Breaking into Academia: The Dread Phone Interview

Photo of a black wireless phone handset on top of a dark cherry wood phone stand against a white wall.
Negotiating Your Hire Package

I asked what library school students would like to know about and @dorevabelfiore replied, “Recommendations for preparing for an interview for an academic library job.” Breaking into academia is difficult and due to length I’m splitting the answer into two posts, this post addresses the dread phone interview.

Disclaimer:

The thoughts expressed here are my opinions and impressions based on my experiences and those of my friends, there is no such thing as a typical academic interview experience so take everything here with a grain of salt.

Phone Interview Tips:

  1. Very few people are interviewed by phone, 5-10 people seems to be the average. You got the phone interview by demonstrating how you met their requirements in your cover letter supplemented by your CV/Resume. Interviews should be taken seriously but having a good attitude and a pleasant demeanor are a huge plus when passing the phone interview stage. Yes you need to know your stuff, but you also need to sell yourself as a person people will be comfortable working with.
  2. Ask for a list of people who will be conducting the phone interview and research them ahead of time. I read CVs and skimmed documents from the institutional repository created by the people interviewing me. This is probably a overkill but it made me feel less anxious being over prepared and may be helpful to you.
  3. Read as much about the university and library as possible before the phone interview. I read the strategic plan, the library’s annual report, and everything else I could get my hands on and had time to read.
  4. Do check out what databases the university has, you won’t have time to look in depth at all of them but make sure to skim those on topics relevant to the job you are applying for.
  5. Sit down with a list of commonly asked interview questions and type out and refine your answers. This will help you synthesize your thoughts.
  6. Be prepared to be asked something totally off the wall, take a moment to think about it seriously and then give a real answer these questions are a test of how you react under pressure, i.e. what will you be like if a students asks you about something totally outside your area of expertise and you need to help them.
  7. When asked to provide a phone number make sure you are on a reliable land line for the interview. There are often problems on the other end due to all the interviewers being on speaker phone and you don’t need to aggravate the situation by being on a cell phone which I guarantee will drop out, Murphy’s Law at work.
  8. Do enunciate everything in as clear of a voice as you can, those on the speakerphone side will be better able to understand what you are saying.
  9. Since it’s often hard to hear what is being asked (sometimes I had to guess), it is good to rephrase the question as you begin to answer so that people know what you think you are answering.
  10. Have a glass of water nearby, you will probably need it, and even if you don’t it will make you feel better to have it ready.
  11. Always pause for a second before you answer (this one is hard but really helps a lot in terms of gathering your thoughts and not rambling).
  12. Don’t be afraid to say you are not familiar with something, they don’t really expect you to know everything and it’s best to just admit it if you haven’t heard of something or have heard of it but don’t know much about it.
  13. Have 2-4 questions written down for when it’s your turn to ask questions. A good question to ask is what are the next steps in the hiring process and when will they let people know if they have been invited for the in person interview. Another important question is what is the standards for review and promotion (my impression is it’s about 50/50 whether positions are professional or tenure track faculty positions.)

Other things to think about:

Remember, these people can’t see you, if you have an online profile make sure you have a picture to go with it preferably one that you feel represents you.

Ask mentors for advice on what to say and what to be careful of. The dread “What’s your worst quality question” is a good place to mention an area that you struggle with but are working on with the help of friends and/or mentors. This shows that you evaluate yourself and realize that just like everyone else you have faults. This is never comfortable but we all have our strengths and our weaknesses and I’m fortunate enough to have friends who are willing to be honest with me about what mine are and help me work on them.

Share 1-2 good or memorable things about yourself when appropriate and leave it at that, remember you still have the in person interview to let people see the whole you.

It’s easy to feel like the phone interview is all about the impression you’re making on your prospective employer but you should be forming your own impression of the library and university you might get a job offer from. How rigid is the structure? Do the people seem pleasant or judgmental? Did anything said make the university or college seem like a really great place to work, or raise a red flag? Don’t be afraid to be judgmental at this stage since you are not committed to anything it’s a good time to take stock and begin figuring out if these are people you might enjoy working with. The more you think about things at this stage the easier it will be to make a thoughtful decision when you receive an offer.

Remember:

Bee yourself! (A little bee humor!) The most important thing is to be yourself! If the people interviewing you don’t like you once they’ve seen what type of person you are then you wouldn’t enjoy working with them. You’ll be much more relaxed if you aren’t trying to go against you basic nature just to conform to someone else’s opinion of what proper behavior is for you.

What else have you done to prepare and survive the dread phone interview? Please comment below with your tips!

