Sample Job Interview Questions

Each interview will be unique and will reflect the type of institution you are interviewing with. Your first line of defense is to be well-informed about the institution, the department, and the degree options and courses offered in the department. Here are some tips and sample questions from me, other LPD's in German and from experiences other graduate students have had:

1. Be prepared to speak at length in German and in English and to be asked to go back and forth.
2. Above all, be able to clearly and succinctly describe your dissertation research and your research agenda going forward. In English as well as in German.
3. Look at the types of courses offered at the institution. If they tend toward literature survey courses, have some specific ideas of how you would structure a survey course in 18th, 19th and/or 20th century literature.
4. Under Useful Links, there is a document of mock interview questions related to teaching. Look through them and think about how you might answer them.
5. Have some very specific and concrete examples of what you have done in your teaching to facilitate learning - use of technology, field trips, ideas for getting students to talk, designing 'Lernstationen', etc.