John Fea on Interviewing for that History Job

Over at The Way of Imrpovement Leads Home, John Fea offers hints for all those individuals interviewing for history jobs at the AHA, ASCH, and, or, just over the phone. Along with giving general tips, Fea provides more specific advice for candidates who are interviewing for jobs at teaching institutions, research universities, and church-related schools.

Here's a particular useful bit:

Once you find out who will be doing the interview, start researching. By this point you should have already familiarized yourself with the department web site, but now you want to go a bit deeper. Find out as much as you can about the people who will be seated on the other side of the table. What courses do they teach? (You do not want to propose a course that gets too close to the "turf" of another professor in the department). What are their research interests? (You may want to mention how your work has some theoretical connections to the work of a particular interviewer). All of this stuff is pretty straightforward and most good candidates do not need to be told any of this, but you might be surprised to learn just how many people come to an interview unprepared.

Read more here.