Anybody who's ever been on the academic job market knows it's one long onslaught of often contradictory advice. So, I wanted to try something.

This week, I gave the exact same job talk, 2 days apart, to completely different audiences. 1/

When I say "exact same," I mean the only differences the 2nd time were mentioning the temporal scope of my study (forgot to do this the 1st time) and adding my website to the last slide. Otherwise, it was the same talk, almost word for word. 2/

For the record, this is the exact opposite of everything I'd been told to do. "Revise immediately while comments are fresh!" I get that, & also, more data are better to make a talk that'll reach the broadest possible audience. 3/

It was striking what each audience did & didn't note. One group found my introduction confusing. The other didn't really mention it. One group asked a lot about evidence/research design & didn't like my answers. The other didn't seem to have a problem. 4/

Of course, there are time constraints on job talks, and it's possible everyone had the same issues & just weren't able to vocalize all of them. AND, even the choice of what to prioritize is interesting & reflects a spread of values in research/research design. 5/

My takeaways are threefold:

1. Everyone has different preferences, & at some point you have to make choices based on what feels right to you. You can't please everyone. 6/

2. When five people across audiences mention the same thing, that's probably a sign you need to work on it. And some things are just common sense but get lost in the shuffle of the million things a job talk is supposed to convey. (Slide numbers! Those are good! I forgot them!) 7/

3. Go to as many job talks as possible, in as many subfields as possible, both before & during your market year. There are many ways to structure & present a successful talk; if your dept's preferred way isn't working for you, there might be another that does. /fin