Steve Tippins walks through what hiring committees ask Ph.D. candidates in professor interviews: dissertation status, publication plans, service experience, and how you balance teaching, research, and service. He emphasizes matching your goals to the institution's priorities and showing you'll contribute to their mission.
You're gonna be asked, especially if this is for an assistant professor or teaching professor position, "Have you finished your dissertation?" or "Where are you in the process and when do you expect to finish?" They don't want to put all this time and effort and money into hiring someone who isn't finished with their dissertation and/or doesn't seem like they're going to finish their dissertation because that means when they show up on campus they're going to have divided interests. Once they start paying you, they want to be your only interest. They're gonna ask you about publishing. "Hey, where are you gonna publish the results out of your dissertation?" They want to know that you're going to be doing more research because they want their name on the research, and that's how you get tenure. They may talk to you a little bit about service. You may not have had a lot of exposure to it as a graduate student. Any exposure you've had is good. You just want to express willingness to be deeply involved with the school, school and to help the school move forward. They may ask you about your ideal balance of teaching, research, and service. It's best if you understand who you're talking to ahead of time. If you're talking to a school that is heavy in research, you probably don't want to be saying, "You know, I want to have 60% of my job to be teaching," because that's not what they're looking for. So you want to be able to answer, and you want to be interviewing with schools that fit with your goals in life. The Scholar Career Network exists specifically to support Ph.D.s through moments like this and help them find meaningful careers.
