Claire Potter Shows Us How it’s Done

The Chronicle of Higher Education recently had a couple of articles on long-distance interviews.  As with pretty much every other industry, institutions of higher education are now conducting fewer face-to-face interviews than ever.  Instead, they’re increasingly using telephone calls and even Skype.  As many of us already know, not all faculty members are at ease with modern technology, so a Skype conference call can be a nerve-wracking challenge.  Not for tech-savvy Claire Potter, however, who blogs over at Tenured Radical:

Claire Potter, a professor of history and American studies at Wesleyan University, was thinking along those lines [the lines of being aware of what’s in the background—and using that to your advantage] when she had a Skype interview in February for a dean’s position. “I set the scene as if I were on the Lehrer NewsHour,” she says. “I assembled a group of books from my research and put them right behind me.” She also wore a button-down shirt, a jacket, and some earrings, but since the camera only pictured her only from the waist up, she could wear her comfortable blue jeans.

So seniors, you know who to go to be like a boss.  Good luck trying to get the internet to work if you have a Skype interview on campus though.

[Chronicle]