I've been bothered since December by a story I was told by an APA job candidate. According to the candidate, one of the members of the search committee with which he was interviewing fell asleep during the APA interview. Now, the other committee members were awake enough to continue the interview, and so they continued as if nothing was amiss. But the candidate was-- rightly, in my view-- pissed. However, he also realized how awkward the situation was, and so also continued as normal.
The whole thing strikes me as criminal. What should he (the candidate) have done? My view is that he should have called attention to the sleeping committee member and politely asked to reschedule. But I guess it's risky to call to the attention of a search committee that they're not doing their job?
Also: Philosophers Anonymous is one year old today. More soon.
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I suspect the other committee members either didn't know what to do -- or, more probably, wouldn't have listened to the sleeper's opinons on anything so it didn't matter.
But -- as the candidate, I might have finished my answer, looked at the sleeper and either a) made a joke about students sleeping in class or b) honestly asked if they would like to reschedule.
Putting myself in the place of a committee member, I'm worried about embarassing the candidate and thus making the interview situation unfair -- if the candidate didn't notice the sleeper. Having the candidate ask the question would make me see that the risk of embarasment is both non-unique AND that the embarassed person should be the sleeper...
Happy birthday, first: love this blog.
Second: wow. I actually had an older prof that would fall asleep regularly in a seminar. Problem was, this guy was opinionated as hell and I could easily see him sleep through an interview and then exert much influence on the committee, one way or another, based on a flash intuition about the candidate. Of course, he'd have done this without the sleeping, so maybe it doesn't matter.
I think I'd probably have not said anything, but then harbored bitterness forever. What should one do? Ask to reschedule, maybe, and then accept that the job might be off the table.
Happy birthday, Philosophers Anonymous!
Inside the Phil Factory probably has the right attitude, which is to show that you can find the humor in the situation, exhibit some grace, and ask for a better time. Of course, the advice that one be funny or graceful itself is often hard to follow (one often comes across as *trying* to be funny or graceful, which is much less effective).
I hope the student hasn't had some consequent self-doubt. (I could hear someone saying: well if s/he weren't so boring, then maybe interviewers wouldn't fall asleep in the middle of an explanation of how an intro course works.)
Spiros--happy birthday PA!!
Love this blog--gives me the unique forum to let down what hair I have left and let fly in good old-fashioned curmudgeonese.
Live long enough, and prosper enough.
Happy birthday to Philosophers Anonymous!
I agree with Spiros that calling attention to the sleeping committee member would have been justified. At the same time, though, I worry that this might harm the candidate's chances. What if the other committee memebers had a thought like "Who is this person who thinks he can insult one of us?"
Perhaps the best response would be to finish the interview without incident and then, later on, contact somebody (e.g., another hiring committee member) to mention what happened and try to insure that the sleeping interviewer's opinion about the candidiate won't weigh very heavily. This would help avoid direct (and possibly harmful, at least from the candidate's perspective) effects without requiring an immediate interaction with that interviewer.
Of course, a punch in the face to wake the sleeper up may be jusfied too.
How about the inverse situation?
During an interview in '06, a candidate fell asleep while speaking to me and the interviewing committee. Now you might think that this poor person was merely an over-tired and stressed-out applicant who had just been through too much. But, here is my favorite quotation from her, after learning that our school has only an undergraduate philosophy program: "Well, I have a friend like you you guys, and he hasn't completely sold himself out working at a place like that. But are you really happy there? Can you be? I don't see how, I mean...."
She then fell asleep, while answering a question about teaching classes in her AOS.
I think the best policy is not to call any attention to it. Any joke might come across as hostile, and if you say something about rescheduling it will irritate people.
One of the times I was interviewed, a moderately well known philosopher kept asking me unrelentingly hostile questions and then scooting his chair around to look out the hotel room window when I was trying to answer him. After I'd finish he'd scoot back around and ask another one unrelated to what I'd just said.
I would have liked to say, "You're being an a-hole," but that would have been a mistake (not that I even got a call-back in any case).
The thing is, departments are typically dysfunctional and weird in the same way that small rural towns are. What is clearly unacceptable and unprofessional behavior to out of towners is just Bob being Bob to people from the town. And any insinuation that they should not have been putting up with Bob being Bob all these years is likely to be taken as an insult.
Happy Birthday PhilAnon!
I agree with Jon Cogburn that feigning indifference is the best policy. The Sleeper functions very much like the Bully or the Flake: for the rest of the committee, the test is how well you handle a colleague who probably grates on all of them. And in such circumstances, it is best to exhibit old fashioned virtues like courtesy, confidence, and the presumption of good faith--precisely because the Sleeper fails to exhibit them.
At such a moment, the candidate is likely to have a strong feeling of being absolutely subject to the whims of monstrous incompetence; but it would be unwise to overcome this feeling by asserting some control over the situation. The candidates is, in fact, powerless, until an offer is made, and part of the test is how much grace you can manage to maintain under such conditions.
Offered up in the "For what this is worth" file...
I had a similar experience at a second interview. I was teaching the class that they had asked me to teach, which was something of a struggle as it was outside my realm of indepth knowledge and the text the students had was agreed to be not very good. But what topped it off was that the regular professor in the class fell asleep during the class.
It was easy to ignore in that situation, so I did. But when someone else in the department asked if students had fallen asleep in class, I said, "No, Prof [Whatever his name was] had that covered," or something like it. I was grinning, but even so it seemed to embarrass the other prof I was talking to. Which it should have, I guess, but that's hardly the ideal way to continue an interview.
Didn't get the job, and am better off for that now, but at the time I really wanted that position.
I think if I was in that position I would just go on as normal, and assume that sleeping guy is equally an embarrassment to his colleagues at the home institution, as well as on field trips. After all, how much influence could he/she possible yield?
i'm a grad student at a department where one of the sc members told me that they had interviewed something like 17 or 19 candidates at the eastern apa in the space of 48 hours. there were two positions to fill. they all looked like hell after that. perhaps it's their own fault, but i can clearly see one or two of these old guys, overworked even without the demands of the job search, dosing off (with no ill intent) and the remaining members of the sc being rather forgiving and just pushing ahead.
I wonder if you could somehow document the incident and then sue the school. After all, it is hard to say that you received the 'same' interview that other candidates received. It seems like some compensation would be appropriate if you didn't get an on campus interview.
If I were on the SC, I'd apologize to the candidate and insist on rescheduling over a nice meal.
But maybe you did get the same experience. Maybe the guy always falls asleep. If they carried on without wondering if he was sick, I'd assume that, and I'd ignore it.
Of course, I've never interviewed for a job, so who knows how I'd actually react?
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