Professor Position
Years ago when I was a part time instructor looking for a full-time tenure track gig as a professor, I had the most amazingly awful interview.
I had made it past the first couple of rounds of the interview process and had made it to the point where I was one of 3 or 4 people in the running for the position. This part usually calls for the live, in-person, interview on campus.
It was all arranged, I would drive over a few hours to the next state, take the campus tour, conduct a few interviews with various committees and admins, have lunch, do any follow up, meet with HR and then head back home.
The campus tour was crazy. It looked NOTHING like the pictures and how they described it. The labs and classrooms were totally run down, antique, and beat to hell.
The big group interview with all the faculty in the department was actually going well... that is until someone runs into the room and yells, "Hey everyone! We're getting sued!"
Basically everyone in the room forgets I exist at this point... there are people whipping out cell phones and calling... there are discussions going on about what it could be about... I'm kinda ticked off at this point.
They suddenly decide to all go to lunch because the interview was basically dead at this point. (We drove there in this massive tricked out Humvee.) It quickly becomes clear that it was one of the other candidates who was interviewing for the job is now filing suit against the department for something and it sounds like it was going to stick. After I heard, "Well, this is going to clean us out!"
I did have a rather nice lunch though... they took me to some local "meat and three" lunch buffet dive and I ate like the poor starving adjunct that I was. They basically only talked about the pending lawsuit and I chatted with the secretary of the dept. about her new grandkid.
After lunch, I'm basically dismissed. The secretary tells me to send them my fuel receipts and I head home hours earlier than expected.
The bastards never paid my fuel receipts after contacting them multiple times.
I guess they really were cleaned out! hahaha
(TribeDoktor, Sun 24 Nov 2013, 7:04, 1 reply)

From what I understand of the US academic recruitment process,
it's nuts.

I mean, I can see the point of giving a sample lecture (though do any students actually turn up?); but the whole several-days-and-several-interviews thing seems horrific. As do the Smoker sessions at the APA. Ewwwww.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Mon 25 Nov 2013, 10:12, closed)