Telephone Interview for Academic Position

[JordanJames]

While applying to PhD programs, I also applied for a couple of tenure track academic positions abroad (I'm a J.D.). I have a telephone interview on Wed. with a business school and was wondering whether anybody has any advise. This is my first interview for an academic position, and I don't really know what to expect. The university is accredited in America, the vast majority of professors in the department are American business school PhDs or law school grads, and the school is run virtually like any other university in America.

Also, lets assume I'm offered the position. I've been accepted by a political science program that ranks between 25-40 in the couple of rankings I've looked at, and it is a program that I really like. Should I just get my PhD now or should I take the position and reapply a year or 2 later for a PhD in poli sci, and will the faculty position teaching business law classes in a business school help boost my application for poli sci PhD programs? Would I be able to use this position to begin my career in academia and find a job elsewhere (in another department or school), or might this be a dead end (it is an average university in the Middle East)? I'm afraid that I can only go so far with just a taught doctorate, and that I won't be able to end up researching (having the research actually published) and teaching the subjects I'm most interested in.

Also, the job is in a city that I have always dreamed of living in, but I always thought that it would be where I ended my career. My end goal is to produce valuable, original and respected research that contributes to the areas of democratization, comparative constitutional law and formal theory. Any thoughts?

[rising_star]

I think you're maybe thinking too far ahead. No advice on interviews but if you have a LJ account, check the tags in the academics_anon community. They probably have some advice there. Second, there's no guarantee that an academic job would help you get into a higher-ranked PhD program. If anything, see if you could defer your acceptance if you got the job. Plus, I think it'd actually raise more questions about why you want a PhD if you're already teaching in an academic position. I doubt you could use this job, if you got it, to get the job you want in another department. That's generally not how these things work, at least as far as I understand it.