“Talks are not merely communication: they are also a performance… So many talks that could have been successful end up flopping because they’re not serious performances.” That’s one observation about job talks from Daniel Muñoz. Dr. Muñoz is a senior lecturer at the Australian National University. Before that, he was associate professor of philosophy at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. In the following guest post, he shares various tips about crafting and delivering job talk. Others are, of course, welcome to add their own advice in the comments. (A version of this post first appeared at Dr. Muñoz’s newsletter, Big Iff True.) How to Give a Killer Job Talk by Daniel Muñoz The job talk—typically on campus, sometimes on Zoom—is the final boss of the academic job market. Don’t underestimate the challenge. You can’t just coast on the rest of your materials: unless you’re already world famous, you probably need a strong job talk. You can’t rely on the weakness of the competition, either: you have to convince people to vote for you, not just against the others, which means turning in a solid performance in your talk and Q&A. My sense is that PhD students aren’t getting enough advice about job talks. And what advice they do get tends to come too late, which leaves them scrambling. The good news: Anyone can learn to give a killer talk. Once you can do that, you’re 90% of the way to a killer job talk. So here is my advice for (1) giving great talks, and (2) preparing a job talk in particular. This advice is mostly aimed at PhD students in philosophy, but there are also some tips about public speaking in general. Good Talks There are two points everyone should internalize about talks. The first is that they are a kind of communication—note the prefix—which means that they are bilateral, not “one way streets.” You have to fit your talk to your audience. What do they like? What do they already know? What, to them, would count as an interesting destination? What kinds of arguments and evidence do they find persuasive? What issues will they let you bracket? Would kind of tone would they see as appropriate? Years ago I gave a talk on..

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