Phone interview #4 went well despite having a rough start. My interview was scheduled for 11 am, but at 11.10 I was still twiddling my thumbs. Then the interviewer sent me a snippy email about “finishing my phone conversation so we could start our scheduled interview.” I emailed them back, said that I wasn’t on the phone and that it wasn’t ringing, and that I was happy to call them in case something was wrong with my phone. We started the interview when I called 3 minutes later, and after we both apologized to the other for the problem (me for an unknown phone problem, them for being snippy in email), we proceeded with the interview. As it turns out, my university’s phone system was malfunctioning yesterday morning, but nobody bothered to tell anybody about it! The only people who really knew were my next-door office neighbor and I, as we were oth expecting phone interviews at 11.
The interview itself seemed good. I had a good rapport with the interviewer, who is particularly interested in my research because they do something similar at another point in development. The questions were good, and permitted me to show my strengths. I know that overall I’m a good fit for the position, and the questions reflected this. Only one threw me for a loop: “What are your general values in life?” Huh? This is not a typical question for a state-funded university, but thankfully, there is no wrong answer per se! The only sticking point for me is that they are interviewing 12-15 people by phone before inviting 3-4 to campus for interviews before Thanksgiving. Like all the other interviews, there’s no way to know how I rank in this short stack. I’ll know more in about 10 days, and will naturally post an update!
Later in the day I received word from the 2nd institution I’d phone interviewed with about two weeks ago. They’ve asked me to do a virtual job talk sometime before Thanksgiving. This will be a half-hour presentation of my research to faculty and grad students, conducted like an internet chat on Skype or MS instant messenger. I am going to do it but am not very enthusiastic at this point. Hubby and I used to chat this way over MS-IM and the connection was generally *awful*. There would be major lags in sound and in the picture, and using picture makes the sound lags worse. I have a feeling that these lags could cause big problems during a virtual job talk. I’m also a bit put off by this; the school is using it as an extra screening tool in order to decide who to invite for on-campus interviews (read: to save money on the search). They hadn’t mentioned it until now because they didn’t know it was an option until recently. My supervisor suspects it’s the “wave of the future” for the job market, because searches are so expensive to conduct. I guess I’ll have to start mounting enthusiasm for it, and start working on my job talk in the meantime!
My next-door office neighbor and I were commiserating yesterday about how tired we are by this point. He was so tired after yesterday’s phone interview (with my #3 phone interview department, for the same position; incidentally, he also has expertise in “Northern Italian cuisine,” does not cook on a stove, and has never taught a class on cuisine) that he wanted to go home and watch tv for the rest of the day! Unfortunately this was not an option for either of us. I’m totally whipped, and can’t motivate myself to do much of anything at this point, despite needing to do lots of stuff to keep on pace. I suspect that later this week I will take a day *totally off* in order to recuperate from these last two intense months.
