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The rhetorical goal for any interview talk is very different than a conference talk.

The goal of a conference talk is to get people interested in your paper and your work.

The goal of an interview talk is to get a job, for which interest in your work is one part.  

There are two key audiences for an academic interview talk, and you have to reach both.

One is the people in your sub-area, who you must impress with the depth of your contribution.

The other is the rest of the department, who you must get to understand your problem, why it is important, and a hand-wave at what you did. Both audiences will evaluate how well you speak as an approximation of how well you can teach. An algorithm:

• Take a 20-minute conference talk.
• Expand the 5 minute introduction to 20 minutes to drive home the problem, why it’s important, and the gist of what you’ve done.
• Does the rest of the conference talk, minus the summary and future work?
• Add 10 minutes of deeper stuff from your thesis (to show your depth).
• It is okay losing people outside of your sub-area (as long as you get them back in the next bullet).
• Does the summary and future work from the conference talk in a manner accessible to all?
• Add 10 ten minutes to survey all the other stuff you have done (to show your breadth).
• Save 5 minutes for questions (to show that you are organized).

Other Talks

Other talks should be prepared using the same principles of considering audience and rhetorical purpose. A presentation on a project in a graduate class, for example, seeks to reach the professor first and fellow students second.

Its purpose is to get a good grade by impressing people that a quality project was done.

Thus, methods should be described in must more detail than for a conference talk.

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