How scared should I be?! How much work should I do? and how honest should I be about how little of my thesis is actually written?

I applied for a post doc on the grounds that it was very very similar to my PhD, just researching a different patient group so I'm pretty well qualified for it. However despite coming to the end of my third year I am nowhere near finished and the whole idea of starting a job soon is pretty scary. If and it's a big if I did get it I'd be looking to start in the new year and then write my socks off till then.

But anyway having not had a post doc interview before I really don't know how much of a big deal it is and what to expect. Will the be expecting some perfect researcher who knows all about everything? I'm trying to relax about it as I have a good track record with applications and a not so good one with intreviews! Any tips would be great....

I've had two post doc interviews so far. I've lost out on both becasue I've not got the PhD yet - going up against people who have. BUT you never know who's applied AND you have got an interview!

The questions I have been asked are..

- tell me a bit about yourself (urgh!)
- why do you want the job?
- why do you want to work at [university x]
- what can you offer us (urgh!)
- what was your PhD about?
- what have you learnt from your PhD
- what are the 3 things your PhD has given you (same as above really)
- if you don't finish your PhD, how will you manage work and your PhD?
- what expereince do you have of publishing your work?

Just assume they have not even looked at your CV - as I'm sure they didn't in my case. Half way through one interview they said "so your PhD is mainly qualitative, you haven't got any quantitative skills" and I was like "erm, I TEACH stats to other PhD students and half my PhD is stats" (as they had only asked about the qualitative bits up until then!)

Good Luck!

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I had gone through one 5 months ago when I was in my 2nd year PhD. It was at the moment I had to visit the States for an international conference (I am from Hong Kong), so basically I had contacted the potential supervisor beforehand through natureJobs.com. Since the post-doc project involves 3 superivisors, I had individual meetings wth them one by one for 1.5 hour each (one at the conference venue, the other two at their labs in University), and had a jointed-lab presentation in front of all the colleagues and students of the labs from the last 2 sups, which was basically like a viva exam lasted for at least 2 hours.

Most of the questions involved:
A detailed description of your PhD project (if you have got publications, you have to explain to them in details)
How your knowledge in your curret PhD study can benifit the post-doc project (So you have to read some of their papers and think a bit before meeting up).

Other than these two are miner stuffs about your confidence in graduating on time..blah blah blah.

I guess the most powerful pre-requisits are: you have a handful of decent publications and clear undersanding of your project; afterall is all about your presenation skills on whether you can tell and teach your work to everyone as an intereting story.

It was a very tough 2-weeks time in the States but it was very rewarding since I got the job back then and my current PhD supervisor is very kind to get me graduate early and start the Job at coming Oct.

Good luck to you, mate.
(up)

Thanks for your responses. Given me lots to think about and I'll try and prepare some answers on those kinds of questions.
I've printed out lots of reading to do tonight and tomorrow (and the bonus is they're mostly quite relevent for my PhD too!).

Now just gotta decide what to wear!