星期四, 六月 07, 2007

After avoiding the 7 deadly sins of résumé design, you may be asking, “If I can’t use crazy colors, clip art, and other types of decoration, how do I make my résumé stand out from the crowd?” Like many things, the answer lies in the details.

Even if you can’t hire a fancy designer and are stuck with Microsoft Word, a few tweaks can turn your blasé résumé into an elegant and functional showpiece.

Update (Oct 25): As promised, here’s a template of the final résumé. Please credit this site, LifeClever, if you post it elsewhere. Thanks!

Update (Dec 11): Check out Sharon’s Universal Résumé Template based on my template.

The typical résumé

Before starting your résumé makeover, first take a look at a typical one:

Like most résumés, it was created in Microsoft Word. It doesn’t look horrible, but it could use improvement. You can improve almost all résumés with four steps:

Pick a better typeface
Remove extra indentations
Make it easy to skim
Apply typographic detailing

1. Pick a better typeface

If you’re using Times New Roman, Word’s default typeface, change it now. Times doesn’t read well on-screen and lacks typographic subtleties such as non-lining numbers. Because it’s available on virtually all computers and designed to be readable on on-screen, try Georgia instead.

At the same point size, Georgia appears larger than Times New Roman, so you’ll want to set the font size a point or two smaller. Just don’t go below 9 points.

To improve readability, also increase the line spacing (also called leading) to at least 120% of the font size.

To do this in Word:

Line Spacing in Microsoft Word

In the menubar, go to Format and select Paragraph.
In the pulldown under Line Spacing, choose Exactly and set the line spacing to 14 points.

Our example résumé currently uses Times New Roman set at a size/line spacing of 11pt/13pt. Let’s change it to Georgia with a size/line spacing of 10pt/14pt.

Here’s a detail of the difference:

Change font

Notice how the Georgia’s numbers blend in better than Times New Roman.

Here’s the full page:

résumé after setting typeface, size, and leading

If you can’t stand Georgia and aren’t worried about on-screen legibility, feel free to choose another appropriate typeface.

2. Remove extra indentations

Next, reduce the number of indentations. Better yet, take them all out. While useful in outlines, too many indentations in a résumé will cause your eyes to jump all over the page, destroying page harmony. The goal is to have all text align to each other.

After reducing indentations, also hang your bullets.

In Word:

Hanging Bullets in Microsoft Word

Replace any spaces after a bullet with a tab character.
Select the bulleted list.
If you don’t see the horizontal ruler, go to the View menu and select Ruler.
On the ruler, drag the First Line Indent marker to left by 1/8th of an inch.

Here’s a detail showing the résumé before and after removing indentation:

Remove indentations detail

To align all the cities and dates on the right, use tabs.

Remove indentations full

Already, you can see a huge improvement.

Also notice that the top margin is now reduced to 0.5 inches. This helps compensate for the additional line spacing in step 1.

3. Make it easy to skim

To make the résumé skimmable, you have to create a distinct typographic hierarchy. By typographic hierarchy, we mean Ellen Lupton’s definition from Thinking With Type:

A typographic hierarchy expresses an organizational system for content, emphasizing some data and diminishing others. A hierarchy helps readers scan a text, knowing where to enter and exit and how to pick and choose among its offerings.

Our example résumé already uses bolds and italics to highlight important information such as names and job titles. If you aren’t using them, set them now.

The headings for the major sections, however, don’t stick out enough. Even with “Education”, “Legal Experience”, and “Skills and Certifications” underlined and set in bold, they look too close to the job titles.

To make these section headings more distinct, use horizontal rules above and below each section heading.

In Word, select the section heading and go to Format in the menubar. From here, you’ll make changes in Paragraph, Font, and Borders and Shading.

Paragraph

Paragraph adjustment

In the pulldown under Line Spacing, choose Exactly if it’s not already chosen, and set the line spacing to 16pt.
Under Spacing, set the Before field to 6pt and the After field to 8pt.

Font

Font adjustment

Select the Character Spacing tab.
For Position, choose Raised from the pulldown and type “1pt” in the field.