East Coast Adventures AKA The Road to ALA 2010

Image with fireworks in the background reading DC 2010 ALA Annual Conference and Exhibition June 24-29 2010.
ALA 2010

Greetings and salutations!

I hope that everyone reading this is doing well, and that my fellow attendees all made it home without incident.

So, what have I been up to?

June 12, 2010 I attended graduation at Drexel University and got to meet some of my fellow students, hurrah!

I also spent several days exploring Philadelphia with my husband, guided by my aunt and cousins before visiting Missy Harvey, the Computer Science Librarian for the Carnegie Mellon University Libraries in Pittsburgh. We moved on to Harrisburg to visit the National Civil War Museum, which I highly recommend seeing, and Gettysburg.? After that we moved on to New York, NY to visit my step-son and one of my oldest friends, and then turned south to Delaware. I realized from the signage that I was near the University of Delaware and gave myself an impromptu campus and library tour, they have an awesome audio/video center in their library! We spent a few days in Maryland relaxing with some friends, and then moved on to D.C. for ALA 2010.

A Few Washington, D.C. Highlights

Revisiting Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum (Twice!)

What can I say, you can’t take the science out of the girl and I always adore seeing the new takes on the NASA display and all the other changes, it really did take two visits to see all the new stuff and I still didn’t have time to see one of their IMAX presentations!

Spectrum Professional Options Fair

This event is part of the Spectrum Leadership Institute, I was there as a representative of ACRL’s Residency Interest Group. The purpose of the event is for Spectrum Scholars to learn about various career paths and professional groups, and to provide general networking for them as well. My group passed out flyers, business cards, pointed people toward other groups of interest at the institute and generally had a good time promoting Residencies, scholarship and mentoring opportunities, and librarianship.

ARL’s 10th Anniversary Celebration of the Intitative to Recruit a Diverse Workforce

As an ARL Diversity Scholar I was asked to attend this lunch celebration of the Initiative to Recruit a Diverse Workforce. I showed up early to help setup with my husband and we helped out and generally had a good time. Not only was the food excellent, but the speakers were as well. I was particularly proud of my fellow 2009-2011 Diversity Scholar Jeff Cruz’s speech. Jeff also challenged us to see which of us would become the first ARL director. I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a multi-way tie in the end, good luck to us all!

Sunday – Best day! I’ll do a separate post on this next week :-)

Privacy –

Monday as I wandered in tired and without a plan and only 2 hours to spare, I had the good fortune to run into Brian Leaf who suggested I go to a session with him on privacy issues. I’m not sure what the name of the session was but I really enjoyed one of the speakers analogy for privacy issues, a black box sitting on a rotting net with a flag.

Exhibits Report

As per usual there was the usual assortment of people watching and free books. I was especially impressed by the determination of the woman who brought her daughter to sit with bags and had 8 bags of books within about 30 minutes of the exhibits opening. I myself snagged 8 which looked interesting, and even managed to snag a free copy of a book being sold Saturday by staring rather wistfully at a book as they were closing the signing and mentioning that I had the first book at which point the vendor gave it to me for free and I was the last person to have their book signed.

I was disappointed in the selection of science related vendors, even the vendors with science products were not nearly as helpful as I had met at midwinter. To that I say, science people want convention attention too! If I ask about your science products and you are a representative for your vendor telling me you don’t have any handouts and only know that name of the products makes me wonder if you really want me to buy them.

In contrast I was very pleased to speak with the people from the Oxford University Press they were very helpful, interesting, and I learned about new products which were in my area of interest. I was also very happy to meet up with Dave, Ryan, and the rest of the Mango Languages crew, if you haven’t tried their product yet see if you have access through your library and check them out! I really love how they not only have lessons for English speakers to learn foreign languages, but also English as a second language lessons. (No I am not affiliated with them, I just like their product and want it to continue succeeding so I can continue using it!)

Poster Sessions

I really enjoyed the chance to see what people were doing to improve their libraries and their services. I really enjoyed the opportunity to connect with other librarians and discover people with similar interest and specialties who I hope to collaborate with in the future. Talks and presentations are useful, but if you don’t drop by the poster sessions when you can you’re missing a fun and highly useful opportunity to connect with your peers/future colleagues/future bosses. Most interesting poster has to go to the librarians that created a virtual tour using adapted dolls, some model props, and photos to simulate a library tour for online students in a video clip. I also loved hearing about successful scavenger hunt strategies and brain storming for overnight mystery events in libraries.

All in all I had a great time, met great people, and learned a lot, if you have a chance to attend a convention I highly encourage you to go.

Attended ALA 2010 in D.C.? What were your highlights?