Academic Job Interview

Earlier this afternoon, I had a long-awaited telephone interview for a post of French lecturer with a University abroad. Earlier attempts to communicate through Skype had, unfortunately, proved unsuccessful, so a telephone discussion was arranged instead.

It seemed to go well. There were five people on the interview board, all lecturers in French, whose profiles I had studied on the University website. The interview was conducted in both languages, French and English, alternately. The telephone line was occasionally unreliable, but for the most part, we could hear each other fairly clearly.

The questions were, in some cases, the standard ones which you would expect to be asked at most interviews for an academic post, for instance, I had the opportunity to describe in detail the type of research conducted up to now, at MA and PhD levels, and to elaborate on future research plans in the areas of French Studies and, particularly, Translation Studies. This part of the discussion was carried out through the medium of French. They also asked me to speak in English about my teaching philosophy and techniques, the type of courses I had taught in the past, and in what ways I brought original approaches to my teaching. Luckily, I had, in the recent past, prepared a Statement of Teaching Philosophy for an application to a US university so I had thoughts prepared on that philosophy, which I will now post to this blog and ask for your feedback on.

I also had the chance to talk about the type of teaching that I could conduct if successful in this application, e.g. the areas I could contribute to, including French for Business, French for Tourism, Translation Studies, Francophone North African literature, postcolonial theory and postcolonial translation theory.

I was asked how would I rank, in order of importance, the three principal academic duties of research, teaching and administration. I feel that, for a new lecturer starting out on an academic career following the completion of his or her doctorate, strong attention must be paid to meeting the teaching needs of the University and its students, preparing courses, marking, giving feedback and so on. Having said that, there should also be a sufficient block of time allocated each week to research, in order to continue to boost the researcher's profile as well as contributing to the research profile of the University, but research should not be allowed to take strong priority over, and to the detriment of, the lecturer's responsibilities to her students as a teacher, mentor and examiner. Administrative duties should probably take up the least of the lecturer's time at this beginning stage of an academic career, though obviously there are important but restricted administrative responsibilities which are directly connected to one's teaching, e.g. keeping records of marks, writing reports on exam outcomes and on individual students, taking part in exam board and course board meetings. This question was answered through English.

I was also asked, in French, about my extra-curricular activities outside of academia, so I mentioned and described in detail my interests in reading, films, and musical interests.

These were the principal topics discussed throughout the interview. Though I consider that it went well, and that I had done a fair bit of preparation for it, I must say that, if I had a choice, I think that a face-to-face interview is probably more comfortable than a phone conversation. But it is good to be stretched beyond one's comfort zones. What have other readers experienced at job interviews, and what thoughts do you have on answers to the above types of typical interview questions for academic posts?