[Astronomy] My first postdoc interview

Today I experienced my first post-PhD job interview, and my first interview for four years. As I mentioned previously, before Christmas I applied for two postdocs. One was in Berlin, and I haven’t heard back from them; given that the position starts on the 1^st of March, I don’t think I will now. The second position was at Oxford, and it was for that that I had an interview this afternoon.

It was conducted over Skype, with video, which was an odd experience. To start with I could only see two and half of the three interview panel members owing to the position that their camera was set up. That wasn’t too much of a problem though, as the ‘half’ leant in to the camera so that I could see him when he wanted to ask me questions. I also wasn’t sure whether to look at my laptop screen or at the camera. There’s not much of a difference, but it was still a bit awkward. Finally, they hadn’t set up slide sharing. So my presentation regarding my skills, achievements, and suitability involved us looking at separate copies of my slides, with me telling them when to progress!

Overall I feel that I gave an average account of myself. I struggled to answer some of the more technical questions posed to me regarding Bayesian mathematics, and embarrassingly couldn’t remember the details of a particular test that I used for my Rossiter-McLaughlin work. But I wasn’t ever stuck for an answer, and admitted where my knowledge ended rather than trying to bluff my way through, which I think was definitely the right move.

(Credit: knowyourmeme.com)

Ultimately though I feel that they’re looking for someone with a different skillset to the one that I have to offer. That’s not to say that they’re looking for someone with more experience necessarily, just different experience. In any case, now I’ll just have to wait and see.