. So you should have a
two-minutes summary of basically what you did, and I agree
you should focus on what we call the job market paper, the
paper you would give at a seminar. Now, bear in mind, this
is a subcommittee of a department. They’re going to go
caucus. Some people might be interested in you; some people
might have other candidates. You are essentially giving talking
points to somebody who might want to hire you to convince
other members of the faculty that this would be at least not
the waste of a day to have a seminar and so on.
So, you really have to express what’s in your thesis.
And what has to come across? First, you have to say what your
topic is. It’s amazing that maybe 10-20% of the time
students fail to do that. Then you have to explain why is
it important. What’s the public policy, the scientific,
or whatever, importance of this? Then you have to say what
your findings are. Whether you’ve confirmed or rejected
some important conjecture. Then – and this is the hard
part, the part the students often fail – you have to
give a sense of how you accomplished these findings. So, if
you’re a historian, what was the nature of your research?
Did you go off to China and work through some archive and
bring back some interesting new data? If you are an economist,
did you develop a mathematical model or an econometric model?
If you are in the sciences, what method did you use to actually
find this? And then the literature. How does this relate to
what other people have done? One of the biggest mistakes that
graduate students make – at almost every stage, whether
they’re writing a paper, whether they’re interviewing,
or whether they’re giving a talk – is to refer too
much to the literature. If you are using the literature as
a starting point, that’s a mistake. The literature should
come in the end, and you want to think instead of saying,
“I build on the literature,” that’s a bad phrase,
you want to explain how you encompass the literature. How
you have made the literature obsolete. I mean, don’t
overdo it, but why is your paper the one that people want
to read in this literature, not why is it the nth iteration
on a well-worn topic. And grad students frequently get that
wrong.
The way you should prepare. I agree – rehearse, rehearse,
rehearse. You should go over this with your friends, your
relations, your enemies. I recommend two minutes prepared
with the real expectation that you won’t be interrupted.
Some of my colleagues will interrupt you before you start
and start explaining to you how they would have done your
dissertation. Try to short-circuit that. Then you hope you
have another 8-10 minutes to actually go on and actually say
what you did, and then you pause again. And then it can go
either one of two ways. You might get questions. People will
start asking you about your procedures, about your evidence,
about what you conclude. Some places are very active. Some
places are more passive; they’ll just want to hear more.
At that point, you can say, “Well, I have this other
paper, this other chapter,” and try to get that across.
At some point, maybe 15-17 minutes into this half-hour, the
person in charge of the search committee, often the chairman
or the recruiting chairman, will start changing the subject.
The first thing is often to ask, “What do you want to
teach?” And often it’s kind of obvious but people
want to know what you have to say. And, what’s the right
answer there. Well, you typically start with the grad courses
and work your way down. You say, “Of course, I could
teach…” whatever the appropriate graduate course
given your specialization. The right answer to this is not,
“Oh, I’d love to teach a topics course on the field
of my dissertation.” That you hear about and a third
of the time and it shows that people just aren’t aware
of what the departments need and that such courses aren’t
offered, and it's sort of narcissistic if they can’t
imagine teaching anything other than what they’re working
on. But if it’s a core, first-year required course or
maybe an advanced field course and then presumably you could
say, of course, the allied undergraduate course and then you
tend to broaden out as you go down. Or you can teach a wider
range of things. If you are in English, presumably everyone
can teach freshman composition. And then you want to give
people an idea of how you would do it. We often ask –
I’m in macroeconomics, “OK, you’re teaching
first-year macroeconomics for Ph.D. students, what would you
do?” and what I want there is not a whole syllabus or
the textbook necessarily but sort of the six major topics
that you would take and the order you would take them in any
sort of devices you would use to get it across.
