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“The first 5 minutes decides your fate.”

  • Career (The COM)
  • Communication (The COM)
  • Graduate Students (The COM)
  • Post docs (The COM)
  • Undergraduates (The COM)

At last week’s Pub Club (04/14/16), Brad Day led a discussion on job talks – what to do and not to do.  He started by asking us what we remembered about the recent series of job talks presented at MSU as part of a cluster hire process.  The answer?  The negatives!  As Brad stated, the first 5 minutes of your talk will decide your fate!

Things that did not impress us:

-sloppy attire
-arrogant attitude
-poor presentation (lecturing, boring, no energy)
-statements such as “I don’t know what any of this means.  Someone will have to explain this to me.” or the crowd favorite, “I’m not an expert in any one thing, but I’m pretty good at a lot of things.”
-spending the majority of the presentation talking about research done by someone else

We did have some positive things about the candidates as well, although the list was much shorter!

Things that did impress us:

-enthusiasm
-polite yet engaging

Sheng Yang shared some additional advice on the entire Job Interview process:

-No matter how tired you are, stay high energy
-Be alert and interactive
-Read up on the research done by the faculty with whom you will be interviewing so you can engage them in conversation.

Both Brad and Sheng Yang agreed that what they want most in a candidate is someone who they can envision as a colleague.  Part of this is having a record of doing good science and communicating that record well.  Beyond that, it means knowing something about the science your potential colleagues are doing, asking thoughtful questions and having ideas of how you might collaborate and engage as a prospective part of their department.

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Brad Day career Communication Job Talks
April 16, 2016 TheCOM

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Pages

  • The Hub
  • About TheCOM™
    • Testimonials
    • About The Founder: Bethany Huot
  • TheCOM Center for Educative Research™
    • Educative Research™
    • The BIOME Project
  • FAQ
  • The Whiteboard
  • Strategic Career Management (SCM)
    • SCM: Identify
    • SCM: Defining The Void
    • SCM: Commit
    • SCM: Community Perspectives
  • The Resources
    • Digital Identity Management
    • Networking & Science Communication (#SciComm)
    • Writing & Peer Review
    • Bioinformatics & Statistics
    • Methods & Technologies
    • Teaching & Learning (T&L)
      • T & L Communities
      • T & L Training Programs/Fellowships
      • T & L Career Path Prep
      • T & L Tools & Resources
    • Career Prep
    • Job Hunting
  • The Vault (Archive)
    • The File Cabinet
      • The Pub Club Files:
        • The News
        • The Pub Club
          • The Mission
          • The People
          • The Mug Club
            • The Coaster Club
          • The Python Group
          • The Publications
            • Favorite Pubs
            • Papers of Interest…
            • Scoop.it
        • 2017 Summer – Summaries & Docs
        • 2017 Spring – Summaries & Docs
        • 2016 Fall – Summaries & Docs
        • 2016 Summer – Summaries & Docs
        • 2016 Spring – Summaries & Docs
        • 2015 Fall – Summaries & Docs
        • 2015 Summer – Summaries & Docs
        • 2015 Spring – Summaries & Docs
        • 2014 Fall – Summaries & Docs
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