I received an email today from our department head informing us that the selection committee has narrowed down the list of candidates and will be conducting jobs talks in the coming weeks.
For your information, 'job talks' are interviews for academics. We invite those who have applied for a position at our department to come in and do a talk with us. Usually, these talks will last about an hour or so (which is open to the public) followed by a close door interview (which is only open to the selection committee).
During the first hour of the talk, the applicant will do a 20 minute presentation on his/her research and the audience can then ask him/her questions about various topics: the actual content of the research, the research methodology, his/her teaching philosophy, or we can simply criticize/challenge the research and see how he/she will handle it.
When this part of the talk is over, we proceed to the second part of the interview, which is more about the nitty gritty stuff such as how many courses can the applicant teach, what are the applicant's qualifications, his/her research record...etc etc.
If this talk is done in the morning, then we may invite the applicant for a department lunch afterwards. Or we may have lunch with the applicant first before proceeding to the talk.
Either way, it's a process.
So, when I got this email today, I had mixed feelings. The first thing that came to me as I scrolled down the list of applicants was that I could pretty much guess who was going to make it and who wasn't. The fact that I realized this was not very pleasant.
Second, I felt a sense of relief in that I was glad I was not going to be part of this process; that as far as I know at the moment, I was not going to continue down this career path anymore. I've been doing this work for nearly 10 years now, so I was certainly glad I finally had the opportunity to move on.
It's a nice feeling, really. Finally, a chance to do something different. It's almost a blessing. =)
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