If you are in a more teaching oriented job, you should probably
have in mind some interesting advanced undergraduate courses
that you might teach. That could be related to your specialization,
it could be related to some interesting thing going on. If
you’re in biology, you might say, “OK, I’d
like to teach a course in the human genome.” Or in my
field you might say, “Let’s teach a course on social
security reform.” You could bring in lots of methodological
issues from many areas that would be topical. So, show that
you are sort of sensitive to this notion that students are
customers and departments are marketing courses to them and
we want to teach them but also we have to attract students.
At some point, either before or after this, you’ll be
asked about your future work. This will also come up more
in these half-hour interviews that you’ll have once you
make it to campus. Here you have to have a very well-prepared
answer, and what’s the right answer? The right answer
is not some trivial extension of your dissertation, like you
haven’t really thought of anything. On the other hand,
the right answer is not some totally new topic that couldn’t
conceivably be done by someone who wrote your dissertation.
So, you want to have in mind a topic that is enough different
from your dissertation to be a distinctly post-dissertation
project but enough similar to your dissertation – either
in topic or methodology – that you could actually convincingly
do it. And you should have thought a little about this. If
it requires a data source or a new archive, say “Well,
there’s this archive in XYZ place that hasn’t been
exploited and I’m interested in doing that.” Or
if it’s going to require some different piece of equipment
– if you’re in science – you should know what
that is. Have some sort of concrete plan, think of it as the
content of your first grant application – this is what
people are asking about.
Now we’re back in the hotel room in New Orleans, people
are looking at their watches, it’s 25 after the hour.
They all want to go get a cup of coffee or use the bathroom
before the next person comes in. It’s only 9:30 in the
morning and they have to do ten more of these. Then, they
say, “Are there any questions?” It’s not unreasonable
to say, “Oh, no thank you.” But you’ve got
to know who you’re talking to. And what the plausible
questions are. You don’t want to ask, “Do you have
computers?” or “Do you have libraries?” or
“Do you ever have an outside speaker or do you just sit
there lonely by yourself all the time?” So if you ask
that at a major research university, that’s just a ridiculous
question. If you ask that at a place that might be a little
more peripheral, they tend to get defensive and think that
you’re asking is it as exciting to be there as it is
at the University of Michigan. So be a little cognizant of
your audience. You should have done a lot of research, and
it’s a lot easier to do in this day and age with the
web. So as soon as you get your interviews, you go on the
web page, you sort of get an idea.If possible, ask who will
be interviewing you.
Don’t go so far…some people say, “Oh, Professor
Shapiro, I’ve just read your recent working paper…”
That’s a bit much unless it happens to be genuinely related
to your topic, but don’t gratuitously ferret out the
working paper of your interviewers. Typically, schools won’t
be able to tell you who’s interviewing you because it’s
a big logistical nightmare to get 6 faculty members in some
distant city into the right room at the right time, and that’s
sort of worked out after the interview schedule. But have
some idea. Know who’s in the field, in your field. If
you’re in Humanities, they probably don’t have someone
in your field. Humanities tend to have very narrow searches
and very narrowly defined slots. And the reason they’re
trying to hire you is not so you can hang out with some great
person in your field, but because you’re filling a need
for them, you should know that. Sometimes there are reasonable
questions to ask, questions that can do two things. One, give
you some information and two, convey some interest. So, if
there is an interdisciplinary hint to the program, you can
ask about that, and ask about links with other units or even
possibly other schools. If you happen to know that there’s
some specialized activity, say you have an international angle
and there are area centers – such as we have at Michigan
– you might ask, “Oh, does the department do a lot
with the area centers?” Or if you are in a science that
has a biomedical flavor, you might ask, “What are the
links with the medical school?” These are sort of questions
which actually might convey some information and show some
interest without treading on people’s toes, but often
it’s easiest and best just to get out of there.
So, what are some do’s and don’t’s? Explain
what you’ve accomplished and how, how you got this answer,
give people a sense of that. Explain what you can do for the
school. You’re the supply curve they’re the demand
curve, we’re looking for an intersection so try to figure
out what you can do for them. Many people have several subspecialties
or several alternative undergraduate courses that you might
teach. Try to figure out in which they might be interested,
and mention that you could teach that....(tape turned) People
are very blasé and it’s kind of surprising. If
you can’t get excited – I don’t mean too excited
– but if you can’t convey some excitement, no one
is going to be excited about your research.
