Doing Economics

3.2 Giving Job Talks
As I noted in the introduction, this book generally steers clear of giving job-
market advice, both because the job market is changing rapidly, and
because there are much better resources on that topic. I nevertheless wanted
to bring up the topic of giving job talks for those aiming to transition back
into academia after spending a few years outside of it, for those going on
the market as senior assistant professors, or for those going on the market at
mid-career.
Most of the advice given in the previous section about giving invited
seminars holds for job talks as well, but job talks are different enough that
they require their own section.
In The Obstacle Is the Way, Holiday (2014) tells the story of how George
Clooney stopped being ignored by the directors he auditioned for when he
realized that instead of going into an audition hoping to get the job, he
should go into an audition with the idea that he was the solution to the
problem the director was trying to solve. In that spirit, one strategy that
makes a candidate stand out is when she takes the first three to five minutes
to talk about herself, and explain why she is a good fit for the position.

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Likewise, if a candidate presents herself as the solution to the
interviewing department’s constrained optimization problem, odds are she
will be seen more favorably than her competitors, which will in turn raise
the likelihood she receives the first offer (or an offer). How does one do
that? One thing to realize is that if you are invited to give a job talk, the
time you are allocated for your talk is yours, so that you can certainly take
the first five minutes of your job talk to introduce yourself to your
audience.
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Those first few “About me” slides should ideally have a slide
that lists (i) where you got your PhD, (ii) which (relevant) positions you
have held, and (iii) any big-ticket, noteworthy item your audience should
know about (e.g., major awards or professional honors). A second slide can
also have a few bullets explaining how you fit the position—here, a bit of
legwork beforehand to find out why they are hiring for this position and
why they are doing so now can go a long way. Finally, a third slide should
feature what you have worked on and what you are currently working on
other than the paper you are there to present, as this shows that you have
both a proven track record and a proper pipeline, and that you will not stop
being productive if and when you get the job.
One piece of advice about giving talks which I personally have found to
be overrated when applied to job talks is the “know your audience” mantra.
For whatever it is worth, and as the preceding paragraph makes clear, my
view is that the audience should know you instead. When I first went on the
job market in 2006, I gave job talks in four economics departments and at
one policy school; when I went on the market in 2013, I gave job talks in
three agricultural economics departments and at one policy school. Even
though I presented fairly technical papers in both 2006 and 2013, I never
felt the need to change my talk for interdisciplinary audiences at policy
schools. My view was always that if they did not like what I do, warts and
all, then it would not be a good match, and not getting an offer was simply
an easy way of knowing early what would not be a good match. This is
certainly not a foolproof way of screening out bad matches, but it does help
reduce the likelihood of one.
One thing many people consistently get wrong in presentations is the
level of technique. You can never go wrong assuming you are presenting to
an audience of smart college graduates with no experience in your field.
This means you should emphasize the motivations and intuition, and define
technical concepts in plain English.

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That said, even when presenting technical material, you should try to
provide as much intuition as possible. If you can keep someone not in your
field interested in your presentation for the entire duration of your talk, that
person will be much more likely to vote for you when the department has to
choose who to make an offer to. There are few worse offenses than that of
wasting people’s time; for an academic, there are few things worse than
sitting in a seminar where the speaker has made no effort to be understood
by as many people as possible.
When interviewing for senior (i.e., post-tenure) positions, one strategy
which I have seen work well in the past is to present an overview of one’s
research agenda (either in whole or on a given topic if interviewing for a
more narrowly defined position) instead of a job-market paper. For
instance, I recall seeing a colleague who applied for a global health position
presenting her entire research agenda on HIV/AIDS in China. This worked
well for her because it allowed her to both show that she had been (and
would remain) productive in an important area of global health, and thus
that she was the solution to our constrained maximization problem.