Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Prepping for my first interview

When I interviewed for industry jobs I looked up questions and not one was asked of me. So I practiced for no reason.  For academic jobs I thought that I would hold off of looking at typical questions, then the over-careful person in me took over and I've been reading up on every question I can think of.  Questions like, "What would you bring to our department?" "Why do you want to join us?" "What classes could you teach?".  I'm worried that I'm going to put my foot in mouth, since if I claim that I can bring real-world medical device experience they could get offended (even though it's the truth since most academics in medical devices have never tried their devices in a person).  I'll probably end up saying something about how I like to collaborate on medical devices and my experience can bring new things to the table like blah blah blah...

Maybe it will be for nothing again, but I hope it works out since the first school I'm interviewing for is in my top-5. It's a decently large R1 with great core facilities and collaborations in a city I love.  My advisor has told me that the person he talked to there has said I'm the front-runner. It makes me kind of nervous. Actually, it makes me incredibly nervous. Especially since I've never been interviewed over Skype. Of course, I'll be myself, but I can't help but feel like it's going to be like my defense all over: four faculty members staring at me, judging me. Although I hope it does go like my defense. I had a really fun time, cracked some jokes, and passed with flying colors (30 second faculty deliberation). Hopefully, these faculty members are as receptive.

I'll post some time afterwards with the damage, but in the meantime, I'll be talking to myself in my office while staring at these questions. Yay.

Outright Rejections (their loss): 5/29
Phone/Skype interviews offered: 11
Phone/Skype interviews accepted: 5
1st campus visits offered: 0
1st campus visits accepted: 0
2nd campus visits offered: 0
2nd campus visits accepted: 0
Offers: 0

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