Throughout the talk: "I argue that..." Or "I see blank as blank." Not just in the initial signposting phase of the introduction, but all the way through. This takes away a bit from the proper function of metadiscursive markers like this.
After every question: "Thank you for that question." / "That is a very good question." It is fine to do spontaneously once in a while, but I get the idea that the job candidate was taught that you always had to do this, with every. single. question. You feel that the person would say "that is a very good question" for even a ridiculously bad question.
I had a student once who would put a tag in front of every source, like "cultural critic Fulano de Tal," or "Lorca specialist Jonathan Mayhew."
These are not major transgressions, but minor tics. I'm sure I have my own I'm not even aware of.
[UPDATE]
A few more:
What would you teach for a graduate course? [DISSERTATION TOPIC]. How about an undergraduate course? [DISSERTATION TOPIC].
List of "research interests" on the CV includes 15, mostly overlapping and currently popular things. It would be easier to list what you aren't interested in.
4 comments:
Your last item cracked me up - thank you!
So when there are no jobs, and yours is a desirable one, you get candidates like this?
Or are candidates just universally worse now?
I really regret all the professionalization workshops, they give people all kinds of tics and make the poor candidates too well able to camouflage themselves until it's almost too late.
They are very good candidates! but just with these particular tics.
Mais, c'est bon
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