A Peculiar Sort of Job Talk.

I will be going to East Coasty U and giving a “job talk” on Friday, June 22nd. I put it in quotes because of the very peculiar situation. First of all, there’s no advertised position. So right there, it’s a strange kind of thing. Second of all, it was arranged by the request of my collaborator there, at my own (behind the scenes) instigation, and he’s junior faculty. Third, the head of the department there, in which I hold my adjunct position, won’t even be able to attend. Fourth, I scheduled the room for the talk and the other attendees myself.

But my department head doesn’t need to be there, he says, because he knows what I can do and is interested already in having me there in a larger capacity. The problem is, that department is Emergency Medicine, and they’re concerned (fairly) that there wouldn’t be enough full-time work for me there. Which is almost certainly true. It would be very difficult for me to make a career out of the two or three hospital emergency rooms they staff. So he wants the Public Health people to be involved. Which is great, because I have public health ambitions.

So a big player in their school of public health will be there, and a serious hot-shot assistant professor in epidemiology. And a graduate student with an interest in modeling and emergency medicine. And there’s another professor that my boss here knows who is apparently very good to work with, and I’ve just sent her a note asking if she’s interested in meeting.

This is self-promotion, absolutely. But I’ve been told on twitter that it doesn’t matter, really, how I get the people in the room. What matters is that they leave it thinking that they want to work with me. And I’ve gotten good advice: “tell a story, clean slides, no animation.” Well, of course I need to have animation, because animation is one of the selling points of what I do. But no animated slides.

And then I’ll leave East Coasty U and head to Chicago for the #ChicagoTweetup2012. Which is going to be awesome. Now. I need to get the grant off my desk.