10 ways to flunk your next academic job interview

1. Do not find out anything about the organization to which you are applying. The internet is literally at your fingertips. If you cannot be bothered to look up anything about the organization that you supposedly want to join, employers will draw the appropriate conclusions. One faculty candidate came on a site visit to our university, but was surprised to learn that we taught undergraduate in addition to post-graduate classes.
2. Bad-mouth your former employers or insult the country you are in or the academic system itself. This will make it very clear to your interviewers what to expect if they hire you. There is a line between constructive criticism born out of a desire to improve the system and criticism engendered by pessimism, impotent frustration or jealousy. One faculty candidate claimed during his interview seminar that no university professor in our country does any research.
3. Refuse to share credit with your co-workers. This will again make it very clear what we can expect if we hire you. One faculty candidate claimed that he had done 80% of all the work in the papers where he was listed as the fourth or fifth among multiple authors.
4. Take advance credit for future hypothetical discoveries. In the software development world, we call this “vaporware” – software that is promised, but doesn’t yet exist. This is surprisingly common on CVs! Listing submitted papers that are still under review is one thing, but nothing demonstrates your good intentions, lofty goals and ability to separate fact from fiction as listing Nature, manuscript in preparation, among your list of publications, right? Why not go one step further and list Nobel prize, work in progress, among your Awards & Honors?
5. Address your cover letters – and have your referees address their letters of reference – To Whom It May Concern. You don’t want to let on that you care enough about this job – or that your referees care enough about you – to write a personalized letter.
6. Speak in the dullest monotone you can muster. Your objective should be to put your audience to sleep within the first few minutes of your presentation so that you can avoid any inconvenient questions.
7. Demonstrate contempt for the interviewer’s questions. Most job-seekers will not resort to open contempt, but might still betray contempt in subtle modifications of tone, facial expression, body language or by not addressing the questions.
8. Refuse to admit when you are wrong, or its flip side: betray lack of confidence in your statements. There is a line between confidence and being adamant.
9. When asked about your future plans, talk exclusively about your past work. This again is fairly common because many people don’t have any significant ideas of their own. For an academic job, employers are looking for evidence of independent thinking.
10. Think small. You don’t want to be caught displaying ambition or initiative. If you’re looking to be just another cog in the wheel, this may be acceptable in some places, but many candidates we considered lost out to others because of a failure to demonstrate initiative and think ambitiously. Your internet research or informational interview should have given you an indication of what is feasible and what you can expect in the organization. Trying too hard to please does not work. Employers want to know: Is this really the job you want?