ORCID

0000-0003-3392-0316 (Turner)

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2026

DOI

10.1002/lob.70024

Publication Title

Limnology and Oceanography Bulletin

Volume

Advance online publication

Pages

5 pp.

Abstract

[Introduction] "I (EKP) bombed my first interview on the tenure-track academic market. After I entered the Zoom room filled with search committee volunteers, the chair performed a quick round of introductions, and I was told that I would have strictly five minutes to answer each question. I smiled nervously, wringing my hands under the desk, and waited to be asked to derive a diagenetic equation or defend the methods I used in my recent manuscript.

“We'll start with something easy. Tell us about yourself,” began the chair.

I opened my mouth. I closed my mouth. My mind went blank. “Um …”, I stammered, “Well, I was born in Pennsylvania …”

I made it to the point at which I had settled on an undergraduate major when I was told my five minutes were up by a wincing committee member. The remaining 25-minutes were likely equally difficult to witness.Fortunately, the memory holds more humor than embarrassment for me now, but in the immediate aftermath, I realized I needed to devote a bit more time to preparation for subsequent interviews. When I did eventually get another chance, I was prepared, and while I didn't ultimately receive an offer from that academic institution or the institution after that, I did eventually land my dream job."

"I (KAL) fully admit that I treated my successful interview like a slightly unhinged performance. I stood alone in my office at a small liberal arts college, in full business casual, feet planted in a power stance, staring down my laptop as if I could intimidate it into giving me the job.

Two years earlier, I wanted to apply for this exact position, but life circumstances were not in my favor. Now, I finally had the chance: a dream job at an R1 university, doing the inter- and transdisciplinary work I had only read about in other people's papers. I was determined not to waste it.

My screen was surrounded by a halo of Post-it notes with one-liners and key phrases I wanted to hit. I had drafted twenty possible interview questions, typed out my answers, read them more times than I care to admit, recorded myself responding, and then listened to those recordings while I drove and worked out. By the time the interview day arrived, I felt as prepared as I was ever going to be.

When the Zoom room opened and the search committee appeared, I took a slow breath. With each question, I repeated it back to them, pretended to jot down a few notes, and gave myself a moment to collect my thoughts before answering. As the interview went on, I started to notice heads nodding along. At one point, I watched a few committee members glance at each other and smile in a way that seemed to say, “We might have finally found the one.”

Two hours after the interview ended, I received an email from the search committee chair asking if I could come for a campus visit within the next two weeks. Two and a half weeks later, I was offered the job."

While our paths to success looked different, both experiences underscore the same lesson: preparation matters, and the faculty interview process is as much about readiness as it is about qualifications. What follows is designed to help you avoid the pitfalls and replicate the strategies that work. We provide a brief description of what to expect in the virtual and in-person interviews, questions to prepare to be asked and to ask (Box 1), and some general advice for the application process (Box 2) based on the authors' experiences.

Rights

© 2026 The Authors.

Published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License.

Original Publication Citation

Peck, E., Valentine, K., Wittyngham, S., Turner, J., & Lewis, K. (2026). How‐to: Academic job interviews (in the United States). Limnology and Oceanography Bulletin. Advance Online Publication. https://doi.org/10.1002/lob.70024

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