The Second Interview

This morning I had the second phone interview that I mentioned last week. This one was very different than the last one. The previous one was a list of HR-approved interview questions and it was all very business like and formal. This time it seemed much more conversational, and I felt I got a better sense of everyone's personalities. And I actually think I would like working with them, they seemed collegial and we even laughed a bit. I was a little nervous going into the interview because one of the faculty members has a rather crackpotesque website where he debunks the big bang and black holes. Fortunately he did seem to believe in dark matter in the context of galaxies (which is my research), however not in the cosmological context or in relation to dark energy. However, during the interview I asked them all what their areas of interest are, and after describing his he said, "I also like to give astrophysicists a hard time about things like black holes and the big bang." He sounded light-hearted so I said, "so if I come there we will have a lot of interesting conversations?" and he said that yes we'd have a good time. So he actually seemed fairly normal after all.

The funny thing about this interview is that I came away from it thinking that they didn't ask me enough things. There are so many ways that I would be great for this job that I didn't even get to bring up. Sure, they asked me if I had any questions, but I didn't think the question they wanted from me was, "Want to hear another reason I'm great?" Things I thought they would have asked but didn't included, "As you know, the person we hire will be creating a new astronomy BA. What classes would you include in that degree program?", "We are in the process of building a new observatory. What programs or classes do you envision creating to use the observatory?", and "Do you have the leadership experience necessary to lead a new astronomy program?" I tried to bring these things up through other ways, but in the end I ended up having to put some things in the thank you notes. (Side note on thank you notes: I so infrequently hand write anything anymore that my handwriting is atrocious and I can barely write three letters without my hand cramping up!) The strangest question they asked was whether I planned to apply for grant funding. I of course said yes (since basically all astronomers do) and I said it would be mostly so undergrads could work for me and travel to conferences and things. They were surprised and said, "Really, because we don't require you bring in any money at all! We actually don't really have any money." I was surprised and said, "oh, that's good to know."

Anyway, I think that in terms of faculty positions this is one of the best opportunities out there. We'll see what happens!