Entries Tagged 'The Campus Visit' ↓

As you prepare for your job talk, depending on what field you are in, the look of your presentation will be as important as your presentation. And regardless of what field you are in, people like to look at things besides you reading your paper (which you probably shouldn’t be doing anyways). Although there are plenty rules of thumb about giving a good presentation, the key is to NOT put every (or nearly every) word you plan on saying on the slide itself and certainly do NOT read directly from your slides. While you are teaching people what it is you do, you aren’t going to be quizzing them, so – really – how much text is essential? And would well-chosen graphics add interest? Above all, practice with a friend or colleague who can give you feedback about places they get lost in your talk, or thought was interesting, or where the pacing gets slow.

I have linked the SWF file of my job talk presentation here. (You need the free Flash Player to view it.) I built it using a slideshow template in Flash in part because I didn’t know how to use PowerPoint at the time. It’s pretty basic and is certainly more functional than pretty in some respects, but the thing you should keep in mind is that I did not actually SAY any of the information that was on my slides.

So, for instance, when I talked [on Research: Book Project slide] about the visual rhetoric CD I did, called ix, I did not actually name all 13 terms I have listed on that slide, but I did talk about that text’s rhetorical mission and how it jumpstarted the research for my dissertation project. And when I talked about how I viewed my editorial role with Kairos as scholarship [on Researching: Kairos editorship], I did not say that Kairos has a readership of 45,000 people a month. I didn’t need to because that information, while important to show the legitimacy of an online journal, isn’t important enough to say out loud in the context of a job talk. Same with the list of books in the grad class I was highlighting.

iow, use your visual presentation – if you have or need one – wisely by supplementing your speaking with text and images that are relevant to your talk. But DO NOT REPEAT what is already on the slides. That’s just BORING. A powerpoint shouldn’t replace the talk itself, as you can see from viewing mine — it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to a general audience without my providing the oral framework. So I’ve written up a brief description of what each slide (or section of slides) was attempting to accomplish.

Most departments will ask you to give what is commonly called a “job talk” during your campus visit. What is a job talk? It is a presentation you give about your research. Since talks are so specific to your area, it may be most helpful to run through a few facts and suggestions:

• Don’t be shy about getting as many specifics about the talk as possible. Different English subdisciplines, and different departments, may want slightly different things. For certain disciplines, our department likes candidates to speak to how their work is “English Studies.” In other disciplines in our department (like literature), we don’t advise candidates to take time to do this. Ask how long, what kind of audience they expect you’ll have, and if there’s anything specific they would like you to address.
• Make sure the talk is appropriate for the position. If you are interviewing for a position in English Education, don’t present on a seminar paper you once wrote about Oliver Twist, even if it was awesome. Unless that paper was really work in English Ed and Oliver Twist was just a cool framework.
• The job talk is NOT a conference presentation. You are not just reading a paper on some very specific topic decontextualized from your larger research agenda. Rather, think of your job talk as a teaching opportunity — you will be teaching your research, where you fit in your field, and the past and future arc of your research to an audience of mostly nonspecialists. Do not stand there and read. Interact with the audience, move around, have visuals or handouts, get them all engaged as you would your students (but no pop quizzes! .
• Don’t just present a chapter of your dissertation. In fact, it’s very cool to present work that you didn’t send in your writing sample or that goes beyond your dissertation. If you do depend upon your dissertation, try to bring in parts of many chapters to show your whole argument, then use specific examples to ground it and keep everyone interested. 
• If you present on a topic beyond your dissertation, do mention your dissertation and how your brain got from your diss topic to this new project. How is it all connected?
• Tell a story. Feel free to be much more casual in your job talk than in a conference presentation and tell your audience how you got interested in this research, what your a-ha and not so a-ha moments have been, where this is going next. The best job talks move fluidly between close analysis — look how deep and cool this all is — and the big picture — look how far we can take this, how this could help your field, how much I have to write these next 10 years!
• Practice, practice, practice. Cheryl and I would be more than happy to set up a mock job talk for you and get an audience together for your to rehearse in front of. Go over this thing many times for many people.
• Different schools may need different job talks. Don’t just put one together and expect it will fly everywhere. You can (and should) be more theoretical at some schools than others, more discipline-specific at some than others, more aware of the curriculum at some than others. Talks generally run about 40 minutes presentation time, 20 minutes for Q & A (departments schedule the research talks for an hour on your itinerary. If you get 40 minutes to present, do NOT go over. In fact, try to stay under. Because . . .
• The Q & A period is the most important part of the job talk. Sure, your talk may have been brilliant (yay!), but can you answer questions respectfully, thoughtfully, enthusiastically? The faculty will be trying to figure out how you fit there, whether you have thought about your research from different perspectives, whether you have an awareness of the broader implications of your work.
• What can be most helpful in a mock job talk is practicing answering questions about your presentation. We can’t predict what kinds of questions you’ll get, but most likely you’ll have a couple faculty wanting you to connect what you’re doing to what they’re doing (though they don’t ask it like that), someone perhaps asking you to explain how you would teach it to undergrads, someone questioning the theoretical framework or lack thereof, etc. Treat all questions with great respect. If you don’t understand a question, ask politely if the speaker will repeat it or explain more what they mean. If you can’t think of an answer, you can be honest and then try to get back to it later. Tying together different questions is a great strategy, in fact.
• Above all else, stay good humored. Have fun! This is one of the only hours in your life when YOUR research and your research alone is the center of attention.  

