Anticipating possible interview questions and thinking about your responses in advance is a powerful tool in landing a faculty position! Questions typically autumn under iv broad categories:

  • Research
  • Teaching
  • Department and community involvement
  • Career and personal choices.

Thanks to Dr. Nanda Dimitrov (University of Western Ontario) for compiling questions typically asked in academic job interviews, based on the data provided past faculty members and educational developers from Canada and the U.s..

Questions about enquiry

  • Describe your current inquiry. Volition you lot exist standing in this research rails? What are your future enquiry plans?
  • How would yous involve graduate/undergraduate students in your research?
  • Where do your research strengths lie? (Quantitative/qualitative, etc.?) Why? What are your enquiry weaknesses? And how will yous improve?
  • Your electric current enquiry requires more technological support than this institution is able to provide. How will you deal with this?
  • We encounter that you have washed a lot of conference papers and presentations; nosotros have limited professional evolution funds. How do you feel nigh that as a limiting factor? (Will you go along to go and pay your own way – stop doing research? Resent the limitations?)
  • What audiences are you addressing with your enquiry?
  • What is the cut edge in your field and how does your work compare to it and extend information technology?
  • How volition you lot get nearly revising your dissertation for publication?
  • What is the broader significance of your enquiry? How does it expand our celebrated agreement, literary knowledge, humanistic horizons?
  • Tin you explain the value of your work to an educated layperson?
  • Tell us how your research has influenced your education. In what means have y'all been able to bring the insights of your research to your courses at the undergraduate level?
  • How would you rest your teaching duties and your own inquiry plans?
  • If you lot were organizing a special symposium or conference on your inquiry topic, which scholars would you invite?
  • In what journals practise yous expect to publish your enquiry?
  • Would you be able to accept on a graduate student immediately?
  • Tell us briefly what theoretical framework y'all used in developing your inquiry.
  • If yous were to begin it again, are there whatsoever changes you would make in your dissertation?
  • What facilities do y'all need to carry out your inquiry?
  • What did yous leave out of your inquiry talk?
  • What is the almost significant piece of research that you have read in the last yr?
  • What practise you envision for creating a research program here?
  • What are your plans for applying for research funding?
  • We have a large education load hither – 12 hours per week; how would you manage this and even so work on doing research and publishing?
  • Tell us about a research project in which you've been involved that was successful and one which was non. Why do you think these were the outcomes?

Questions about teaching

  • What is your philosophy of teaching?
  • Could you tell united states of america about your teaching experiences?
  • What do you consider to be your education strengths/weaknesses?
  • If you have a educatee who is doing poorly in your course, but has not missed classes and appears to exist a adept student, what would y'all do?
  • There is a strong motility to infuse interdisciplinary piece of work into the curriculum. With what other disciplines could you piece of work (teach/research)? Have you done such piece of work in the past?
  • What classes could you teach in our program?
  • How would you program a course in ___? What texts would you lot use? What topics would you cover? What goals would you have? What assessment and teaching methods would you apply?
  • How would y'all evaluate student learning?
  • Have y'all ever conducted formative evaluation or Minor Group Instructional Diagnosis (SGID)?
  • How do you bring diverseness into your solar day to solar day teaching?
  • What is the difference between collaborative and cooperative learning?
  • How take you lot used technology in the classroom?
  • If you lot could teach any class you lot wanted, what would it be? What would you lot teach side by side if you could teach two of them?
  • If you could teach your dream upper level specialty course, what would that exist?
  • What disquisitional approaches do y'all notice most persuasive? How do they interpret into your teaching?
  • What kinds of essays practise you want your students to write?
  • How do you know you've been successful in teaching ___ class?
  • How would you teach a major piece of work in your field? (They may proper name one)
  • Can you call up of a specific instance of when a student you were educational activity really seemed to learn something that yous regarded as worthwhile? Briefly draw what happened. What thing or things did you do that contributed to that student learning? Why do you think did these actions of yours work?
  • What experience have y'all had teaching at the community college level? How if at all do you call back teaching at a community college differs from teaching at a four year higher or academy?
  • What experiences accept you had teaching diverse students? (Well prepared, under prepared, total-fourth dimension, part-time, students with total-time jobs and/or family unit care responsibilities, students representing unlike ethnic groups and races, religions, ages and genders?) What pedagogy methods have proved effective with such students?
  • Describe your familiarity and feel with different teaching methods such as collaborative learning, learning styles adaptation, and classroom assessment.
  • Tell me about your teaching techniques (e.g., grouping projects, case method, etc.)
  • What is your favourite lecture and why?
  • Tell me near your industry experience (if you lot have any). How would you bring that industry feel into the classroom?
  • If you lot have no industry experience: How do you expect to be able to teach students about the field if you lot have never worked in it?
  • What is your favourite theory or theorist to teach?
  • How do y'all motivate your students?
  • How would yous encourage your students to major in our field?
  • How would you piece of work with our students as opposed to those at your electric current institution?

Questions most department and customs involvement

  • Institution ___ is dedicated to providing a liberal arts/ spiritually based/ holistic teaching. How would you describe your role inside that vision?
  • You lot've seen our mission argument. How would you lot see yourself contributing to our mission and campus atmosphere?
  • We have instituted a community service requirement for all undergraduates – how would you see yourself interface with such a plan?
  • What is your opinion on unmarried sexual practice didactics? (if it is a Women's University/ College)
  • How will you lot fit in equally a section member and what kind of contribution volition you brand to our community?
  • Apart from the obvious financial reasons, why would you similar to bring together the Kinesthesia of Y at University X?
  • We conceive of our campus as one large customs. What non- or extra -academic activities would yous be interested in sponsoring or participating in?
  • What is your perception of the responsibilities of a full-time faculty member in a University / College? …To the section? …To the division? …To the University / College as a whole?

Questions about career and personal choices

  • Describe your goals and plans for professional development every bit a University / Higher instructor.
  • Where exercise you meet yourself professionally in five years? In x years?
  • What are some of the specific things you would like to address/learn in your own professional development? How is this connected to your work as an academic?
  • What about our position is especially attractive to you lot?
  • What do you practise when you are not working? (Modern equivalent of "what are your hobbies?")
  • How long do you lot plan on staying at University ___?
  • What is the last book that you read for fun?
  • How exercise you feel about living in ___ urban center?
  • I understand that your partner is completing his/her Ph.D. What if yous receive job offers in different locations?
  • What kind of bacon are you looking for?
  • Why have you changed jobs and so ofttimes?
  • If you get more ane task offering, how will you decide between them?
  • Who else is interviewing you?
  • How did you go about researching / preparing for the interview for this position?
  • What questions do you lot have for usa?

teaching tipThis Creative Commons license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon our work non-commercially, as long every bit they credit usa and indicate if changes were fabricated. Apply this citation format:Questions Asked by Hiring Committees. Center for Teaching Excellence, University of Waterloo .