Borders and Shading

Adding borders

Select the Borders tab
Under Setting, select Custom
For Style, select a solid line. For Color, choose black. For Width, choose “3/4”.
In the preview area, click the Top Border icon to the left of preview image.
To add a bottom border, repeat step 3 using grey for Color, and “1/4” for Weight.
In the preview area, click the Bottom Border icon to the left of preview image.

Here’s a detail of the difference:

Horizontal rules detail

And now the full page:

Typographic Hierarchy

To give more emphasis to job descriptions and responsibilities, deemphasize the cities and dates by setting them in grey.

4. Apply typographic detailing

Our résumé makeover is almost done, but it needs some finishing touches:

Use smart quotes

Never ever use inch and foot marks (straight quotes) as quotation marks and apostrophes. They should always be curly. Microsoft Word has automatic curly quotes turned on by default. If not:

In the menubar, go to Tools and choose AutoCorrect.
Click the AutoFormat As You Type tab.
Under Replace as you type, click the checkbox next to “Straight quotes” with “smart quotes”.

Space out text set in ALL CAPS

In general, avoid setting type in ALL CAPS. Because the letters start to look the same, it’s harder to read. In small doses, text in ALL CAPS is acceptable if you space out the letters.

The extra spacing between letters help makes each letter more distinct and readable:

Character spacing

In Word:

Select the text set in ALL CAPS.
In the menubar, go to Format and choose Font.
Select the Character Spacing* tab.
In the Spacing pulldown, choose “Expanded” and type in “2pt” in the field.

Separate durations of time with en dashes

Durations of time such as “9–5”, “Monday–Friday”, and “October 5–December 31” should always be separated by en dashes, not hyphens.

On the Mac, press Option-Dash to create an en dash. On a PC, hold down the Alt key and press 0150.

Adjust spacing in phone numbers

The space after the closing parenthesis in a phone number is often too wide. To reduce this, select the space and change its font size in half. So if the rest of the text is 10pt, change it to 5pt.

The final résumé

After adding the finishing touches, here’s the final résumé:

Final résumé

No rules are set in stone, so feel free to experiment. Just do so judiciously. You can find additional guidance here:

Thinking With Type (also check out the book’s website)
The Elements of Typographic Style
Erik’s Typo Tips
Five simple steps to better typography
The Rules of Typography

Questions to ask (and be prepared to answer) during an academic interview

The following questions have been collected from diverse resources by Kathryn L. Cottingham, Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences, Dartmouth College.

Dean

Big Picture
- What is the long term plan for this school/institution?
- How does this department fit into the long-term plan?
- What is the outside perception of this department? Strong? Unified? Interactive?
- Admissions profiles:
  - Undergraduates: who applies? who is accepted? who comes here? Where do they go after graduation?
  - Graduates: who applies? who is accepted? who comes here? Where do they go after graduation?
New Faculty Assimilation/Success
- What sorts of programs are available for new faculty members?
  - Formal mentoring?
  - Orientation?
  - Written faculty handbook?
Research
- What resources are available to initiate student research?
- Is there support for summer research by undergraduates?
- Are competitive, within-institution seed grants available?
- What are the indirect costs of grants?
- What are the expectations for the summer? On campus? Or is field work ok?
Teaching
- What are typical teaching opportunities, across the college?
- How much variation is there across departments?
- Are teaching training opportunities available? What kinds? How often?
- Can one buy out of teaching obligations?
Faculty Review/Tenure
- What is the schedule and mechanism of faculty review?
- How much of the department is already tenured? Is there a quota?
- Who decides tenure and how?
Sabbatical Policies
- Are sabbaticals available?
- If so, how do they work?
- Do benefits continue?
Details
- What salary range?
- How paid?
- Can grants be used to supplement summer salary?
- How do raises work?
- What are the benefits?
- What retirement plan(s) would be available?
- What type of health plans are available?
- Any benefits for tuition for family members?
- Will they pay moving expenses?
- Are there resources available to assist spouses in locating jobs?
- Who insures equipment?
- Who would I be negotiating with?
- What is the time frame for making a decision?