I would almost say that in addition to rehearsing interview answers, you should also rehearse eating dinner and interviewing, sitting in a bathroom stall and finishing a conversation, or riding in a car and attempting to maintain an intelligent discussion with a complete stranger while, at the same time, traveling through a town you have never been to. For me, dinner tables and cars (and yes, bathroom stalls) are confessional and contemplative spaces.  I will muse about things in a car that I would never think of anywhere else. I will reveal my innermost fears while poking at a spinach salad. I will hum the Sponge Bob theme song in the stall. I will sigh and make mindless comments about the size of a ditch while gazing out the car window. I will also worry about eye contact, crumbs, indiscrete noises, tooth debris, and exhaustion.

I have a post on car rides, bathroom breaks, and dinners because these are the moments when you might let your guard down and forget you are being interviewed. But you are being interviewed every second of your campus visit. It’s not that search committees or department faculty consciously think about catching you off guard; it’s just that they will remember anything you say or do that had significance for them as they rank the candidates. Possibly sexist or racist comments, asides about their program or colleagues –  even how much you ate, how engaged you were, how polite you were, whether you started conversations or waited to be asked questions — are mentally noted. Faculty may let their guards down, too, and ask you question they shouldn’t, like if you have children or plan to, whether you have a partner, what your partner does for a living, what ethnicity you are, etc.

Also important to remember is that while department faculty and search committees can become great friends down the road if you get the job, don’t instantly think that you made great friends at the campus visit and so they owe you anything. When I was on a search committee I genuinely liked several candidates we interviewed and could imagine myself having a great time getting to know them professionally, and that was important. Yet they and I both needed to remember that that’s only part of the equation. So, don’t take it personally if you were turned down for a job when you thought you had made some instant friends. And don’t hesitate to keep in touch with those contacts if you genuinely were interested in one another’s research or teaching.

One last comment. As far as conversation goes, I always feared that car rides and meals would “use up” all the questions I had prepared for later. After my first campus visit, though, I learned a valuable lesson: first, it’s OK to repeat questions to different groups! And second, I compiled separate questions for car rides and for those interviews that would take place when not in motion, such as at a conference table. Basically, I had questions about the community, cultural events, social stuff to ask in more casual environments and more job-centered questions to ask during the formal interviews. I also learned how to “plant” certain information during car rides and dinners that I hoped would surface during another part of the day’s activities. One of the happiest moments of my life was when, during the Q & A after my research talk, my “driver” asked me a question about a topic I had told mentioned during the car ride.