I am listening to the audiobook Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. I don't think that the concept (your subconscious picks up more clues in the span of seconds than your conscious could pick up in hours of investigation) is all that new, but it is interesting to listen to in the car. I do think that the concept is relevant to some of our readers in light of the fact that the AALS recruitment conference is coming up soon. In the span of 30 minutes, interviewers will be making an assessment of candidates, and I would bet that most assessments are formed within the first minute or two and then rationalized by what happens in the next 28 minutes. That's fairly frightening to think about.
However, candidates also have to make judgments about the people that they are meeting. I know the general attitude is that candidates are being interviewed, not interviewing, but I would take the latter approach. You are also interviewing schools here, and if you leave off your consideration until you have an offer, you may have missed some clues.
I hope our experienced readers can come up with their own heuristics for candidates to use in their assessments. My mentor gave me one that I think holds true. You can tell a lot about a school by what questions they ask you. I found that I had two kinds of interviews: (1) chatty, tell-me-about-yourself interviews and (2) interviews that probed my scholarship and my research agenda. There was a range within those two groups as well. If a school emphasizes and supports scholarship, the questions will fall into Group 2. If the school does not or is split, then the questions will fall into Group 1. So, even though this may not be intuitive, you should be glad if a school grills you.
Others?
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1. Posted by David Zaring on November 3, 2005 @ 9:53 | Permalink
I don't know what to read into it, but it's always interesting to see how many of the folks on the hiring committee speak during the interview. Sometimes it's really not that many.
ps Gladwell needs to hire a reader. I listened to Blink and the "instant reactions are magic! Sometimes!" thesis and the grating voice just killed me.
2. Posted by tim zinnecker on November 3, 2005 @ 18:59 | Permalink
" ... and I would bet that most assessments are formed within the first minute or two and then rationalized by what happens in the next 28 minutes ..."
Having served on our hiring committee in past years (and again this year), I tend to agree with this statement.
If this is true, then query whether schools might be more efficient with their limited time in DC if they scheduled fifteen-minute interviews on Friday, with Saturday interviews reserved for longer "callback" interviews with Friday candidates who make the initial cut. Call it "speed interviewing," if you will. One roadblock to such an approach is that unless most schools agree to this format, it probably is unworkable. Also, waiting until Friday night to schedule the Saturday interviews may pose problems (which could be alleviated if a school and candidate could agree on a Saturday time at the end of Friday's successful 15-minute interview, rather than playing phone tag with each other during Friday's evening hours). And let's not forget that candidates find it extremely difficult (if not impossible) to be on time for back-to-back interviews at the current multi-wing facility. Being five minutes late for a 30-minute interview is one thing; being five minutes late for a 15-minute interview is quite another. Notwithstanding these (and probably other) concerns, the idea does appeal to me.
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