Be rested and well-fed (don't skip breakfast); be lively and enthusiastic.
Practice your spiel—the description of your dissertation. Do mock interviews with fellow students, roommates, and faculty members. Get them to ask you obvious, strange, illegal, and rude questions (you'll find samples in letters to Ms. Mentor). Have a couple of clever sound bites, work on looking poised and nonchalant, and remember what actors say about sincerity: once you can fake that, you've won it all.
Likability sells first, and then knowledge. Be ready with well-researched questions about the school (you'll have studied their homepage and their catalog). Know the names of faculty in your field. Suggest what you can do for the department and the school: where you fit in, what unique talents you can offer.
And afterward, if you don't get the job, do not blame yourself. A now-famous biographer once lost a job at Amherst solely because at her Modern Language Association convention interview, the hotel room's fireplace went berserk and began spewing black smoke into the room—whereupon our heroine had an uncontrollable coughing fit and could not complete the interview.
Sometimes real life intervenes. You won't interview well if you've just had a death in the family, or your wallet's just been stolen. (That happened to a young woman Ms. Mentor knows, and she wonders if an envious classmate was sabotaging her interview.)
But self-blame is useless, and Ms. Mentor urges you to persevere. Actors do get jobs, and so do academics, and much of it is a matter of technique. With practice, you will get better. Ms. Mentor can guarantee that.
Not Moby Dick
Q: When our annual job market convention comes up, I'm going to be seven months' pregnant, and unmarried. (Suffice it to say, the father of my child is a very generous, handsome rogue who likes to spread his seed into every available furrow.)
Given the fact that I may look like a whale and won't want to answer questions about my “husband,” should I
A. Not bother to go, since I won't get a job anyway?
B. Go, and hope for the best?
C. Lace myself up tightly, claim to be fat, and hope I don't have a conniption fit?
A: Ms. Mentor votes for B, but acknowledges that you do have a problem: many a hiring committee won't see past a big belly to appreciate a big brain.
Still, the convention will be your only chance this year. If you do get interviews, prepare a few little jokes about the forthcoming event and claim you have perfectly reliable child-care arrangements (whether you do or not). Your mission is to neutralize the obvious question: Are you a mom or a professor?
Sometimes, truly, lying works best, such as claiming that you have a husband who's a freelance writer who'll be doing child care at home.
But Ms. Mentor does not encourage you to lie. She only presents alternatives, and trusts you to make the best choices.
Just avoid having a conniption fit. It will make a permanently negative impression.
A Matter Of Morals
Q: “Tell us about your morals,” said a group interviewing me at our job market convention. I told them I was raised among Pentecostals and snake-handlers (true), but that now I go to a Presbyterian church (rarely), and don't smoke or shoplift. I didn't mention that I do drink wine and that I have sex with my boyfriend in a non-missionary position.
What kind of question is that: “Tell us about your morals?” Is it legal? How should I have answered it?
A: Ms. Mentor is reminded that a decade or two ago, one very Christian university became famous at the Modern Language Association convention for asking such questions of job candidates. It seemed that a faculty member had recently absconded with a student—and her morals—and his ex-colleagues didn't want it to happen again. Naturally, of course, the university became notorious at MLA for being the only school whose interviewers mentioned Sex.
Are such questions legal? Probably, although they do border on asking about “creed,” and maybe marital status as well.
How should you have answered them? Ms. Mentor thinks you did fine. You were honest and tactful, considering the provocation.
Whether you could actually fit into such a community, if the job is offered, is another question—but you haven't asked that. So Ms. Mentor, with her usual prudence, will remain silent.
Without Cane, Yet Able
Q: I'm worried about how best to present my disability during job interviews. I have a degenerative hip condition, and I've been advised not to walk long distances, stand for long periods, or climb stairs. However, in a pinch, I am able to do all these things, and on good days my limp is not immediately apparent.
I'm worried that at interviews people will see me sitting down at every opportunity, and taking the elevator whenever possible, and assume I am lazy. In fact, one college where I teach as an adjunct has expressed concern (behind my back, of course) over my “low energy level.” Since I actually am very energetic (otherwise I'd never be able to work full-time and complete a dissertation), I believe they are reacting to my disability.
I don't want interviewers to get the impression I'm lazy, but I don't want to be constantly explaining, “I'm using the elevator because I'm disabled.” I could try to “pass” by climbing stairs, etc., but I'm not sure dishonesty is a good idea. (Besides, I might hurt myself.)
Have you any advice for me?
A: Ms. Mentor was particularly pleased to receive this missive, for it lets her point out a fact that few people want to face: Anyone who does not have a disability now will either have one later, or be dead first.
Thus disability rights are everyone's cause. Ms. Mentor recommends the excellent book Feminism and Disability, by Barbara Hillyer, and advises all pre-disabled individuals to get to know the Americans with Disabilities Act (1990), the civil rights bill for the disabled. (A Q & A later in this book discusses the ADA in greater detail.)
Besides inspiring Ms. Mentor to remodel her ivory tower to make it more accessible, the ADA has pushed colleges and hotels to come up with ramps, elevators, parking spaces, and many an ingenious modification to let folks with disabilities gad about just like the pre-disabled.
You, however, have a mostly hidden disability, which your colleagues interpret as laziness rather than as a handicap. That's not altogether bad: to an employer worried about health costs, you are not a “problem.” Moreover, your ability to do many things at once—finish a dissertation, teach full time, and correspond with Ms. Mentor—shows you to be well organized and energetic.
But what about job interviews? Most academic conventions, held in hotels, won't present problems—for rare is the candidate with so many interviews that she does not have time in between for caffeine, rest, snacks, or scheming.
On-campus interviews, though, can blow your cover.
In an ideal world, of course, you'd simply announce that you have a disability, perhaps adding that since Elizabeth Taylor and Liza Minnelli also have hip problems, it's obviously a special scourge besetting glamorous women. (If you can say this in laughing self-deprecation, you'll be regarded as quite witty.) In an ideal world, potential colleagues would see your need for rest as another charming quality
