Advice for faculty position job interview?

This answer assumes that you're interviewing for a permanent tenure-track position, not a temporary limited-term job. Easiest part first: do not mention the pregnancy until after you are offered the job. The phone interview is actually good for you, because it prevents them from, even unconsciously, making this a factor in their decision (which is illegal, but still happens). If they ask borderline questions that seem to be fishing for information about your family life, just politely deflect them by saying that this won't be a factor in your considering the position. After the job offer is the right time to talk about health care, maternity leave, etc., not before then. You're right to suspect that academic interviews are very different from other kinds of job interview, with a lot less focus on personality or on made-up scenarios and a lot more focus on the subject of your research. There's some variation from discipline to discipline, but the basic formula for a 30-45 min. interview is to spend the first (at least) 15-20 min. discussing your research in depth, the next while talking about teaching (this will be longer and more detailed at a liberal-arts college), and a few minutes at the end about general campus life and any concerns of yours. Be prepared to give a summary of your current and future research to start things off, and be prepared to talk in detail about courses you've planned at various levels of an undergraduate curriculum, from broad introductions to relatively specialized upper-level seminars.

I thought I would post a quick update in case anyone uses this thread as a future resource: I think the interview went OK. I don't really have any context, but I had something to say for everything they asked, and once was told that they'd heard enough (!) It was my impression that they were looking more to see that I had thought carefully about the questions they posed rather than my specific answers per se. They called and five people were on speaker phone talking to me. I did take the call on a cell phone, because I decided to take the morning off work and take the call at home. The connection was fine. Each faculty member asked me one question, then I had time to ask them as many questions as I liked. The questions they asked were (paraphrased): 1. Why do you want to work at XYZ Uni, particularly given your highly research-focused background? 2. What sort of external funding would you get to ensure that undergrads have support for research? 3. How would you design a neuroscience curriculum? (I had a whole curriculum planned... that was the one they had to shut me up about!) 4. How would you cope if asked to teach outside your area of expertise? (My PhD mentor told me they would ask me that, so I'm glad I'd thought about it) 5. What has been your biggest career challenge so far? This one I kind of thought they might ask, but hadn't really thought about an answer. I think I got through it OK though. Finally, I asked them questions about tenure path (timeline, relative importance of research, teaching, service etc.), mentoring for new faculty, graduate students (how are they funded, how many in the dept etc. etc.), types of committees that junior faculty would be expected to serve on, and admissions profiles of students, e.g. how many are pre-med, how many are in the honors program, how many honors students does one faculty member typically mentor etc. == If I make it through the phone interview, I'm sure your advice will stand me in equally good stead for the face-to-face. Oh, and hiring timelines never came up, so I never brought them up. Thus the pregnancy issue was avoided.

good luck 'pode. you have a lovely manner in person so all I can add to the above is BE YOURSELF!

I marked a few best answers, but you have all been very helpful. Thank you so much!

Also take a look at the http://chronicle.com/forums/index.php forums, which have lots of questions about academic job search issues. For a small college job you will also want to think about extracurriculars you might do with students - independent research topics that are a manageable level for them and are connected to your own stuff; field trips in the area of the college; bio club activities; would you work with pre-med students or anything of that sort; would you lead Interterm trips to exotic research locales; etc... This won't be a major focus but it would be something you can bring up ("so how involved are the undergrad majors?" or "what opportunities do students have for independent research, is there travel money for them to go to conferences?" etc)

If you are looking at an interview with a small liberal arts college, then it is absolutely imperative that you come across as someone who works well with colleagues and is enthusiastic about teaching. Anything relating to your research is likely to be lost on half of the search committee in any case. My first job was as a philosophy prof at a SLAC and I was interview by a philosopher, a psychologist and a physicist. Even the philosopher barely knew what my work was about. But they were very concerned that I come across as someone who could be cooperative, supportive and collegial. If you were interviewing for an endowed chair at a major research institution, then no one would care about working with you because you'd be off in your own lab, running your own team and your value to the institution would be adding to the list of faculty grants and accomplishments. At a SLAC, you'll be more of a person working closely with a small group of other professionals and they want to be assured you can play nice and play well. This is especially important since I imagine your neuroscience program will be cross-disciplinary (biology and psych, at least, maybe others). EVERYTHING you do in the early stages will be compromising and collaborating with people with other agendas and constraints. Creativity and collegiality are essential. I was one of the primary people developing a cognitive science program at my current institution, and running it was always a matter of being open to what others were doing, being creative and flexible in the development of our new program, and being supportive of the people working within our program. I have a pretty healthy CV, but in my present situation those skills were far more important. At your interview, they'll be even more so. And a general note about academic interviews from someone who has had a bunch of them. Don't portray yourself as someone that you're not, just be the best version of you that you can muster. You never know what the agendas and preferences of the people behind the process actually are and you don't want to land yourself in a position that you assume you could do and will grow into. Just be the brightest, more enthusiastic version of yourself and what you're good at and let the chips fall where they may.

I just finished doing a lot of phone interviews of candidates for a job in my department, and I can say that the phone interview is a lot harder than a live interview, esp. if one or both is on a cell phone. There's a lot of both people starting to talk, then stopping, then starting again, etc. Try to relax about this, maybe talk a bit slower than you're used to, because you can't always tell if the other person is finished. What seems like energy in person can seem like nervousness over the phone. Do periodic umm-hmms if the other person is going on about something, to let them know you are still there. Give your answers to the questions evenly, then when you are done, stop. Make sure you can talk about your work and teaching coherently, and try to have some sort of take-away point when possible ("The overall goal of this class would be to help students to ...."). Do get to know the school - I was surprised how offended I was when someone mistook my school for another one. I'm not an uptight person, but I guess I've become more attached to my school than I thought. Lots of good advice above. Good luck!

I'd suggest getting real legal advice from a real lawyer. I agree with the seriousness of this concern, but I think talking to the HR department at the university in question would be easier, cheaper and probably more accurate, especially if the university is in a different jurisdiction. All universities I know of have very strictly regulated framework agreements for hiring, and almost all have engaged in some sort of equity policy assessments, which includes recognition of the need to hire more women and recognition that pregnancy can go along with that. So, if you can talk to HR there and ask how to handle the question that would be a good first step. Then, and I make this advice cautiously, if they ask about it and you tell the truth, and they seem to be taken aback, you can also say, "I happened to talk to HR because I was wondering about daycare" or something, and this fires a shot across their bow if they seem to be thinking that male sexless sterile nerd robot hire would be better.

The other thing to expect, when they bring you in for a campus interview, is to do the same goddam interview about nine different times. It's common to be taken from one faculty member to another to have the same conversation about your research and your teaching and what you can contribute and small talk, and then to have the same goddam discussion one more time with some sort of dean, and then maybe again with another higher-up. It's even worse than it sounds.