Department Chair

Big picture
- What is your vision for the department/school? Where is it going in the next 5 years? 10?
- When was the last planning exercise? Can I get a copy?
- How does this position fit in to that vision?
- Is the department growing or shrinking?
  - Which subfields?
  - Are there tensions among the subdisciplines?
  - What are current plans for future hires?
New Faculty Assimilation/Success
- What sorts of programs are available for new faculty members?
  - Formal mentoring?
  - Written faculty handbook?
Department Administration
- How big is the department?
- Is it unified, or split along disciplinary lines?
- How often does the department meet to discuss departmental business?
- How are decisions made?
- How is chairmanship determined? How long is the term?
Students
- What kind of graduate students do you attract?
- Where do they go once they finish their degrees?
- Who pays for graduate students? Are there any training grants?
- Do students have a say in search decisions?
- Do students have a say in department administration?
- What interdisciplinary collaborations are already in place? (Are there any training grants, for example)
- How many undergraduate majors come through the program each year?
Research
- What is available as "set up" money?
- Is there department research support available? Of what kinds?
- Are there vehicles available for field trips/research use?
Teaching
- What secretarial help is available for working with courses? With grants/papers?
- What is the teaching expectation through time? How many courses?
- Which courses?
- What would this person teach over the next 3 years?
- How much flexibility in what an individual teaches?
- How much flexibility in when courses are scheduled (within a week, within a year)?
- How big are classes? Are teaching loads weighted by the number of students in the classes?
- Is there time to prepare the first course?
- Can I teach a seminar the first semester/quarter?
- Are TAs available? For what courses?
- How much funding is there for courses, particularly new ones?
- How do ideas for new courses get processed?
- What are the teaching labs like?
- Are there computer teaching labs? Software? Support personnel?
Service
- What non-teaching expectations are there?
- What are the ��standing�� department committees?
- How does undergraduate advising work?
- How does graduate advising work?
Promotion & Tenure
- Are there annual reviews before tenure?
- Who decides on tenure?
- On what criteria are decisions made?
- Are the criteria written down and handed out to new faculty?
- What are the unwritten criteria?
- What percent succeed?
- Is there a ��tenuring up�� policy?
- schedule -when do people come up for tenure?
- What are the criteria for promotion to full professor?
Details
- Can I see the space for this person?
- How much office space, lab space, offices for graduate students?
- How long to remodel? Who pays?
- Ethernet? Networks? Email? Who pays?
- Reprints? Page charges?
- IMPORTANT FOR YOUR SANITY: When will a decision be made? When might I be notified?

Faculty Members

Big Picture
- What do you like best about this place?
- What do you like least about this place?
- What are you looking for in this new position? (want to know: is there agreement? Or are there opposing ideas?)
- What are hiring priorities for the future?
- What else does a newcomer need to know?
New Faculty Assimilation/Success
- What sorts of programs are available for new faculty members?
  - when you started
  - now
  - what do you wish you'd known?
Higher Administration
- How is the [higher] administration? Rigid? Flexible?
- Are they fair?
Department Administration
- How often does the department meet?
- How are decisions made?
- Do you feel that faculty have an adequate say in day to day operations?
  - In major decisions?
Graduate & Undergraduate Students
- How about the students? Are they motivated? What do they do after graduation?
- What support is available for graduate student research? Enough computers?
- What support is available for undergrad research?
- Are work study students available from time to time?
- Is there travel support? How often? How much?
- Do all biology majors do research?
- Do they have to submit a thesis?
- Are there any curriculum changes in the works?
- Do grad students with TA's have time to get their own research done?
- How are most grad students funded?
Research
- What support is available for research?
- How's the library? Journal availability? Where do you go for the obscure stuff?
- Does the administration support travel to scientific meetings? How often? How much?
- How much equipment sharing is there?
- Do you feel like this is a congenial environment?
- How much collaboration is there within the department or college?
- How much external collaboration is there? Is this supported by the administration?
- Who does grant book-keeping?
- Is there access to mainframe or UNIX-based computers?
- How much technical support is there for computing?
Teaching
- What do you teach?
- What is the general teaching expectation through time? How many courses?
- What would you like this person to teach over the next 3 years?
- How much flexibility in what an individual teaches?
- How much flexibility in when courses are scheduled (within a week, within a year)?
- How big are classes? Are teaching loads weighted by the number of students in the classes?
- Can I teach a seminar the first semester/quarter?
- Are TAs available? For what courses?
- How are TAs trained?
- How much funding is there for courses, particularly new ones? Can you buy what you need?
- How do ideas for new courses get processed?
- What secretarial help is available for working with courses? With grants/papers?
- Is this a Mac based or PC based department? What are the student computer labs like?
- Who sets up equipment and washes glassware for teaching labs?
Responsibilities/Loads
- How are administrative committee responsibilities?
- How about advising?
- How many minor committees for graduate students?
- What percent of your time is spent on teaching, research and service?
- What is the average class size?
- What is the average lab size?
- What is your overall work load?
Sabbaticals
- What is the policy on sabbaticals? Do they have them? When? Are they automatic?
- How much?
Promotion & Tenure
- Are there annual reviews before tenure?
- Who decides on tenure?
- On what criteria are decisions made?
- Are the criteria written down and handed out to new faculty?
- What are the unwritten criteria?
- What percent succeed?
- Is there a ��tenuring up�� policy?
- schedule -when do people come up?
- What are the criteria for promotion to full professor?
Details
- How's the salary?
- How do raises work?
- Are the benefits any good? Are they transferable to other schools?
- What are housing costs?
- Is good housing available?
- What's it like to live here? Where do most people live? In town? Elsewhere?
- Schools?
- Crime rate?
- Cultural events on campus? Locally?
- Tuition assistance?
- Opportunities for spouse/partner?
- How's the parking?
- Family leave policies? Maternity coverage? Day care?
- Who pays for photocopying, phone calls, interlibrary loans, faxes, page charges, reprints?

