Each time I’ve made it past the initial interview, I’ve been asked to teach for 15 minutes.
I guess the idea is to find out if a candidate can talk on the level of the students.
I’m always very concerned about the 15 minutes. I like it better when they assign a topic. But what about when they don’t?
I can’t teach my BEST 15 minutes… Those are usually in the middle of projects. So I have to pick 15 minutes that shows what I can do.
The teaching module at a job interview can seem so phoney if it’s not constructed for the candidate well. In the searches I’ve been on we have asked the candidate to give a presentation to us as colleagues, perhaps as something that might be done through a teaching learning center, rather than pretending we’re college freshmen in a class together. If that were the case, we’d probably be pretty ill behaved.
However, we keep the presentation part of the interview because it usually lets us see a different, important side to the candidate. I also like to see what a candidate would do with a sample student essay.
But the part of booking candidates so one bumps into another strikes me as rude. I should think the way the search committee treats you suggests much about the sort of institution it is.
Best wishes for a position, soon.
I would have preferred that. I already had that written.
What I did instead was take something that I think I do well that other people ought to do, too, and I presented it, even though it is a bit edgy in terms of my philosophy being different from other people’s. I figured if they didn’t hire me, they would get a good handout out of the presentation.