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During the campus visit

  • Present yourself as confident and competent
  • When and how much can you use “I don’t know”
  • What (not) to wear
  • When to ask questions and what questions to ask (see “homework” before)
  • The presentation
    • “Elevator speech”
    • The departmental talk
  • “Elevator speech”

    In the elevator on you way to your next appointment, you are introduced to Dr. Smith, Associate Dean for Research. Dr. Smith is not in your area so after shaking hands he asks: “So, what do you do?”

    must have a short speech that describes your research interest in a compelling way to someone outside your area

    • Must prepare for this: find someone outside your research area, practice
      • Start with the handshake
      • Remember it is not a very tall building (key: 1-minute but compelling)
      • Review: figure out what messages you want to convey

The departmental talk

  • Good technical presentation:
    • Well organized, clear
    • Outline, Introduction, Main presentation, Conclusions and Outlook
    • Keep time

Good technical presentation

  • Introduction – 10 minutes
    • Get the audience interested and excited:
      • Why is the topic important?
      • What is the background and context?
  • Main presentation – 30 minutes
    • What you did:
      • Give enough details to make point, show how important your work is
      • Keep it simple – OK to leave some details out for clarity
    • Most important results
      • What they mean
      • Only experts may follow the last 10 minutes of this part
      • Plan on some flexibility: Watch time and be prepared to skip or add slides to keep time – decide beforehand what to skip or add
  • Conclusions and Outlook – 10 minutes
    • What are the implications
      • “the new technique I developed could be applied to reinvestigate this decades-old question”
      • “the long-lasting prediction is confirmed by this new material I developed”
    • Where is the field going as a result of your work?
    • What direction is your work going to take from here?

Important details

  • Clean slides, no typos, large font
  • Outline easy to follow
  • Appropriately cite other’s related work, especially if in the audience
  • Practice talk in front of varied audience (if possible your lab mates, your supervisor, family or friends outside area, undergraduate students)
    • It may be very helpful (and sometimes painful) to record your talk and then review
  • Practice answering questions
  • Don’t get defensive

The good…

Specific heat

a colorful graph
  • Superconducting transition at Tc = 1.4 K
  • Transition moves down in temperature with applied field

The bad…

Specific heat

a black and white graph
  • Superconducting transition at Tc = 1.4 K
  • Transition moves down in temperature with applied field

…and the ugly

Specific heat

a black and white graph and a colored graph underneath the black and white one.
  • Superconducting transition at Tc = 1.4 K
  • Transition moves down in temperature with applied field

C/T for YbSb2

γ ~ 4 mJ/mol K2

Morosan et al. (unpublished)

Other important details

  • Have backup of your presentation
  • If possible check out the room and AV equipment before talk
  • Face the audience as much as possible
  • Don’t read off slides
  • Beware of “wandering laser pointer”

“hard” questions

  • I don't think you've accounted for the research of Barnes and Bailey. Aren't you familiar with their model? I think it invalidates your main hypothesis.
  • You acknowledge all these collaborators –what exactly did you do?
  • This is a project you started working on as a postdoc in Prof. X’s group. Will you be continuing this work? How will your work be distinct from that of your postdoc supervisor?
  • (To the candidate) Well you didn't even account for phenomena x.(Aside to the audience) How can all this research be valid if she didn't account for x?
  • It looks like you've done some interesting modeling. Is there an application of this work?
  • What a wonderful little application. Is there any theoretical support?

“harder” questions

  • I believe a simple non linear equation explains all your data. Why have you wasted your time on such a complex model?
  • How does this differ from the basic model that we teach in sophomore transport?
  • Those results are clearly unattainable. You must have falsified your data.
  • You've done some interesting work, but I don't see how it could be considered engineering. Why do you think you are qualified to teach engineering?
  • Your work appears to be a complete replication of Fujimoto's work. Just what is really new here?

Good luck!

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Source:  OpenStax, 2010 nsf advance workshop: negotiating the ideal faculty position. OpenStax CNX. Feb 11, 2011 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11275/1.4
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