Faculty interviews—traps and tips (2023)

The year was 1995, and I was a postdoc working to develop a low-temperature near-field scanning optical microscope to study exciton charge and spin transport in nanostructures. It was my third year of the appointment, and I had some nice results that got me an invited talk at the APS March Meeting and a half dozen faculty interviews.Like nearly all faculty candidates, I was forced to think about what I wanted to do with my career in the longer term as an independent researcher. The optical techniques I had developed were still new to me and significantly different from my PhD research, which was on sliding charge-density waves and their nonlinear dynamics, so it felt natural to consider what other systems I could investigate using similar approaches. I decided to focus on spatiotemporal behavior of ferroelectric materials. But beyond that, I had only a vague idea of what I was going to do. I had never done any actual research with such materials, although I had read many papers on them, which at the time involved trekking to the library at night to read journal articles printed on real paper.Unfortunately, I had the deeply mistaken notion that I could get by in a faculty appointment interview with a cursory plan of attack and assuring the recruiters that I would “figure it out” along the way. Not surprisingly, I bombed interview after interview. The talks usually went OK, but when it came to a discussion of my research plan, I struggled to provide details. By the time the 1995 APS March Meeting came around, I had already botched five interviews. I attended the meeting with dread, knowing that my remaining interview, and possibly my last chance to become a professor, was scheduled for the following week.Like most of the others, my interview at the University of Pittsburgh was a two-day affair, with the first day reserved for my seminar and a few meetings and the second day filled with one-on-one discussions, where I would inevitably be questioned about my research plan. The seminar went well, but I went to sleep with a slight irritation in my throat. The next morning, my voice was gone. I had a full-on case of laryngitis.My future colleagues at Pitt were exceedingly kind and understanding. Instead of being peppered with questions, I was served soothing herbal tea with honey. I distinctly remember gazing helplessly at two of the faculty search committee members as they discussed my fate, right in front of me. Maybe they thought that since I couldn’t speak, I also couldn’t hear what they were saying. One of them really wanted to ask me about the details of my proposed research program. The other was defending me, saying sympathetically, “Oh, I’m sure he has a good plan.”And that’s how I got my faculty offer at the University of Pittsburgh.I have participated in many faculty searches over the past 25 years, and I am confident that my 1995 self would not have been selected by any of those committees. The two-talk format is commonplace nowadays. Faculty give one talk based on prior research and the other focusing on their “five-year plan.” I do understand why the hiring process is structured that way: Faculty hires constitute a huge investment, and search committees need to be convinced that the successful candidate can build an independent research program with clearly articulated themes and initial projects.Here’s my advice to faculty who populate search committees: Remember that a successful research career can span 30–40 years. When you are evaluating the research plans of your candidates, consider rewarding those whose ideas border on the adventurous. A balanced portfolio, mixing high-certainty paths with those that have less certain outcomes, is likely an indicator of your future colleague’s long-term success. And when you hire that person, make sure that they get the support they need to be successful.My advice to postdocs interviewing for faculty positions is to not follow the path I did. Formulate your research plan, and be ready to articulate and defend it. At the same time, be aware that it is easy to get trapped in your own expertise “polaron.” The early stage of your career will be when patterns are set in motion. By the time you receive tenure, it may be hard to maneuver away from what is “expected” by your colleagues, the broader community, and yourself. I have tried to avoid that trap: Since joining Pitt, I have ventured into several new areas of research in which I initially had no prior exposure. Did I make rookie mistakes in the beginning of those adventures? Every time. But as an outsider, I eventually brought new insight and perspective into those fields.So once you get the job, look up and look around. You might be inspired by a paper you read or a talk you heard at the March Meeting, and you might come up with an idea or research direction that seems much more interesting and compelling than your initial plan. Don’t be afraid to embrace those ideas, change course, expand your horizons, and work in areas in which you are not an expert. Both you and that field will be better off because of it.© 2023 American Institute of Physics.