The job applicants we interviewed last week can be roughly divided into two groups: those we'd gladly listen to all day long and those who made our eyes glaze over at "Hello." Over the course of 24 interviews, my colleague J developed some pretty effective techniques for dealing with both kinds.
Suppose the candidate was a Froot Loop who'd just beamed in from Planet Flake: interesting, but clearly not firmly enough connected to reality to work at a small college at the edge of Appalachia. While the rest of us were trying to figure out graceful ways to end the interview, J would lean forward with interest and egg the candidate on with question after question, inviting him to share grand plans for transforming our down-to-earth campus into an outpost of Loon University.
This produced an entertaining spectacle, which is more than I can say for J's method of dealing with the candidate who not only was not interesting himself but somehow managed to suck all the interestingness from the room--and possibly from the entire Chicago metropolitan area. While the rest of us struggled to steer Dr. Dull toward more scintillating topics, J would lean back in his chair and lose himself in the white noise of the interview room, nodding rhythmically and occasionally making some vague agreeable sound, like "Um-hm" or "Right!" I would look at him, my eyes pleading for rescue from this fount of dullness, but J would just nod and grin and say "Mm-hm."
When we finally managed to dislodge Dr. Dull from the table, J offered a single comment: "He just about drove me to DefCon 4."
DefCon 1: "So, do you have any questions for us?"
DefCon 2: "It's been great talking to you! Have a great trip back!"
DefCon 3: Stand up and extend the arm for a farewell handshake.
DefCon 4: Excuse yourself to visit the rest room or catch a train.
I don't know what comes after DefCon 4, but if we're ever in that situation, I'm sure J will know what to do.
Showing posts with label MLA Chicago. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MLA Chicago. Show all posts
Thursday, January 03, 2008
Friday, December 28, 2007
Meeting the OMDB Candidate
No one wants to meet an OMDB candidate, but every pool of candidates includes at least one of them--and sometimes more.
The OMDB candidate inspires Search Committee members to proclaim, "We'll hire Candidate X Over My Dead Body." Sometimes Candidate X becomes Candidate OMDB within nanoseconds of the start of the interview, but the rules of the game clearly state that the interview must continue to the bitter end even after the Search Committee has relegated Candidate X to the OMDB file.
What causes an otherwise hire-worthy candidate to assume OMDB status? Here are some sure giveaways (although circumstances have been changed to protect the guilty):
1. Candidate OMDB expresses a fervent desire to teach her dissertation texts and only her dissertation texts in every class from now until the end of time.
2. Candidate OMDB believes that American literature begins with Washington Irving and, when pressed to consider earlier authors, cannot envision ever teaching a text dating from before 1800.
3. Candidate OMDB oozes smug self-satisfaction while saying, "I don't know if you know anything about American literature, but..."
4. Candidate OMDB expresses a fond desire to teach just about every course in the curriculum, most especially those taught by Search Committee members, and then coyly suggests that his administrative experience would make him a prime choice for department chair.
5. Candidate OMDB name-drops shamelessly: "Maybe it's obvious that I studied with [Big Name Scholar]...."
6. Candidate OMDB transform the interview into a personal monologue, causing Search Committee members to lean back and take mental refuge in their Happy Place, so that when he finally stops chattering long enough for anyone else to get a word in edgewise, no one is alert enough to notice.
We have one more day of interviewing and we are very pleased with the quality of our candidates so far, with a very few exceptions. We've already encountered more than enough OMDB candidates for this search, so I'm hopeful that we've filled our quota and tomorrow's candidates will all be stellar. Then we'll have another kind of problem: why can't we hire all of them? That's when the provost steps in to say "Over My Dead Body."
The OMDB candidate inspires Search Committee members to proclaim, "We'll hire Candidate X Over My Dead Body." Sometimes Candidate X becomes Candidate OMDB within nanoseconds of the start of the interview, but the rules of the game clearly state that the interview must continue to the bitter end even after the Search Committee has relegated Candidate X to the OMDB file.
What causes an otherwise hire-worthy candidate to assume OMDB status? Here are some sure giveaways (although circumstances have been changed to protect the guilty):
1. Candidate OMDB expresses a fervent desire to teach her dissertation texts and only her dissertation texts in every class from now until the end of time.
2. Candidate OMDB believes that American literature begins with Washington Irving and, when pressed to consider earlier authors, cannot envision ever teaching a text dating from before 1800.
3. Candidate OMDB oozes smug self-satisfaction while saying, "I don't know if you know anything about American literature, but..."
