Telephone interview, academic librarian

My first academic interview! It's a subject specialist position, and this was a quickie screening interview. Six person panel: four librarians, two faculty.

• Why did you apply and what attracted you to this university?


• How would you build relationships with faculty?


• What [subject] resources are you familiar with?


• What do you do to help facilitate student success?


• What is your greatest professional accomplishment?

The questions were broad to the point of being vague. I suppose that was on purpose, and the direction you take the question could say as much as your answer. I should have gotten all reference interview-y on them and asked more clarifying questions to figure out what they meant.

It's definitely tricky to switch gears from public library to academic interviews. I'm kind of on autopilot with the public library stuff at this point, but I had to come up with mostly new material for this one. The result being, I think I rambled a bit more than usual.

The bit where I got to ask questions was really helpful. I asked my standard, "What is the greatest challenge you will face in the next five years?" They talked a lot about liaison to departments and building relationships with faculty, as well as self assessment. I liked the emphasis on self assessment, that tells me they're looking seriously at ways to become better. It was fascinating to hear the different perspectives from librarians versus faculty. The faculty seemed more concerned with concrete user issues, like subscriptions to online journals.