Miscellaneous Questions

Salary/Benefits
(Ask administration, untenured faculty, or benefits coordinators)
- How much?
- Hard money or soft money?
- What are the fringe benefits like?
  - health insurance. Who pays? What %? How does copay work?
  - maternity coverage/leave. How long a leave is guaranteed?
  - sick leave
  - retirement plans (TIAA-CREF? How do they do it? Matching? Who pays?)
  - any mortgage assistance programs?
Raises
(Ask administration & untenured faculty members)
- what are the typical ranges?
- On what criteria are raises granted? Who decides?
Living
- cost of living: high/low?
- housing costs
Start Up
- How much money for equipment, supplies and travel as "set up" money?
- Can the spending be spread over a number of years, say two or three?
- Summer salary included?
- How about summer salary for undergraduate and graduate students until grants?
- Is there seed money available from the college/university?
Tenure
- schedule -when do people come up?
- Are there annual reviews before tenure?
- Who decides on tenure?
- On what criteria?
- Are the criteria written down and handed out to new faculty?
- What percent succeed?
- Is there a "tenuring up" policy?

Graduate Students

Big Picture
- What do you do?
- Why did you come here?
- What do you want to do after you finish?
- What's the best thing about this department?
- What could be improved?
- What's the best thing about this institution?
- What could be improved?
- What do you want from the new person?
- What skills/courses/seminars could I offer that would be especially helpful to you?
Student Life: What's it like to be a Ph.D. student here?
- How much camaraderie is there among the students of different professors?
- How much say do you have in administrative decisions? Job searches?
- Do students worry about support? How are the TAships? RAs?
- How many students have their own grants?
- Do you have enough money to live on?
- Is there a department social life? Within the grads/postdocs?
Department Politics
- Do the faculty get along? Are there hierarchies? Clear schisms?
- How do things work day-to-day? Does each professor have their own lab, which works independently of other labs? Or have professors banded together in groups with more shared equipment?
- What do you hear from faculty about:
  - job satisfaction
  - department politics
  - tenure issues
  - salaries
- What do you think about these issues?
Courses
- What's a typical junior/senior course like?
- What's a typical grad course like?
- What classes are hard? How much out of class work is there? Is there a lot of variation among different sections of the same course?
- What's the grad curriculum, beyond the core courses? Do students take many courses?
- How do you like having required core courses?
- What's this statistics core course like from a student perspective?
- How big are the classes?
Teaching
- Do you have time to do your own research when you're teaching?
- How much teaching does the average student do?
- Do you get trained?
- If so, how?
- Would there be interest in seminars to improve teaching methods?
- Can you take a more active role in teaching, if you want to?
Research Training
- How many of you had M.S. degrees when you started here?
- How many of you had research experience as undergrads or as technicians?
- Do you feel like you're exposed to sufficient techniques here?
- Is there support to get training elsewhere if it's not available here?
- Do you have enough computers/equipment to get your research done?
- What do you need that I could buy with startup funds to help the community?
- Do you have enough time to do your research if you're also teaching?
Details
- How's the food? Beer?
- Do alumni come back and tell you about life after graduation?

