Advice for presentation for PhD interview

[waderpanda]

Hi all,

I've been asked to make a short presentation (5-10 minutes) for one of my interviews and I'm not entirely sure what I should put in it. The presentation is supposed to contain a short introduction with some information about my previous research accompanied by some slides. 

Should I include short info on all the projects I have worked on, or simply focus on my master's thesis (currently working on it)?

How much of a background should I put in about me (like where I'm from and where I currently am)?

Should I include a short section of questions I am interested in exploring? My advisor mentioned that this can be both good an bad; it's good because it showcases how you think and that you are looking ahead in your career, and bad because the lab group/PoI may already have a basic plan of what they want out of their student and if this is too different from this plan, they might think twice before accepting you.

Is there even a correct way to do this?

I'd appreciate any help

[TakeruK]

Here's some quick advice in case you are not used to giving these short presentations. They'll make you sound like an experienced grad student and you'll fit right into the department

1. I second the "one minute per slide" guideline. To account for the general tendency of going over, I include the title slide as part of the count (i.e. for a 5 minute talk, it's title slide + 4 content slides). Alternatively, practice practice practice to get the timing right.

2. Each slide should only convey one single message. Make that message the title of your slide. Then, include whatever schematics, plots, data, etc. you need to support that point. I also second the suggestion to cut as many words as possible. I very rarely have any words at all on my slides, only labels and figures. Use the software's "Presenter Mode" in order to see notes on your screen but only project your slides.

3. Ensure every slide is legible from the back of the room. One figure per slide! Feel free to "doctor" the images, e.g. if the axis labels are too small, draw over them in Powerpoint and make bigger labels. If they are very jargon-y or use abbreviations, replace them with more clear labels. If a figure is complex and have a lot of data points, you can either: recreate them with the minimal material necessary to convey your message (if they're your figures) or use Powerpoint to block out or highlight important points.

4. When introducing yourself, don't make a slide on it. That is, don't have a slide that just lists your previous projects and your background etc. Keep the title slide on the screen and spend 30 seconds talking about yourself.

5. Make sure you have citations and attributions for everything you put into the presentation. If you are putting your own figures, label it as such (e.g. "waderpanda et al., in prep"). If you are putting someone else's figure, be sure to cite it. For extra points, if you are presenting something that someone at the dept works on, use their version of the figures and cite their work. This shows that you understand their contribution to the field.

To answer your specific questions:

For the format, I think you have three good options, assuming 10 minute talk slot:

- If all of your projects have a common theme, or answers a common question, then start your talk with 1 slide of background on why this question is interesting. Then spend 1 slide per former project and focus on how this project relates to that question. Just say your main contribution and the main result. Then spend 2-3 slides/minutes on your Masters work. 

- If your past projects have been very different (this is normal/okay for undergrads), then maybe summarize them all on one slide (but not a list---you can just talk about this during the title slide intro too). Spend 1-2 minutes just mentioning them all and say that you would be happy to talk to anyone further about these projects, but you want to spend your time today on your Masters work. Then, move onto the background and results for that.

- If you only have a 5 minute slot, I'd skip the previous projects. 

For the "future work" section, I would advise against listing all of your future research plans for the same reason your advisor gave you. However, for your Masters work, you should have a slide that discusses what's next for this project. That is, talk about what could be done by someone who is interested in pursuing this further, but don't necessarily say that you will be the one doing this. This is an important aspect of scientific talks because it shows you understand how your project fits into the bigger picture. If you don't have time to present this slide, that's okay, make it a "backup slide" to show during questions if it comes up.

Also, although you shouldn't make your plans for research in grad school an actual slide, you should be prepared to answer the question if someone asks you what you see yourself doing in this department. You can remain non-committal and state that these project ideas are things you would be interested in as potential directions. This will avoid the concerns your advisor has.

[fuzzylogician]

Following the advice above, here is what I would do: 

1. Keep it short, these things tend to take longer than you think, especially if you might get interrupted with questions. 4-6 slides seems like a good target to aim for. 

2. Spend maybe 30 seconds talking about yourself, but keep the title slide (that is, don't have a slide with your personal info, just talk through that part): your name, where you're from, what school you're attending now, your major and sub-specialization if there is anything non-obvious about it, any other fun fact you'd like to share. 

3. I would recommend doing both a broad overview of your interests and details on a project. Specifically, I'd suggest first having a slide on your broad interests: the type of questions you're interested in, any projects you've been involved in, one-line each, with just a brief description of what questions you were asking and what you found. 

4. Pick one, maybe it should be your thesis, and go into a bit more detail: what question(s) are you asking? what is your methodology? what are your findings? what conclusions did you draw? As always, slides should be easy to read, so bullet points, graphs, pictures, are all good choices. But because you might be nervous, if it helps you to have more text, I'd in this case ignore the (generally very correct) advice to keep it minimal, and do what you need to be comfortable. 

5. Either as a slide or against this last slide from the previous batch, talk very briefly about what you hope to do in grad school, keeping in mind that broad and vague is good because it's very likely that you will change your mind once you're actually in school.

6. Practice! Run through your slides a couple of times to make sure you know what you want to say. The beginning is usually more difficult, and then you get into a rhythm; if that is true for you, think more carefully about the wording of your first couple of slides, and then things should start falling into place. 

[Quickmick]

That is interesting. I'll just make a couple of general suggestions as opposed to being content specific. Our group generally uses the 1 slide per minute guideline... and people tend to talk over so maybe 4-6 slides? While I like your ideas regarding projects/direction I would be careful of making the slides too wordy (people will read instead of listen). Maybe a slide could be a pic of you actually working on the project? My guess is you will do better describing it verbally anyway, so maybe just use the slides for talking points...

good luck!

Edited January 23, 2017 by Quickmick

[waderpanda]

Thanks for the advice

I'm going to try to keep it short, talk mostly about the thesis, connect all of my previous research to my research interests, and keep practicing. Hopefully, I don't screw it up 

[Euprymna]

Sorry to butt in on this thread... I have also been asked to do a short presentation on my research for my interviews, and the advice in this thread has been very helpful! I had no idea how to start at all, since my research experience is very fragmented. 

In addition, the interviewers have also asked for a short presentation on a paper (~5 slides) - do you have any advice on how such a presentation should be structured? I plan to talk about what I found interesting, what I thought were good experiments, and maybe any unclear parts that I can find... but I'm not sure if that is a good plan? 

Thank you!