In a recent article in University Affairs, Letitia Henville and Erin K Maher provide advice for candidates who are crafting their “job talks” script during the academic hiring process. Henville and Maher discuss the difficulty of conveying academic expertise while still allowing for a broad listening audience to follow along with this high-stakes presentation. Among their recommendations, the authors advise that candidates look up their hiring department’s areas of expertise so that they know which terms they need to pause and explain. They also encourage candidates to use the first person to engage their listeners and provide reminders of their main takeaways throughout the presentation, even if this runs the risk of sounding “ungrammatical.”
