THE PURPOSE
The 2005 James A. Barnes Club Conference will inaugurate a new program. Mock interviews will be organized to help potential job candidates hone their interviewing skills. Interviewing well is a difficult challenge. Many no doubt remember the stress of going through the “meat grinder” at national conferences; others look forward to this stressful situation. Obviously, graduate students could do mock interviews at their home institutions; however, because their strengths and weaknesses would be already be well known at their home institutions, such experiences will have limits. At the Barnes Club Conference’s mock interview sessions, objective and distanced professionals from other institutions could offer potential candidates valuable tips on interviewing style and protocol. For example, interviewers could offer advice on mannerisms like eye contact or firm handshakes. More substantively, interviewers could ask the following questions: How do candidates pitch their dissertation research? How do they project long-term research agendas? How specific or general are their answers? How do they balance teaching and scholarship in their responses? How can they formulate questions to ask about the hiring institutions? Such interviewer-interviewee interactions in hypothetical situations would also go a long way to alleviate anxieties.

THE SCENARIO
Interested graduate students may attend the Barnes Club Conference and participant as a job candidate in a simulated job interview. The fictional job is a tenure track position in U.S., European, or World history with a three-three teaching load at a medium state institution. Service, teaching, and publication receive equal weight. Alternatively, a graduate student may interview for a fictional public history job. Two-person teams of faculty from Temple University and other area universities will serve at interviewers on the fictitious hiring committee.

THE PROCESS
The Mock Interview itself will occur over an extended lunch break in the following way:
25 minutes - Lunch.
5 minutes - Introduction and opening remarks.
30 minutes - The team will try to simulate a “real” job interview at a national conference as closely as possible.
15 minutes - Evaluation of the job candidate by the team members. The object here is to give constructive criticism to the job candidate. The interviewers should focus on strengths and weaknesses in the candidate’s presentation.
15 minutes - Questions and answers (for public mock interview).