Then there is often a question of what tone to take. You’re
used to talking to your advisor, and you’ve been a student
all your life. So, how should you address people? And you
are a future colleague, so you don’t want to quite talk
to them like you’re a student. On the other hand, you
don’t want to quite presume that you are going to be
in the faculty lounge in six months. You have to strike a
balance. Give the people talking to you some sense that you’d
be an interesting person to interact with. Don’t –
I’m talking now about the interview – don’t
ask about things like salary. Don’t ask about teaching
load. If you are going to get the position, these things are
going to come up later. So, that’s at the hotel interview,
or it might be conducted on the phone or it might be on some
ad hoc basis.
Then on the basis of that you might get a fly-out or a campus
visit, and these are typically a day long. Again, you have
to practice your presentation. You should ask when you get
invited what the structure of the visit is going to be. So,
find out if there are going to be undergraduates lurking around.
And find out how long your job talk is. Our job talks run
1 hour and 20 minutes and you don’t want to go over because
people are running off to class and having people dribble
out is very bad. It’s very impressive for it to be a
minute to 1:00, the person concludes, everyone looks at the
clock and leaves. So, it’s very important to time it,
and you might have very different presentations for different
places.
And again, know your audience. Are there going to be students
there? But even if there aren’t students there, this
is not like a research seminar because it’s going to
be much more widely attended by non-specialists even at the
professorial ranks and they’re going to want to be communicated
with. But they’re also going to be looking over to their
colleagues who are the specialists to see if there is some
glimmer of real progress in this. It’s very, very difficult
to get across something complicated that really can only be
fully appreciated by a specialist but that other people can
understand. And probably the way to address this is structuring
your talk. So, first 20 minutes have it be pretty general.
Although again, don’t get into overview of the literature
or vague generalities. It should be accessible to the generalist
but quite specific. And then you can sort of pause and say,
okay, I’m going to get more into it in terms of the details.
We’ve been over individual meetings; I don’t have
to talk about that. There, again, I think showing some interest
in what people are doing. Expect a lot of questions about
future research and so on.
Now I have some of what
I call miscellaneous issues. One of the biggest ones that
students confront and it is an increasing problem on both
sides of the market is the issue of spouses or POSSLQs - persons
of opposite sex sharing living quarters, to use the census
phrase. This question I deal with as placement officer. If
you have a spousal constraint, how should you deal with this?
What I recommend is that at the application stage, just be
totally quiet about it. You should apply broadly. You don’t
know where the opportunities for your spouse are going to
be. You don’t really know that much about the labor markets
in these places. Of course, if they’re places that you
think might work out well, apply there, but just don’t
mention it. You should be frank with your advisor, so that
the advisor might be able to drop hints in ways that are less
compromising to you. You don’t want to sort of announce
to the world, “Well, I can’t come to your school
because my spouse can’t get a position anywhere within
300 miles of you.”
It’s actually illegal – a violation of federal
law – for someone to ask you whether you are married
or personal questions like that. Frequently, you do get asked
that, even at an interview. Now, often it’s sort of an
ill-advised effort just to be friendly. Some people just say,
“Oh, do you have kids? Are you married?” blah, blah,
blah. I would just give a straight-forward answer. If you
are asked about whether you’re doing a joint search say,
“Well, we’re actually searching for our best jobs
and we hope to work it out, but we’re not constraining
at this point.”
At some point down the road, it turns around, and this is
more at the campus visit. One, it’s definitely going
to come up there, just because you can’t go out to lunch
and dinner with people and it not come up. And, two, if you’ve
had a fly-out, you’re pretty high up on the list. It’s
between one-to-one to one-to-four, I’d say, depending
on how the school runs it, but you’re a strong candidate.