4. Candidate OMDB expresses a fond desire to teach just about every course in the curriculum, most especially those taught by Search Committee members, and then coyly suggests that his administrative experience would make him a prime choice for department chair.
5. Candidate OMDB name-drops shamelessly: "Maybe it's obvious that I studied with [Big Name Scholar]...."
6. Candidate OMDB transform the interview into a personal monologue, causing Search Committee members to lean back and take mental refuge in their Happy Place, so that when he finally stops chattering long enough for anyone else to get a word in edgewise, no one is alert enough to notice.
We have one more day of interviewing and we are very pleased with the quality of our candidates so far, with a very few exceptions. We've already encountered more than enough OMDB candidates for this search, so I'm hopeful that we've filled our quota and tomorrow's candidates will all be stellar. Then we'll have another kind of problem: why can't we hire all of them? That's when the provost steps in to say "Over My Dead Body."
Thursday, December 27, 2007
It's better than walking on hot coals
One day down, two to go--but let's not get too excited. We had only five interviews scheduled today and one had to be rescheduled because the candidate had two flat tires on the way to Chicago, so we're doing nine tomorrow and eight on Saturday, one after another all day long in the big interview room with the horrid carpet.
Where do hotels find all this horrid carpet? Do they all patronize the same Horrid Carpet Warehouse, or do their design teams offer Affirmative Action for the Aesthetically Impaired? One hallway in our hotel features puke green walls and checkerboard carpet with interlocking lines and angles that make my eyes hurt.
And how did all this ugliness ooze into the prettiest part of the prettiest big city in the midwest? I'm not a city person, but I can't walk a block up Michigan Avenue without being awed by the wealth of architectural variety and detail, the Gilded Age buildings oozing with sheer, brazen, unashamed hope. I sense the presence of Carl Sandburg swooping among the towering stone towers or stomping along the crowded sidewalks. Sherwood Anderson looked at the Chicago River and saw mud, but it was the kind of mud that could support the (self)creation of an artist. Harriet Monroe made poetry happen here. In the public library just up the street stands a bronze bust of Gwendolyn Brooks looking like a straight-talking, no-nonsense goddess of poetry. City of big shoulders indeed.
But none of those authors had to live with this horrid hotel carpet. Sherwood Anderson stayed in a cold, bare room in a cheap rooming house while he wrote Winesburg, Ohio; if, instead of bleak, bare, drafty walls and floors, he'd been surrounded by horrid hotel carpet, his muse would have jumped in the river. How many potential works of Great Literature were stillborn because the muse couldn't coexist with obnoxious upholstery?
Good thing I'm not here to create Great Literature. Horrid hotel carpet is appropriate for the big bad interview room because no one expects to be comfortable in there anyway: the MLA interview room is a black hole of angst right now, full of people so desperate for a tenure-track teaching job that they wouldn't notice if the floor were coated with hot coals.
As for those of us who already have jobs, the horrid carpet is the least of our concerns. We want to find someone who knows a little something and knows how to teach it to our students, someone who can teach a 4/4 load plus serve on committees and still do some research and publishing, someone we wouldn't mind running into in the hall every day. If putting up with horrid hotel carpet is the price we have to pay to find that person, then it's a price worth paying.
So I'm willing to put up with the ugly carpet. Just don't ask me to write any poetry about it.
Where do hotels find all this horrid carpet? Do they all patronize the same Horrid Carpet Warehouse, or do their design teams offer Affirmative Action for the Aesthetically Impaired? One hallway in our hotel features puke green walls and checkerboard carpet with interlocking lines and angles that make my eyes hurt.
And how did all this ugliness ooze into the prettiest part of the prettiest big city in the midwest? I'm not a city person, but I can't walk a block up Michigan Avenue without being awed by the wealth of architectural variety and detail, the Gilded Age buildings oozing with sheer, brazen, unashamed hope. I sense the presence of Carl Sandburg swooping among the towering stone towers or stomping along the crowded sidewalks. Sherwood Anderson looked at the Chicago River and saw mud, but it was the kind of mud that could support the (self)creation of an artist. Harriet Monroe made poetry happen here. In the public library just up the street stands a bronze bust of Gwendolyn Brooks looking like a straight-talking, no-nonsense goddess of poetry. City of big shoulders indeed.