Questions to be Prepared For

In one of my interviews, I was given these four topics in advance:
- Future research plans: what directions do you see your research taking in the next 5-10 years? What will be the topic of your first major research proposal as a new faculty member, and where will you submit it? What balance do you anticipate between field research and lab/office based research? If field work will be important, what field sites would you want to consider in the first few years?
- Education: Given our curriculum needs within the X group, how will you contribute to the undergraduate and graduate curricula? In particular, what graduate course(s) what you like to teach, and what will be your basic teaching model (e.g. lecture, lecture + lab, discussion, etc)?
- Graduate and undergraduate research: How will you engage graduate and undergraduate students in your research program? That is, what style of advising/mentoring will you use?
- Resources: What critical resources do you need in order to establish a successful research program? What critical resources may already be here? What kind of help would you want from the X group, the Department, and the University for you to achieve your goals?
From Everham & Smallridge, ESA Bulletin Dec 1994
- What is the main point of your dissertation?
- What are your professional goals?
- What is your concept of teaching in a 4-year college as opposed to a research university?
- What specific research will you pursue if you are selected? How do you anticipate funding it?
- How has your experience and training prepared you to teach the courses required?
- What other courses might you teach?
- Why do you want this job?
- Why should they hire YOU?
- What strengths would you bring to the department?
- What would you expect from this department and administration?
- What kind of start-up funds, facilities, and equipment would you need?
- What experiences or interests do you have in college-wide activities and service?
From an underground primer by Peter Kareiva (UW-Seattle) and Dan Doak (UC-Santa Cruz):
- What research will you be doing when you show up here?
- What projects will you start next?
- Why would you want to come here?
- What teaching would you like to do?
- What is your philosophy of grad student training? How will you support students? What types of projects do you expect them to work on?
- What do you contribution to the department that is not already well covered by the faculty?
- What makes you think you could ever get any outside funding?
- What is the best idea you ever had?
- What do you do? (the 3-5 minute summary of your entire research agenda)
- Where do you see your work going in the next 10-20 years?
From an underground list of questions used by graduate students at the University of Arizona
- What kinds of tools would be available in your lab for grad student use?
- In what areas do you think your work would uniquely contribute to this department?
- With whom in the department do you envision interacting the most? Outside the department?
- What meetings do you attend? What societies do you belong to?
- What do you envision as your ideal lab: # grads, undergrads, postdocs, techs, participation of grads who are not your own students?
- To what degree do you see integrating grad students into your research program?
- Is their work usually closely related to your research focus or is it fairly independent?
- How do you help grad students get started on a project?
- What's your perspective on grad student funding?
- How would you respond to a student who is floundering (early vs. late)?
- What types of mentoring have you experienced -- and what would you do similarly or differently?
- What courses have you taught before?
- What do you see as the major challenges of teaching at a large (small) university?
- What do you want to teach? (grad, undergrad, seminars) Statistics?

Questions Known To Catch People Off Guard

The illegal questions: spouses, children, etc.
- For example: will anything need to be done for your spouse/partner (like find them a job)?
Would you take this job if it were offered to you?
How would you handle an interpersonal conflict in your lab?
A break-up between two members of the lab who were involved?

