Interview to job offer timeline - arts/humanities

[ThisQuaintNavySquid]

I had an interview for a postdoc position yesterday that I am really excited about but it’s the first time I’ve applied for a full-time academic position. Previously, I’ve interviewed for roles in education (I worked in teaching alongside completing my PhD) and the turn around between interview and job offer is extremely quick - I don’t have any idea how quick/slow it is at university level.

I thought it might be a good idea to start this thread to gather together lots of experience about the timeframe between job interview and offer/rejection, particular for arts/humanities in the UK, as lots of information online is geared towards sciences or the US. I’ll certainly find it helpful and perhaps some other anxious soul searching here in the future can stumble across it too!

If you’re happy sharing what type/level of job you applied for, that might be really helpful, too.

Thank you for reading and sharing!

My experience is a while ago in the humanities, but they generally are very quick to notify people. Maybe 2-3 days. I was offered a job straight after the interview. The next one was 1.5 days and the final one was about 2 days.

Thank you so much for your help, it’s really tricky to find out elsewhere online! What kind of positions were you interviewing for?

The first was for a temporary (1 yr) lecturer. The other two were permanent lectureships.

The longest I’ve heard of is around 1 week. This was when the appointing committee could not agree on who to appoint.

If you're first choice, usually within a couple of days. If you're second choice, could be a week or more while they wait for first choice to accept or turn it down.

I interviewed for education and had a phone call later the same day. I'm now sitting on humanities panels as an interviewer and if all candidates are interviewed on the same day, we try to contact preferred candidates that day or the following one.

It always used to be common to be notified that day or the next day if you got the job… but now some universities are insisting the panel has the appointment ratified by the Dean or equivalent before the candidate can be contacted even to be told they are first choice, so can be more like a week.

Being told you haven’t got the job depends on how competent and humane the institution is. Best case for me was a phone call that evening or a letter the next morning. Worst was over a month - by which time everyone of course knew who had got the job via the grapevine.

My partner is an academic, and he has had everything from a phone call while he was on the train home to waiting 3 weeks. With the three week one, he assumed he hadn't got it after 10 days passed, and then they contacted him to apologise because they wanted to hire more than one person out of all the people they interviewed and were scrabbling for the money and asked for patience, and then offered the job a week or two later. V stressful, but unusual, I think.