Job Interview Presentation

Dear Doctor,

I am asked to give a 30-45 min presentation for my recent work at the end of onsite interview. The position is research engineer. I will be interviewed by 3 guys from the research team before the presentation. So hopefully they will know what I am doing before the presentation! What I suppose to say then? Please help.

Mark

Start by thinking about the key things that you would like to leave them thinking about. It may be how meticulous your research is, it may be how ground breaking, it may be the paricular topic (e.g. "sub-entopy of the micondrial layer in cambrain rocks") Either way work out three main messages that you would like to get across.

Once you have these three messages, you then have the presentation structure. All that you then have to do is to find a way of illustrating the points.

Where you can make your presentation visual. Include pictures. If you use graphs and charts make them simple and ensure that you clearly show the inference that you are meant to derive from them.

The biggest mistake that a lot of research people make is assuming that they are presenting to an audience who understand the topic. If you are doing research the reason is that other people have not done it. It is there fore very important to start your presentation as if it was being viewed by a lay person. In a couple of sections go down into the technical depth to help to validate the findings, but otherwise keep it fairly high level.

If the audience do not understand you, then you will be scored down.

Your academic paper is where you need to put all the detailed information.

The other important thing to do is to rehearse the presentation, out loud and at least four times. One of these has to be in front of a scary audience – family, friends, colleagues, people you meet in the street. Listen to their feedback.

I hope that this helps. Please let me know how it goes.