Listing interview talks on CVs - an ethical dilemma...

[sensaes]

...or just pointing at another elephant in the living room?

Interesting blog post from FSP:

"On CVs, it is common to include a list of invited talks given at other universities, research labs, professional organizations, or companies...Should you include interview talks? You don't have to indicate them as such of course, but should you even list

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[poldyb]

Assuming it is fine (as I do) to put 'interview talks' on your vita, do you list the fact that you may have given the same "interview talk" at several schools in a year? If so, how?

Re: Related question

[sensaes]

Tricky, isn't it? I suppose you could always resort to appending version numbers - 1.2, 2.0, etc.

Re: Related question

[tyopsqueene]

Ha! I've seen people list several conference talks with the *exact* same title on their CV, or very, very similar titles. It really did make them both look like one-trick ponies. Best to do 'selected talks' and only mention it once, IMNSHO.

Re: Related question

[poldyb]

I've wondered about how best to do it myself - for a few years after my PhD, I had several campus interviews a year. I gave one job talk two or three times each year, but a different one subsequent years. I used the "selected talks" in the past. Now I just list year, title, and the schools.

However, I disagree with most of the comments below - these "job talks" were full, 60 minute research talks. The talks I gave became articles later. I treat job talks no differently than I do for invited talks and I see no reason to exclude these talks from the CV.

More awkward, though, are "invited" talks I have delivered at Universities where I've been a part-timer.

Re: Related question

[tyopsqueene]

Huh, I dunno then. At the moment I'm attending a couple of conferences, and giving at least two 'invited' (including home uni 'invited' tho') talks a year, and that seems to take up an adequate amount of space on the CV. I mean, how many/how far back into the past would you bother to list?

ETA: I'm not being snarky about this - I am actually redrafting my CV right now so I'm just curious.

Re: Related question

[poldyb]

I am not a inveterate talker; I typically avoid conferences if I can. So I don't have the super long list - I have 7 talks listed (as I said above, each talk is listed only once no matter how often I've delivered it). But I treat my CV as a fairly comprehensive record of my professional activities.

I'm somewhat baffled by the idea going around here that it is a selective document. Sure, there are cases where a more limited CV is desired, but I do that ad hoc from my comprehensive CV.

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[the_lady_lily]

I have an 'everything and the kitchen sink' CV too, which I trim down to the requisite number of pages; not that invited/job talks are a category on that yet, worse luck.

Re: Related question

[poldyb]

I haven't made a distinction between types of presentations. I just list the title, year, venue. That makes is clear enough, I think.

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[tyopsqueene]

What do you use the comprehensive CV for then? I mean, I have a desperate list of everything I've ever done, ever, which I wheel out for dark moments of departmental assessment, grant-holder reports and so on, but I tend to think of a CV as definitely being a selective document, rather than a total record.

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[the_lady_lily]

Remembering everything. I tend to forget stuff unless I have it all written down, and trying to do a selective CV that wants to focus on Quality X is really hard if I don't have my memory jogged.

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[poldyb]

I use it for job applications, among other things. I used to use a selective one until several colleagues whose experience I trust told me that it was hurting me in applications. It is comprehensive but streamlined and only takes up three pages.

But as I said, I don't give many conference papers and I list only formal aspects of education, employment, publications, talks, teaching and service. I list each thing once, e.g. a particular course I have taught at 4 different schools will be listed once only despite vast differences in the way I taught it.

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[tyopsqueene]

OK, I see then - three pages doesn't sound too long at all. I'd be interested to see how you lay that out as I'd love to have a more streamlined-but-comprehensive CV, and I kinda fail at that. (Possibly because I'm slightly interdisciplinary and feel the need to overexplain everything just in case the audience don't get it).

Re: Related question

[poldyb]

I try not to explain anything in my CV. I'd show it to you, if I could be sure you were not some evil mole trying to out my super hero identity.

Re: Related question

[tyopsqueene]

I'm not sure I could ever convince you of that.
Probably my inability to cut down to 3 is more a symptom of my irrational love of Arial than that I actually have too much content.

Re: Related question

[sensaes]

Usual tip to advisees: If your heart's not really in it, use Comic Sans for the application cover letter.