Your technical presentation
- Consider the audience
- Faculty in your area, faculty outside your area, graduate students, undergraduates
- The people making the decision
- Who is most important?
- THE PEOPLE MAKING THE DECISION!!
TARGET THE PEOPLE MAKING THE DECISION!!
- Target the introduction (first 10 min) to the entire audience
- Convey excitement about what you are doing and create excitement in your listeners
- Ensure understanding the importance of the work and the key background concept
- Target the heart of the seminar (next 25-35 min) to the decision-makers
- Be exceptionally clear (but not simplistic)
- Tell them what it means, and summarize as you go
- Establish your expertise in the area
- Target the conclusion (last 10 min) to the entire audience
- What does your work mean to the future of the field?
- What direction are you taking the work next?
- This anticipates your more detailed talk about future work
- Leave the audience feeling a sense of excitement about the future of your area and your ability to contribute
- Be sure to acknowledge colleagues/funders
Talking points
If your work is in two very different areas, work with your mentor(s) to craft a talk that integrates, to the degree possible, what you have done. Focus most on the work that you will build on for the future and what aligns best with the department where you are interviewing (which may mean having to prepare multiple talks to match the relevant department’s interests).
If your work is based on something done by a collaborator, acknowledge that by saying “Research by my collaborator demonstrated that…, and based on that, I designed the following set of experiments…”
Your research presentation
Align the talk with your research write-up, which many faculty will have read
Think about your audience
- Is there anything you don’t want to share for reasons of being “scooped”? Generally, it’s best to say what you are thinking, but worth considering your audience
- What background do you need to provide so that they understand your planned experiments?
General advice
- Make clean slides, no typos, readable font
- Reference work appropriately
- Provide an outline and follow it
- REHEARSE your talk!!!!! Get feedback from a knowledgeable audience!
- Is the level placed well for your audience? Are you conveying what you wish?
- Get them to ask questions!!!
- Go to the room and check out the projector to ensure it works with your computer or flash drive or CD.
- Hard to recover if you don’t have slides
- Have a well-practiced (and therefore familiar) beginning
- Say “Thank you, I’d be happy to answer any questions” at the end.
Talking points
If you don’t know how to target your talk to the level of the audience, talk with your mentor and colleagues. Ask the Department where you are interviewing who will be in the audience. A talk to primarily faculty and postdocs will be different from one that has upper level undergraduates and beginning graduate students, for example.
Answering questions
- If someone challenges you….stay calm
- Acknowledge the question
- Validate it as appropriate or even, if not, say how you have thought about its relevance
- DO NOT BE DEFENSIVE
- If you have not thought about it or don’t know what the person is talking about, suggest that you would like to talk with the person individually after the talk on this topic
- Think about the question(s) you
really don’t want to be asked
- They will be asked
- Be prepared to provide an answer
- Don’t over-answer – be concise and clear in your responses
Talking points
Provide list of questions.
Deflecting “tests”
Expect the unexpected
- If someone asks you to “solve” an equation or do something in his/her office… indicate that you have a limited amount of time together and you’d be happy to talk with them further on the issue, but would like to focus on other things in the time available
Talking points
If you have to use this approach, be thinking in the back of your mind how you will pursue the discussion. Draw the person who asked the question out and get them to help in formulating the answer in an interactive way. Be sure to say how much you appreciate the question.
The visit
- Ask about impact of recession on the institution, on the department
- If you get different answers from different people, ask the Chair to clarify the situation
What to do when…
- Someone asks a question forbidden by law (e.g., Are you married? Do you have children?)
- Possible responses
- Refocus (e.g., “My husband’s job is very portable”)
- Follow up with a question of your own (“Can you tell me something about relationships between the department and industry in this area?”)
- Indicate that you would prefer not to answer
- Note that the question is outside the boundaries you understand for this process… and many more options
- You feel uncomfortable with the situation…
- Refocus what is happening by asking a question in a different direction or move away with murmured good wishes if that option exists
- Pull someone else into the conversation
- Excuse yourself to go to the restroom
Talking points
Participants ALWAYS bring up this question. Answer in a way that you feel comfortable, but indicate that there are many ways to respond — either answer the question directly, deflect the question, don’t answer, challenge the person... the individual has to come up with something with which they are at ease, and in that case it is likely that the questioner will also be at ease.
Ending the process
- Thank the Chair (or person with whom you end the process) for their time, the information, and their input.
- Some candidate write brief emails to the individuals they met during the interview (not clear whether this is a good idea or not, so do what feels right to you).
Relax and enjoy the process
- Relaxing is not easy, but you will perform better and be more effective if you have a level of calm and your wits about you
- If you can’t enjoy the process, try to be present to what is happening (not just responding) and learn from the process
GOOD LUCK!!!!
