How to navigate virtual campus interviews

[First Timer]

About to have my first ever virtual campus interview at a LAC next week.

Since I'm pretty clueless about the whole process (especially given everything is being done online due to COVID), I would love some advice and guidance: 

1. What should I expect from a virtual campus interview, in terms of (a) who I am meeting, and (b) what is expected of me (there was no mention of a job talk or teaching demo).
2. Any general advice on giving a first time interview? I know this is vague, but I'm clueless and stressed out, and haven't the faintest idea on what questions to even ask here. Any help and advice is great!

TIA

[ask questions]

virtual campus interviews are a completely new phenomenon for the most part. I think it is completely appropriate for you to ask the search chair these questions - given the circumstances.

[PS]

it would be great if you could relay your experiences to the rest of us :-)

[ask away]

While I have participated on several search committees in the past, I don't have any experience with doing them remotely. Even so, I hope this advice will be useful.

In my experience (as both a candidate and interviewer), search committees generally want the interviews to go well. When a candidate is unprepared (either for the actual visit or for a career in teaching), everybody is uncomfortable for the duration of the candidate's time on campus. At my particular institution, we want to make sure we're seeing the best sides of our candidates. We know that the interview process can be awkward, that candidates might be nervous, and that we generally have a lot more experience and familiarity with our policies, culture, students, etc. There's only so much a candidate can gleam from the outside, so part of our job (as search committee members) involves setting them up for success before the formal interviewing begins.

I know that not all search committees have this orientation, but we really do want to address as many questions ahead of time so that we can focus on the relevant attributes that suggest an individual will be a good colleague, teacher, and scholar. We don't want to be saying in our later deliberations "Well, perhaps if they had known that the teaching demo was for an upper level class they would have pitched it differently" or "Too bad that they thought they had an extra 20 minutes for that job talk." That turns the evaluation of the candidates' performances into hypothetical "what if" guessing games, and that's not a good way to make a significant hiring decision. Toward this end, we try to anticipate as many of those questions as we can and provide that information ahead of time, but we also encourage candidates to contact us before the visit to address lingering concerns.

So I am encouraging you to ask clarifying questions of the search committee chair. Perhaps schedule a short phone chat to go over everything that you're not sure about. Certainly you want to know ahead of time if there will be any formal presentations or teaching demonstrations! I've had candidates ask me about our local dress codes (norms), and I took that as an indication of their awareness that some of these things vary a lot from one school to the next. Write up your list of questions, and figure out the most appropriate way to ask them. If the search committee is offended by this approach, perhaps they are telling you something about their culture that you should be aware of before you sign up to work with them for the next 20 years or so.

Good luck!

[First Timer]

OP here. This was incredibly helpful! Thank you so much.
I will definitely be reaching out to the chair of the SC soon to find out more about what is expected from me as the candidate.

[Guest321]

It's my first time on the market and I recently did a couple of virtual campus interviews. Based on that very limited experience, the campus interviews were more formal than my advisers led me to expect. There was lots of variation across meetings, but in general, the Zoom format made the meetings feel more like an interview than a conversation. Prep answers for the standard questions, like what you would like to teach, how you might teach it, where you see your work going in the future. For the job talk, expect it to feel like you're talking to a wall. It's a bit disconcerting, but if you know to expect it, it helps. Break a leg.