Preparing for an academic job interview

PREPARING FOR AN ACADEMIC JOB INTERVIEW:
Frequently asked questions for on-site and phone interviews

Prepared by DIALOG VI Symposium Participants
Robert W. Campbell, Institut für Hydrobiologie und Fischereiwissenschaft,
University of Hamburg, Germany

M. Claire Horner-Devine, School of Aquatic and Fishery Science, University of Washington
Julien Lartigue, Marine Science Institute, University of Texas at Austin
Gretchen C. Rollwagen Bollens, School of Biological Sciences,
Washington State University Vancouver

Congratulations! If you are reading this, you likely have put together a very successful
application package and are preparing for an interview. This paper builds on discussions at the
November 2004 DIALOG VI Symposium for recent Ph.D. graduate (see http://aslo.org/phd.html). Most of the forty participants were in temporary postdoctoral positions so there was great interest in the job-application process. Several of the participants had recently
been interviewed, so the symposium provided a useful forum for exchanging information and
insights. See also suggestions on applying and interviewing for jobs prepared by the 2002
DIACES Symposium participants, http://aslo.org/phd/jobhunting2002.html. We have put
together this article to share our insights with a larger audience. We hope you will find them
useful.
First of all, always keep in mind that the interview for a position is very important both in terms
of giving your potential department a chance to evaluate you, but also for getting a sense of
whether the position and department are a good fit for you.
What follows is a list of questions intended to help you prepare for your upcoming interview. To
get the most out of your interview, it helps to spend some time thinking about what kinds of
questions you might be asked, how to answer those questions and what sorts of questions you
would like to ask. We present these questions as a list broken into categories, including research,
teaching, institutional/departmental issues, and personal/professional development. We finish by
providing some general interview suggestions based on our experience and some suggestions for
phone interviews, since these seem to be increasing in frequency.
These lists are not meant to be exhaustive—they simply reflect our recent experience as
interviewees. Some of the questions may not be relevant to all positions and universities. And, of
course, each interview is different, and you may be asked an array of questions not on our lists.
However, we do expect that reading through these lists and preparing answers to at least some of
the questions will serve at least three useful purposes:
1. It will help you identify the sorts of questions for which you should have ready answers
when you interview.
2. It will help you identify (and hopefully answer) some questions that are important for your
own personal and professional development.
3. Perhaps most importantly, thinking about these questions and your own answers will get
you thinking in “interview mode.” (That is, to get yourself into the routine of thinking
broadly about your interests and goals, and articulating these goals in a way that makes a
potential employer think: “I’d like to work with this person!”)

