Interview questions: four of them come up almost every time

Academic interviews contain a small set of almost entirely predictable questions — and those are, oddly, the ones candidates most often answer vaguely, because they assume the hard questions are elsewhere.

The four that recur

• What will you work on in the next five years.
• Where will the funding come from.
• What can you teach.
• Who here would you collaborate with, and on what.
• Prepare a concrete answer to each, with names and numbers.

The five-year answer

• A theme, then two or three concrete projects under it.
• The first project specific enough to start immediately.
• Distinct from your doctoral work.

The funding answer

• Name actual schemes and their approximate timelines.
• Say which one you would target first and when.
• Vagueness here is read as inexperience.

The teaching answer

• List specific courses, including introductory ones.
• Offer one new course you could design.
• Departments need teaching gaps filled, not only specialists.

Questions you should ask

• How are new staff supported in the first two years.
• What does the promotion process actually assess.
• What happened to the last two people in this kind of position.
• Asking nothing signals you are not evaluating them.

One thing worth remembering

Name actual funding schemes in your funding answer.

It is the single fastest way to show you understand how the system you are joining works — and a candidate who cannot answer it concretely raises a doubt the rest of the interview rarely removes.

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