Top Tips for Acing Your Academic Job Interview: Insights from Experts (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: What you would say, your biggest tip to people watching today would be for their academic job interview success. Can I come to you first, please, Michelle? Yes. I'm aware I might be picking the one everybody else would say as well, so apologies, but it's preparation. I have interviewed candidates who haven't done any research into the institution or the faculty they're applying for a job for, and that's them as they're not going to go any further. So do your research. Find out about the institution, what are their values, who are their students, but not just the institution, also the faculty or department you're applying for as well. Read up into them. Who are the members of staff? What's their areas of expertise? What can you contribute? So research, research, research. Absolutely.

Speaker 2: Absolutely. Nadine? Try and relax. I think that's a big thing. We said earlier about talk to somebody who makes you laugh before you go in. Take deep breaths. Have water. And ask if you need questions to be repeated, have them repeated. It's not a problem.

Speaker 3: Be positive. Be enthusiastic. And body language has already been talked about by Amy. But always give a positive answer where possible, even if you're asking about your weaknesses, but try and twist it around. So come across enthusiastic. You've got to sell yourself and convince the panel that you're the right person for the post. So do the homework you said, but positive throughout the interview.

Speaker 4: Yeah, I think I can add to that and really just say attitude is everything. But in an academic interview, you have the capacity to research the research group, the department. It's all there. It's all online. People are on Twitter even these days. Professors go on Twitter. They're on LinkedIn. There's ResearchGate as well. There's no reason why you can't do that extra work. And also, obviously, as a researcher, you should have very well-developed research skills. So put them to good use.

Speaker 1: Just one final tip. Smile. It sounds really obvious. But smiling does really help connect with the panel as well, I think. You can find more information about applying for jobs and hints and tips on the jobs.ac.uk website.