Even if the questions presented here are not asked when you interview, we hope you will benefit
from the practice they provide in terms of thinking through answers. They might also help you
think of some questions that you would like to ask while you are visiting.
Phone Interviews:
Phone interviews seem to be growing more common as search committees try to make the
difficult decision of who to invite for a campus interview. When one of us was preparing for a
phone interview for a tenure-track faculty position, a senior colleague shared a list of questions
that he thought would likely come up. As it turns out, he was exactly right, and she was able to
sail right through the interview, was invited to campus for in-person interviews, and was
ultimately offered the position! If you are not interviewed by phone, these same questions are
likely to be asked on site. Questions (in generally the order they were asked):
• Why are you interested in this position?
• How will/could you involve students in your research?
• What courses could you teach here? (Check out the course offerings in the department ahead
of time and use actual course numbers to refer to the courses you could step into, as well as
new courses you might propose.)
• What sorts of research projects/topics could you pursue here? (Check out the research
interests of the other faculty in the department, and mention possible areas for potential
collaboration, or possible dovetails with current research.)
• What kinds of facilities would you need to conduct your research and teaching here? (If
possible, get a sense of what major items are already in place (such lists are often on
departmental/college websites) and talk about how you could use what’s there, as well as
anything new you would need/want.)
• When could you start in the position?
• What do you see as your greatest accomplishments in your career to date? What shortcomings
have you dealt with?
• How would you describe your interactions with students?
• What questions do you have for us? (You should prepare several questions in advance.
Asking these questions led to more lively discussion among the interviewers and allowed
everyone’s individual personalities to emerge.)
On-Site Interviews:
The following questions are in no particular order and reflect our personal experiences. Some of
these questions could also come up in a phone interview, although probably not the more
detailed ones. So even if you are only at the phone interview stage, it would be helpful to review
these, too.
Research
• Why did you choose your dissertation (post-doc) topic?
• Tell us about the theoretical framework of your research.
• What changes would you have made to your dissertation or post-doctoral work if you were to
begin again?
• What contribution does your dissertation make to the field?
• Tell me about your research. (Asked by a Dean who didn’t know the field)
• Why didn't you finish your dissertation sooner?
• What are your research plans for the next 2/5/10 years?
• What are possible sources of funding to support your research?
• What are your plans for applying for external funding?
• When will you have sufficient preliminary data for a grant application?
• What facilities do you need to carry out your research?
• How does your research fit in with this department?
• Who would you collaborate with?
• What kind of startup package do you need?
• Do you have the permission of your mentor/advisor to take this work with you? (mostly asked
of postdocs)
Teaching
• Are you a good teacher?
• What makes a good advisor? Do you think it is important to challenge your students? How
would you do that?
• How many MS and PhD students would you try to have in your lab? And what about
technicians and post-docs?
• What is your approach to advising graduate students?
• It is the third week of your introductory class and you notice that some students really aren't
paying attention, some are sleeping and some aren't showing up - what do you do?
• How do you feel about having to teach required courses?
• How do you motivate students?
• How would you encourage students to major in your field?
• In your first semester you would be responsible for our course in _____. How would you
structure it? What textbook would you use?
• What is your teaching philosophy?
• If you could teach any course you wanted, what would it be?
• What do you think is the optimal balance between teaching and research?
• Have you had any experience with distance learning or technology in the classroom?
• How would you involve undergraduates in your research?
• Have you taught graduate or professional students?
• Have you supervised any undergraduate or undergraduate students?
Institutional/Departmental Issues
• Can you summarize the contribution you would make to our department?
• Are you willing to become involved in committee work?
• Why are you interested in our kind of school?
• What institutional issues particularly interest you?
Career and Personal
• You list a number of interesting community service activities on your CV. Would you want to
continue with that sort of extracurricular involvement if you came to U of X?
• If you have more than one job offer, how will you decide?
• How do you feel about living here?
• What does your spouse do? (…they are not supposed to ask this but they probably will!)
• What do you do in your spare time?
• Who else is interviewing you?
• What will it take to persuade you to take this job?
• What kind of salary are you looking for?
Helpful advice based on experience:
• Try to enjoy yourself.
• If you enjoy talking to certain people during the day you can bring that up with the committee.
They want to know that you enjoy the department.
• Be prepared to tell your story again and again. It may seem like it is getting really old and
boring, but try to make it seem fresh to them.
• Say goodbye to people you have talked with individually if you can.
• Read the job description carefully.
• Bring phone numbers and names.
• Bring a print-out of the faculty web pages, particularly those you know you are going to meet
but also those of others so you can look them up quickly.
• Practice your talk to death.
• Time it.
• Develop a "cocktail party length" summary of your work that you can spout off.
• Bring extra copies of your vita, dissertation abstract, papers, statement of research interests,
handouts for talk.
• Bring a sample syllabus of a course you might want to teach.
• Don't check in anything critical on the plane – carry it with you.
Final words…
Being asked to interview for an academic position is a major statement about how the search
committee feels about your preparation and potential as a member of their faculty. You should
take pride in reaching this stage of the application process! Based on our experiences, your best
bet now is to do a lot of homework (about the department, its faculty/students/staff, its facilities,
the overall university and the community/city/part of the country you’re visiting) – and relax!
These people really want to learn about you, they want to know that you’ve taken the interview
seriously, they want to think about how you could add to their department. Be yourself,
remember that you’ve got skills and interests to contribute, and enjoy the process as much as you can.
Good luck!!

Acknowledgments

DIALOG, the Dissertation Initiative for the Advancement of Limnology and Oceanography, is
funded through from the National Science Foundation (NSF-OCE-0217056), National
Aeronautics and Space Administration and Office of Naval Research (ONR-N00014-98-1-0590)
and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA-NA16OP1435) to Whitman
College, C.S. Weiler PI. These agencies support the program and most participant travel. The
Education Section of the American Fisheries Society, Society of Canadian Limnologists, and
Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research provided awards to supplement participant
travel.

星期一, 六月 04, 2007

How to Write an Abstract

(Draft 10/20/97)

Phil Koopman, Carnegie Mellon University

Abstract

Because on-line search databases typically contain only abstracts, it is vital to write a complete but concise description of your work to entice potential readers into obtaining a copy of the full paper. This article describes how to write a good computer architecture abstract for both conference and journal papers. Writers should follow a checklist consisting of: motivation, problem statement, approach, results, and conclusions. Following this checklist should increase the chance of people taking the time to obtain and read your complete paper.

