Some advice for job talks. You can't simply stitch together 3 15-min talks. You need to tell a single story that you explicitly reiterate as you go through your data. Thread:
You can think about talks as involving 3 levels--Why (big overarching framing), What (what's the specific theory your testing), and How (what you're doing--the data). A 15 talk has mostly What and How, with a bit of why to kick off/end.
The problem comes when you keep a bit of Why at the beginning and end and then fill all the middle with What/How. Audience gets lost in the weeds, wondering how things connect and why the data is important.
You need to come back up to Why after every sub-section and explicitly keep the Why thread visible through the What/How. So you need to connect the specific concepts and your data to the overarching questions. Explicitly. Don't make your audience do the work, wondering "why?"
Feel free to cut things from your talk that don't fit into the narrative! We all love our data, but a job talk is a scientific story, not a list of accomplishments (that's what your CV is for)
One concrete tip is add in extra slides that say explicitly "X study was done to test Y concept, which matters to the why because Z" and then you can cut once you've practiced the talk.
And finally, this stuff is hard and you should use your mentors. My experience is that faculty typically have the same opinions on structuring talks (and we want you to succeed!!)
You can follow @kurtjgray.
Tip: mention @twtextapp on a Twitter thread with the keyword “unroll” to get a link to it.

Latest Threads Unrolled:

By continuing to use the site, you are consenting to the use of cookies as explained in our Cookie Policy to improve your experience.