So, they’re going to begin to be thinking about how can
we attract the person. And this is a big concern for hiring
departments – people being turned down because of the
spouse. And at this point, it might be advantageous to discuss
it because remember the student is always worried, “Oh,
I’m going to get turned down,” but schools don’t
like being turned down either. It’s no fun to search
and search and search; you actually want to hire occasionally.
And schools will make efforts on behalf of spouses. Or they
might be more inclined to offer you a job if they think well
this is a person who might really want to come here because
the spouse will potentially get something. So at that point,
it gets on the table and it can be positive and you just have
to sort of have an ear to it.
On dress…right, some of our students go to work for
banks and you’ve got to dress like a banker. But, faculty
members are kind of feeble-minded especially when they get
on search committees, and we can only remember a few things.
And what you don’t want them to remember is how you dressed.
So, I remember interviewing people with white socks and fishnet
stockings, and that used up my limited storage capacity. So,
if you don’t have a suit, you’re going to need one
and this would be a good time to buy one.
Just a few other logistical things. Typically you’ll
get reimbursed – but with a horrendous lag – for
your fly-out, and often the fly-out will be booked at the
last minute or be a complicated itinerary so it might be a
$1000 air ticket plus a rental car so if you don’t have
credit cards with ample limits, you should get some. This
is a potential problem. Do not check your luggage. When I
was on the job market, I was flying from Boston to San Francisco.
A lot of people switched in St. Louis; they had an ice storm,
and a lot of my fellow Ph.D. students were running around
in tennis shoes at their interviews because their luggage
was just gone for days.
At the convention or at fly-outs, try to schedule a little
down time. This is exhausting work. So if you are in to exercise,
bring your running shoes or your swimsuit and try to get in
a little early so you’re rested and if you like exercise,
if you like eating out, movies or so on. Try to build a little
slack into your schedule. Often I think interviews that fail
are because students are just exhausted, and don’t let
that happen to you.
Sonya Rose
Can I just add a couple things that I thought about as you
were talking? One of them has to do with the campus interview
and the job talk. The question period. I know that in both
Sociology and History that the question period is very important.
Now, how can you practice? I would just make your friends
ask you questions but basically what people are looking for
is a sense of how potential faculty members would relate to
students. And I have seen people really screw up their interviews
by brushing aside, not answering a question, brushing them
aside, being condescending. You’re not going to do that,
but my advice would be to take every question seriously even
if it’s stupid. Don’t let anybody think you think
it’s stupid. Answer it in the most direct and sophisticated
way you can. This is a skill that you need to learn, and I’ll
just say that it is important.
Matthew Shapiro
Could I add something there? I’ve worked in the government
and for high government officials you prepare “talking
points.” You know your research better than anyone so
you should know what all the questions are so you should write
the questions out ahead of time and write out the answers.
Occasionally, someone will say something that actually might
be potentially devastating – or it might seem devastating
– and it is permissible to sort of acknowledge the question
and say, “Well, I’ll have to think about that,”
but you can’t say that too often. Maybe one of those
per talk. But if necessary, trot it out. There’s a very
famous economist who every time he got a question would say,
“That’s a good question,” and he wrote it down
and then he went on. But you can’t do that.
Sonya Rose
One more thing. Here’s an experience I heard via the
grapevine about one of my former students. At the conference
interview, be very, very careful that you know that they only
have half an hour. And I think the brevity is really important.
And when they say, “Do you have any questions,”
think about something smart to ask. The nature of the student
body or the relationship between departments. Ask one question.
Don’t ask, “Are there any problems in your department
that you want to talk about?” Don’t ask about how
much research funds there are at that point. You don’t
want to ask how much are you going to pay me if I come there?
That’s over the top, but you don’t want to ask questions
like that. The one instance I heard about the person blew
the interview because he had asked too many questions and
kept the other people who were waiting in the hallway waiting
for 20 minutes, and that was not good.
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