Tips for successful interviews for entry-level faculty jobs (opinion) – Inside Higher Ed

Claire Williams Bridgwater offers advice to help you find the right workplace when you are pursuing an entry-level job.
By  Claire Williams Bridgwater
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Just landed your first interview for a faculty position? Autumn is the peak season for academic job hunting, so you still have plenty of time to get prepared. Here I offer 10 pointers for how to be successful in that entry-level faculty interview. As a senior academic who has worked at several major research universities and a private teaching university, I have been hired, promoted, tenured. I have served on numerous search committees. These pointers are intended to help you find the right workplace. Although my academic job experience is mostly in the sciences, this advice applies to other disciplines, too.
Related to that question is the matter of adjuncts. How many adjuncts has the institution hired relative to tenure-line faculty? How does it treat adjuncts? A two-tier caste system for tenure-track faculty members and adjuncts signals a privilege gap. That gap should be a red flag, because students can and do exploit adjunct faculty such that the academic institution’s ranking spirals downward over time. Some faculty members have power while others have none. Worse yet, this two-tier caste system opens the door for institutionalized bigotry.
You should consider other practical questions: How long must a new hire work to become vested for retirement? How often is a sabbatical given? These and other cultural norms can be found in the faculty handbook.
Also ask how many majors are in the degree program. What are the trends for this major over the past five or 10 years? Some majors are fading while others are soaring. Degree programs can and do fail— and they can also succeed wildly, filling your classroom beyond its seating capacity.
Related to course load and enrollment are budgets. During the interview, be sure to ask about the hiring department’s budget in general terms—how much revenue comes from teaching? How much comes from research overhead? Any endowed funds or endowed chairs in the department? What are the centers and institutes, and do any have sunset clauses?
A note of caution: while asking questions is expected, I have also seen search committees rattled by too-specific budget questions. This is uncomfortable territory, so ask gently. Save budget questions for meetings with the college dean and higher-ups.
Sidestep search committee banter about money, too. Why? Search committees do not cut the deal. Deans or department heads (or department chairs, who are not the same as department heads) are the only ones authorized for money matters. They negotiate with new hires, and they alone write the official hiring-offer letter after all interviews are completed. Only when they enter the picture do salary and start-up funding come into play.
Bonus. Here I offer one last thought: make friends during each interview, no matter how things turn out. Doing so can be as golden as getting hired. Academia is a village, and news travels fast. If all goes well in the first interview, other institutions elsewhere could hear about it and want to interview you.
Also, if this particular job is offered to someone else, don’t fret. Some candidates get multiple offers. And negotiations with a first-choice candidate can fail. For these and other reasons, that job might be yours yet. So let them call you. Don’t ask for updates.
All these pointers are aimed at helping you find the right place, where you can grow and reinvent yourself. Reinvention is what academics do. Today’s scholars rarely work on the same thing for an entire career. I, too, am a new graduate student, having just completed a master’s degree in a new field in 2021, even though my doctorate was awarded decades ago and I landed my first academic job in 1993.
Remember also that each faculty interview is a grand opportunity unto itself to peer inside what’s probably the most opaque workplace in America. Few people get the chance to compare the inner workings of different academic spaces, so learn from each one. Gather new ideas on how to persuade others and how to bloom if hired. Keep carefully detailed notes about each interview. Those notes will guide you as to which academic workplace is right for you. May you have many choices, along with the wisdom to select a workplace where you can grow into your best scholarly self.
Claire Williams Bridgwater is a research professor in residence in the Department of Environmental Science at American University.
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