But none of those authors had to live with this horrid hotel carpet. Sherwood Anderson stayed in a cold, bare room in a cheap rooming house while he wrote Winesburg, Ohio; if, instead of bleak, bare, drafty walls and floors, he'd been surrounded by horrid hotel carpet, his muse would have jumped in the river. How many potential works of Great Literature were stillborn because the muse couldn't coexist with obnoxious upholstery?
Good thing I'm not here to create Great Literature. Horrid hotel carpet is appropriate for the big bad interview room because no one expects to be comfortable in there anyway: the MLA interview room is a black hole of angst right now, full of people so desperate for a tenure-track teaching job that they wouldn't notice if the floor were coated with hot coals.
As for those of us who already have jobs, the horrid carpet is the least of our concerns. We want to find someone who knows a little something and knows how to teach it to our students, someone who can teach a 4/4 load plus serve on committees and still do some research and publishing, someone we wouldn't mind running into in the hall every day. If putting up with horrid hotel carpet is the price we have to pay to find that person, then it's a price worth paying.
So I'm willing to put up with the ugly carpet. Just don't ask me to write any poetry about it.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Fit for a king
The bed in our hotel room has nine pillows on it. Nine! It's a king-size bed, but until nine-headed kings become more plentiful, nine seems a bit excessive.
Who sleeps on nine pillows? And if we're not planning to sleep on them, what do we do with them? The closet is already crowded with clothes, a safe, and, of course, extra pillows. (In case we need more!)
Some of the excess pillows can sit on the sofa, which is shoved in a corner of the room so dim that if I tried to read over there, my eyeballs would jump right out of my head and out the window and fall splat to the street 24 stories below. I would gladly trade any six of our pillows for just one 100-watt lightbulb, but that would violate one of the unspoken rules of hotel management: "Keep the Customer in the Dark." The less we see, the less we know and the happier we are--or at least that's the theory.
This works with valet parking as well: a charming young man in a dark overcoat whisked our car out of sight and hid it in the bowels of the parking garage, knowing that the absence of car will translate into an absence of awareness of the parking charges adding up day by day. It would be distracting, for instance, if we had to face the unpleasant fact that none of the motels where we stayed on our honeymoon charged as much for a room as this hotel charges daily for a parking space.
Now here's a thought: let's put that idle space to good use and solve our pillow problem at the same time. I say we take the excess pillows down to the parking garage and ask the valet to stash them in the car. He could even take them for a test-drive! With the excess pillow problem solved, I'll be able to relax and enjoy a snooze fit for a king.
Who sleeps on nine pillows? And if we're not planning to sleep on them, what do we do with them? The closet is already crowded with clothes, a safe, and, of course, extra pillows. (In case we need more!)
Some of the excess pillows can sit on the sofa, which is shoved in a corner of the room so dim that if I tried to read over there, my eyeballs would jump right out of my head and out the window and fall splat to the street 24 stories below. I would gladly trade any six of our pillows for just one 100-watt lightbulb, but that would violate one of the unspoken rules of hotel management: "Keep the Customer in the Dark." The less we see, the less we know and the happier we are--or at least that's the theory.
This works with valet parking as well: a charming young man in a dark overcoat whisked our car out of sight and hid it in the bowels of the parking garage, knowing that the absence of car will translate into an absence of awareness of the parking charges adding up day by day. It would be distracting, for instance, if we had to face the unpleasant fact that none of the motels where we stayed on our honeymoon charged as much for a room as this hotel charges daily for a parking space.
Now here's a thought: let's put that idle space to good use and solve our pillow problem at the same time. I say we take the excess pillows down to the parking garage and ask the valet to stash them in the car. He could even take them for a test-drive! With the excess pillow problem solved, I'll be able to relax and enjoy a snooze fit for a king.
Caution: road hazards ahead
So here we are in Chicago getting ready to interview a zillion job applicants at the MLA convention--and let me just say that the excitement level on the road trip was a bit uneven. That long stretch of I-65 from Indianapolis to Gary is so boring you could drive it in your sleep, while the final 30 miles into Chicago are packed with back-to-back (and bumper-to-bumper) thrills. If there were a way to spread out all that excitement over the entire trip, it would be a more pleasant drive all around.
Now I have one or two little logistical matters to adjust before I'm ready to start the interviewing assembly line, but my brain is stuck in thrill-ride mode. Somehow I need to connect with my inner Indiana. Is there a Hoosier in the house?
Now I have one or two little logistical matters to adjust before I'm ready to start the interviewing assembly line, but my brain is stuck in thrill-ride mode. Somehow I need to connect with my inner Indiana. Is there a Hoosier in the house?
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