Speaker 1: Hey there, this video is about job talks. Usually I'm thinking of faculty positions but it can also apply to other situations like postdoc talks. And so if you're in that situation and want to learn more about it this is the video for you. And I've been in tons of search committees and I've participated in many faculty searches and hirings of postdocs and faculty in different countries. So I think the rules are more or less always the same. So I think you will find this informative. The most important point that people seem to forget actually quite frequently is that this is not your normal research seminar that you would give at a conference. It is not. Many people treat it that way and then problems can be created as a result. Even if in your program this is listed as the research seminar, like to separate it for example from your teaching seminar that you may also give as a part of faculty searches, it's not the same as the research seminar that it will give at a conference and I'll explain why here. Well, the first point applies for really any talk is of course it takes energy to put together a very good talk and you have to invest the time. Otherwise, this is not going to work well for you. And one of the things that you have to plan for very precisely is the time. So do not go over time. People get very irritated if you talk for longer than a lot of time at these searches because in Germany at least anyways people have to listen to like six or eight of these talks so nothing is more aggravating than people going over time. So let's assume for the rest of this video that your talk is like 30 minutes. Now, it is very important to start broadly. Why? Because for faculty searches anyway, there's going to be people from all walks of life in your audience and if you start from the very beginning hitting it with this gene and that gene or this particular organism and process rate without having provided any context, people will just immediately drop off, right? So I think it's super important to be aware of what audience you're talking to. I mean, this is basically a very general point, but still and so spend maybe the first two to three minutes providing a very, very broad background that virtually anybody in that audience can relate to. This, you know, requires thinking and I think it's super important to get it right because it sort of gets people's attention. And then really don't make it longer than these two to three minutes because if you talk about general stuff, giving the background in your field and citing other people's works, for much longer than that when your talk is 30 minutes, where people are mostly there to hear about what you have done, they will get impatient with you, right? So make sure that this is not like 10 minutes would be way too long. Maybe you can get away with five minutes if you are slowly going towards your topics anyway, but make this sweet and short and generally applicable to most people in the room. Now, next you will go through your content slides and this is basically your normal research seminar that you would give. I would say about maybe 20 minutes of these 30 minutes are that. Make sure this is a coherent storyline. It is often different from a particular research seminar on one topic by you weaving together several lines that you have worked on, several research lines that you have been working on over the past several years because it's more like an overview talk of what you have been doing, more like a keynote presentation maybe at a conference. And so make also sure that they are all nicely woven together, even if they are seemingly disjunct topics, you need to make sure that people understand why this all feeds into your common goal and into one overall story. So put special emphasis on making sure you are presenting a coherent package of your work, even though it consists of different research lines. And then it's very important to be very clear, of course, to make sure everybody understands what you're talking about. But I think it's also important to have at least one slide in there that is so technical that you will lose virtually everybody in that audience for just a moment, for maybe just maybe just 30 seconds or something like that, doesn't need to be more than this, but include enough professional technical detail that what you do doesn't appear trivial. If people really understand everything you do and everybody in this room, either you are a genius in storytelling or you know, it maybe is just staying too superficial and then people will think that your work lacks sufficient depth. And remember this is not a research seminar. It's basically you are sort of advertising yourself. So make sure you add in some of the complexity, of course, that you understand. Don't put stuff in that you can't later on answer to, that would be terrible. But that you're pretty sure you're losing virtually everybody in the room, maybe for the other specialists on this topic that happens to be in the audience as well. So I think this is an important piece of advice to have one slide in there that is sufficiently technical that you will lose almost everybody. But then, of course, very quickly get back to trying to explain things in the best way you can and in a way that you think most people will be able to follow you in that room. Then, as like in any research seminar, conclude with your topic points, give a take-home message, an overall conclusion, mention your acknowledgments, all the people that helped you accomplish your research, and that maybe is also another one or two minutes to sort of wrap it all up. Then, basically, that content block for your research is finished. But your talk should not be finished at this point. Because there is another block that is very important and I've seen very, very many of these job talks over the years and I am amazed how many people forget that last point. And that last point is the outlook. What specifically would you do if you came to this institution as a faculty or maybe as a postdoc? Like, what could you contribute to the department? Very specifically, if possible, because it shows you have done your research, state like what projects could we do where we can combine the expertise of a couple of the faculty members or lab members and come up with a very nice project together, for example. Or say how you want to go into the future for the next five years or so and how you could make others' research line profit from you. Like, what do you have to offer and how could you profit in your research from that particular specific environment that that school, department, institute, or whatever will provide you? So it's both, how do you profit them? I think this is probably even more important and then maybe of lesser importance, how could you specifically profit from having these people? And I think it's very good to name these people on the slides. I've always done that for every application I have done. Even in the cover letter already, but definitely in the job talk, I have said I could work with Professor X and X on this and Professor Y on this topic. And it's also important that you say these are just examples, so that you don't exclude people by naming some and leaving others' names off of that slide. Small important detail, but you say like, you know, I can immediately see working with Professor so-and-so and Professor this and that on that particular topic. They will be receptive because their ears will perk up because they've heard their names. It's the same as when if you were being named in one of these presentations, you would perk up and then you will think about, oh, how could I work with these people? And then you have basically already succeeded in getting their attention on this point. But it's surprising how often this has been left out of presentations. Thinking that this point will come up in the discussion afterwards with the search committee meetings, of course, it will. Of course, it's always a question every search committee meeting, how, what could you contribute to our department or program? But I think it's just so important that you spend like five minutes or so, or let's say three to five minutes, on charting the course. What would you do if you came here? Where's your research going? And how can you make everybody's research better as a consequence of that particular school department or institute? Thanks for watching and see you in the next video.