Notes - Potential Questions in Job Interview

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Self-introduction? Why do you apply? Why are you interested in our project? What do you think you bring to the position and to our department? Please tell us about the most recent research project you have conducted? This post will require you to manage undergraduate students. What strategy would you employ to manage them effectively? If offered the job, when would you be able to start? Do you have experience to collaboration? What will you be after 3 years? How much do you know your potential supervisor? Describe a research project you’ve worked on. Describe your experience and skills. How will you be able to make contribution to this field? Why should we accept you over another application? Describe your research proposal. What is the most significant contribution you have made to your school? what do you do now? What challenges do you think you might face in the graduate programme? What skills or abilities do you hope to strengthen through our programme? What has motivated you to pursue this academic field? Tell me about a goal you have set for yourself and how you have achieved it or intend to achieve it. What are your greatest strengths? What are your greatest weaknesses? What is your philosophy towards work? Are you applying for other courses? What Would Be Your Dream Job? Are you motivated? Explain and provide examples. How do you intend to finance your education? Tell me about your experience in this field. What was challenging? What was your contribution? Do you have any hobbies or outside interests? Why do you want a PhD degree in computer science? Tell me about a goal you have set. Tell me about a group in which you were involved. How did you contribute to make this group? What do you know about us/school/university? Do you have any experience in drafting research proposals for funding? Tell me about a mistake you made and how you handle it. Tell me about a time you were faced with a difficult situation and show how you handle it. What are your attributes, what types of person are you? Give me an example of a course you would like to teach here and what it will include? Give me an example of research-informed teaching. How are you going to manage with students come in with different country/background? How do you make sure to have equality, inclusion and diversity in your classroom? Choose one area of research and tell me its recent development and how your research responds to that? How do you manage various deadlines? Tell me your philosophy of teaching and learning? Subjects that I can contribute to the teaching portfolio of the department, which is not currently taught? How do you support students who are struggling with their work, and make sure that you are meeting student expectations? What are the key achievements of your research? (Impact) What’s your next book (research plan for the next 5 years)? What’s your strategies of keep up research while teaching? Anyone you want to collaborate with in our department? How are you going to attract funding? Tell us about a situation where you managed conflict? What administrative role would you like to take up in the department? Student mentorship experience? How do you manage creative teaching such as role play with students who have social anxieties? What courses do you enjoy teaching? Tell me your experience about teaching? What if a course that you are not familiar? How do you improve your teaching? Why this position and your strength. Strategy for future research? Apart from your supervisor and group, how you collaborate with others? Innovative teaching method? How comfortable or confident you feel about teaching a class more than 200 students? A failure experience in research? Any experience for acting as a leader in a project? Talk more about yourself. How do you set assignment? How do student benefit from you? Why are you interested in this university and this position? Why do you want to change jobs? In a course, some students perform well while others do not. What do you think is the reason? How would you deal with this situation? What do you think are the differences between Chinese students and European students? If you were asked to lead undergraduate students’ final projects, what topic would you prepare? What are the highlights of your previous research? What is your research direction in the next five years? How do you define success in your career? What research conditions do you need? Do you think you have any advantages that others do not have? In your opinion, which research directions are more likely to receive funding in Europe and the UK? Describe a situation in which you led a team. Give an example of a time you handled conflict in the workplace. How do you maintain good working relationships with your colleagues? Tell me about a big decision you’ve made recently. How did you go about it? What has been your biggest achievement to date? Describe a project where you had to use different leadership styles to reach your goal. Tell me about a time when your communication skills improved a situation. How do you cope in adversity? Give me an example of a challenge you faced in the workplace and tell me how you overcame it. Tell me about a time when you showed integrity and professionalism. How do you influence people in a situation with conflicting agendas? Give an example of a situation where you solved a problem in a creative way. Tell me about a time that you made a decision and then changed your mind. Describe a situation where you were asked to do something that you’d never attempted previously. Tell me about a time when you achieved success even when the odds were stacked against you.

FIT/DEPARTMENT Why do you want to work at X University? Why do you want to join our department? Why do you want this job? Why should we hire you? What skills would you bring? How would you describe the reputation of X University/this department? What support do you expect from an institution like ours? Why do you think you would be a good candidate for this role? How would you fit with existing activities in our department/university? Which groups here would you expect to collaborate with? Why do you want to collaborate with them (you need to know something about the scope of their work and may be asked to talk about specific ideas for useful collaboration) In what ways other than your subject expertise can you contribute to this Department / School / University? (e.g., public understanding of your area, committee work, graduate programme, running conferences). Of the future plans that you’ve listed, what is the single most important thing for you? In other words, during a period when funding is extremely limited, what is the one thing that you would continue? How in particular would your career benefit from being here? Do you know our campus? From what you know, will you feel at home in it? What sort of colleague would you be? What would you bring to the department? How would you support the admin needs of the department?