Introduction

Now that the use of on-line publication databases is prevalent, writing a really good abstract has become even more important than it was a decade ago. Abstracts have always served the function of "selling" your work. But now, instead of merely convincing the reader to keep reading the rest of the attached paper, an abstract must convince the reader to leave the comfort of an office and go hunt down a copy of the article from a library (or worse, obtain one after a long wait through inter-library loan). In a business context, an "executive summary" is often the only piece of a report read by the people who matter; and it should be similar in content if not tone to a journal paper abstract.

Checklist: Parts of an Abstract

Despite the fact that an abstract is quite brief, it must do almost as much work as the multi-page paper that follows it. In a computer architecture paper, this means that it should in most cases include the following sections. Each section is typically a single sentence, although there is room for creativity. In particular, the parts may be merged or spread among a set of sentences. Use the following as a checklist for your next abstract:

Motivation:
Why do we care about the problem and the results? If the problem isn't obviously "interesting" it might be better to put motivation first; but if your work is incremental progress on a problem that is widely recognized as important, then it is probably better to put the problem statement first to indicate which piece of the larger problem you are breaking off to work on. This section should include the importance of your work, the difficulty of the area, and the impact it might have if successful.
Problem statement:
What problem are you trying to solve? What is the scope of your work (a generalized approach, or for a specific situation)? Be careful not to use too much jargon. In some cases it is appropriate to put the problem statement before the motivation, but usually this only works if most readers already understand why the problem is important.
Approach:
How did you go about solving or making progress on the problem? Did you use simulation, analytic models, prototype construction, or analysis of field data for an actual product? What was the extent of your work (did you look at one application program or a hundred programs in twenty different programming languages?) What important variables did you control, ignore, or measure?
Results:
What's the answer? Specifically, most good computer architecture papers conclude that something is so many percent faster, cheaper, smaller, or otherwise better than something else. Put the result there, in numbers. Avoid vague, hand-waving results such as "very", "small", or "significant." If you must be vague, you are only given license to do so when you can talk about orders-of-magnitude improvement. There is a tension here in that you should not provide numbers that can be easily misinterpreted, but on the other hand you don't have room for all the caveats.
Conclusions:
What are the implications of your answer? Is it going to change the world (unlikely), be a significant "win", be a nice hack, or simply serve as a road sign indicating that this path is a waste of time (all of the previous results are useful). Are your results general, potentially generalizable, or specific to a particular case?

Other Considerations

An abstract must be a fully self-contained, capsule description of the paper. It can't assume (or attempt to provoke) the reader into flipping through looking for an explanation of what is meant by some vague statement. It must make sense all by itself. Some points to consider include:

Meet the word count limitation. If your abstract runs too long, either it will be rejected or someone will take a chainsaw to it to get it down to size. Your purposes will be better served by doing the difficult task of cutting yourself, rather than leaving it to someone else who might be more interested in meeting size restrictions than in representing your efforts in the best possible manner. An abstract word limit of 150 to 200 words is common.
Any major restrictions or limitations on the results should be stated, if only by using "weasel-words" such as "might", "could", "may", and "seem".
Think of a half-dozen search phrases and keywords that people looking for your work might use. Be sure that those exact phrases appear in your abstract, so that they will turn up at the top of a search result listing.
Usually the context of a paper is set by the publication it appears in (for example, IEEE Computer magazine's articles are generally about computer technology). But, if your paper appears in a somewhat un-traditional venue, be sure to include in the problem statement the domain or topic area that it is really applicable to.
Some publications request "keywords". These have two purposes. They are used to facilitate keyword index searches, which are greatly reduced in importance now that on-line abstract text searching is commonly used. However, they are also used to assign papers to review committees or editors, which can be extremely important to your fate. So make sure that the keywords you pick make assigning your paper to a review category obvious (for example, if there is a list of conference topics, use your chosen topic area as one of the keyword tuples).

Conclusion

Writing an efficient abstract is hard work, but will repay you with increased impact on the world by enticing people to read your publications. Make sure that all the components of a good abstract are included in the next one you write.

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