behaving yourself at dinner

Fellow Northwestern professor, Sandeep Baliga, offers some advice to job candidates about how to conduct yourself at dinner.

Some if not all the people going to dinner with you will also want to have a glass of wine.  This is especially true of macroeconomists who will want to have many, many drinks and then go to a bar after dinner.  So, by all means say you would like a drink if you want one and say no if you do not.  Others will drink anyway even if you refuse so just report your true preferences.

The dessert question is a bit more subtle.  If you do not order dessert, neither will anyone else.  Perhaps you are really tired and want to go to your hotel and go to sleep.  They will want to be polite and not delay you.  (The macro-economists will drop you off and go to the bar without you.)  But, some of the people at dinner will want to have dessert.  The senior faculty do not get out to good restaurants too much anymore and are focused on childcare most evenings. Of course they want dessert!  So here, you must misrepresent your true preferences – order dessert and let everyone else go crazy and order the crème brûlée and the chocolate cake.  They will thank you for it and think of you kindly when they vote on offers.  If you are not hungry, order a sorbet.  If you can’t eat it, let it melt and pour it surreptitiously into the flower arrangement in the middle of the dining table – there will be such an arrangement at the fine dining destination they will take you to.

Dinner is the time when it’s easiest to let your guard down, and not surprisingly it’s also the time when your hosts are most likely to let their guards down. This can often work in your favor, but I’ve also heard a few horror stories about candidates who disclosed too much about themselves over appetizers.  My advice is, if given a choice between dinner the night before the talk or after the talk, I’d take dinner before. I was often very tired by the time dinner came around on the day of the talk. I”d spent an entire day talking and performing and by dinnertime I was really exhausted and just wanted to deflate and be casual. This is a good mindset to be in if you’re having dinner with friends or colleagues you’ve known for a long time but not necessarily a good mindset for an interview.  Dinner before the talk, in contrast, is a good time to get inside info about the department and to prepare for the day of conversing and presenting that lies ahead. Dinner is great for intelligence gathering because your hosts will be more relaxed, which means they become more chatty and open (especially if you show an interest in what they’re saying). Don’t view their openness as a sign that it’s okay for you to disclose everything but definitely take advantage of the opportunity to get an inside-view of the department.