TEACHING You will have seen that you have to contribute to course A, how would you structure a version of this course that related to your interests? What would you see at the main challenge to teaching the students here at X? Tell me about a time when you have had to handle a difficult tutorial dynamic. What was it and how did you handle this? Can you give an example for a class/ lecture that went well, and what can you do to achieve this? What do you see yourself teaching here? How do you think your teaching could develop further? I see that you were a visiting lecturer at X. You said that you ‘motivated students to participate.’ Can you tell me how you did this? What do you find are the main challenges when teaching a large number of students and how do you overcome these? Tell me about any collaborative working that you have done whilst teaching. Were then any particular challenges to working collaboratively and how did you overcome these? This role has a substantial amount of teaching. How do you plan to manage such a teaching load with publishing?If you could teach a completely new course at X what would it be and why? What particular challenges have you faced when teaching students at LSE and how did you overcome them? How would you contribute to teaching? Have you developed any learning materials? [Were they successful?] If we asked you to plan an 8-lecture series for first-year undergraduates as part of X course, drawing on your own particular specialism, what would you suggest? How would you attract new students to this department / your subject? What Masters courses would you like to develop? Which other departments would you like to collaborate with for inter-disciplinary course development? Have you offered pastoral support to students? Do you have any experience teaching students who have learning difficulties? What problems have your graduate students presented? Are you a successful teacher? What areas have you found students in your subject to be weakest in? How do you address their problems? How do you cope with underperforming students – give examples How do you engage a bored student on the back row of a class of 100? Talk us through one of your proposed lecture courses What have you learnt about yourself from teaching What have you learnt about teaching from your students What are the most important skills you hope your students will acquire What should students learn beyond the material and techniques of their subject? Have you supervised graduate students and how did you find this experience? What are the differences between teaching undergraduates and teaching graduate students? Between teaching masters students and supervising PhD students? How would you go about motivating a research student who was going through a particularly low point in their doctorate? Tell me about the mechanics of how you run your classes? The students at X won’t have studied this type of history before, how will you teach them the appropriate methodological approach?’ What do you do to get the two students at the back who aren’t saying anything to contribute? You teaching grade is phenomenal, tell me how you get it. Do you know any education theory about the use of case studies? What would you do if you do not have the expert knowledge to the questions asked by the students? What innovative teaching would you bring?

RESEARCH Tell me about your research/PhD. Tell me about your research career to date? (Don’t assume everyone has read your CV, and even if they have, this is a way to get you talking) What are the key findings of your current research/PhD? What is the theoretical contribution of your thesis, or where is it situated in the theory? Are you not concerned that the position will affect your writing and finishing your PhD on time? What will people be saying about your research in 10 years’ time?Outline a project you would undertake if you were awarded research funding. How does your research contribute to the syllabus here? Why did you choose your research topic? What has been your main theoretical and empirical contribution to the subject? What publications have you/do you expect to deliver in the next 12 months/2 years? o Conventional routes o Creative routes – co-editing a book, conference proceedings Since your academic background is X field, why do you have plans to publish your research on Y journal? Why is the multidisciplinary perspective important for your research? And how do you define your research expertise in the long run? Which direction do you see your research going in the future and why? How would you rank your work compared to that of others in your field (a) nationally (b) internationally? What would you consider has been your best work, and why? Which piece of work you have done best shows who you are and what you have to offer? What did it change about how people approach this field? What are the big issues in your field? Which ones will you focus on, and what gives you a competitive edge there? What research grants are you thinking of applying for? [international, national, local] What is the overall importance of your next project? What is the principal benefit of your research to scholarship? To the world beyond scholarship? What does your current research project leave undone? Who are your main competitors? What are they doing? How are you confident that you can compete with them? How would you convince funding body x that they should fund your project rather than the hundreds of others they are considering? What stage is your book at, does it have a prospective publisher? Talk us through the timetable of your research / publication plans What would you say were the most original aspects of your dissertation – in a sentence? And the most important? Why? How would you summarise its importance when describing it to an undergraduate student? Has it thrown up possible final-year or Masters Dissertation topics? What possible Masters or PhD topics has your project / book thrown up? How do you intend to secure and sustain constant funding for your research here? (looking for knowledge of the funding infrastructure) What’s been your most important finding and how do you know it is important? Who would you like to collaborate with? How do you ensure your findings have impact? You say you are interested in x but isn’t the real question y? Where do you want to publish and why? Explain your choice of journals. Do you only want to publish in development journals?

ENTERPRISE/OUTSIDE ACADEMIA How will your research influence policy? Can you tell me about a time when you have transferred the results of your research through any type of knowledge exchange activities? What did you do and how did you do this?

CAREER DEVELOPMENT You will have access to a mentor as well as career and development opportunities at The Learning Institute. What particular support and advice do you feel would useful to you at this early stage of your academic career? Can you mention any experiences that have influenced your career choice to date? What are your longer-term career goals and how do you think this position will help you achieve them? What are your professional goals for the next 5 years, 10 years? Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

GENERAL HR-TYPE QUESTIONS What aspects of your work to you find particularly motivating? Can you give me an example where you have worked well in a team? Can you give me an example when you have resolved a conflict? Have you ever supervised another colleague work and, if so, how did you do this? Have you ever motivated someone and, if so, how did you do this? What committee work have you done and what challenges has it presented? You have achieved a lot of diverse things, how do you balance your time? In this role, ideally, how would you like your effectiveness to be assessed? What further training do you feel you would require to take on this role? What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? How do others describe you? Why are you leaving your current job? (or if at end of contract: why isn’t it being prolonged?) What did you like/dislike about your last job? When would you be available to start? Do you have any questions for us?

PRESENTATIONS General questions about the research. How do you locate your research in general field? What is your unique contribution? What are the big debates in your area? And how does your five-year plan contribute to those debates?

My Question: What specific project will I be working on upon joining the lab? What is the current state of the project? And are there any former PhD or PostDoc works on it? Are there any teaching or mentorship responsibilities for postdocs in the lab? How does collaboration typically work within the lab? Is it more common for students and postdocs to propose their own ideas with the PI providing guidance, or are research directions typically determined by the PI?