Job market paper pitch
In this post I will talk about the job market paper pitch. Like the rest of the blog, the purpose is to complement the major job market guides (Cawley is the gold standard), with some focus on what I think is undercovered. In particular, I have experience on both sides of the market at schools that are not highly ranked, and that seems to be a gap in the job market guide market.
Plan and practice
It is important that you plan your job market paper pitch carefully before the market. You will need to use it a lot, and without a good one, you are dead on arrival. Plan it out carefully and practice it with colleagues and hopefully your advisors. At the same time, be careful about sounding overly rehearsed. You want a more conversational tone. The best rehearsals are with a faculty member or another grad student who interrupts you with questions. That is what is going to happen in an interview.
One piece of advice that worked for me is that I tried not to use the same language each time I gave it, except for particularly technical or complicated parts where an ad-libbed explanation could go south quickly. Since I was always figuring out what words to use as I went along, it sounded a lot less forced.
Telescoping pitch
You want various lengths of pitch. One that is less than a minute, another that is 5 minutes or so, and another that is in the 20 minute range. This is analogous to the abstract-introduction-full paper version of your paper. Each level should convey as much of the important features of the paper as possible within the time frame. And because you may not know going in which length of pitch is called for, you should be able to transition from one to the other without looking like you are saying "oh, you want a longer version, let me circle back and start again". Just like you want the main body of your paper to flow from your introduction.
In another post, I described how interviews are different at different ranks of schools. Each type of interview presents a different challenge for a job market pitch.
Top ranked schools are going to spend the vast majority of your interview dissecting your paper, so you are almost certainly going to use the full length pitch. But they may spend a lot of time interrogating areas they are concerned about. So you may run out of time. One thing you may want to do is plan out some areas to skip or skim if you are getting bogged down with questions. If you are going to have to give a pitch that is 5 minutes shorter than you planned, it is not likely the case that the last 5 minutes is the part you want to lose! For the same reason, if you include a summary of your main results in the introduction of your pitch, there is no risk the interview will be over before you get to those.
At lower ranked schools, the challenge will be that you don't know what length of pitch they want. It may be that after your 5 minute pitch they want you to keep going, or they may want to ask a couple questions and move on. The key is to have a nice telescoping pitch planned and to read the room carefully. You don't want to plow through when they are trying to change the subject, and you don't want to waste the opportunity to explain more about your paper if your audience wants to listen.
Know your audience
This is a really common mistake. I have conducted a lot of interviews for positions outside my field, and candidates often bring up papers in the literature that I haven't read and don't explain them. Sometimes I stop them, sometimes I let it go. Either way it isn't great for the candidate. In one case, we waste time going over someone else's paper. In another case, I am not understanding what the candidate wants me to understand.
The basic rule of thumb should be that you shouldn't assume any field-specific knowledge or knowledge of the literature unless you are confident everyone in the room has it. Which should only happen if you are interviewed only by people in your field and you are citing very seminal papers. The safer bet is to spend a few seconds filling in the field specific gaps.
You may end up talking to non-economists. In rare cases, they may be part of the interview process. More common is a meeting with a dean on a campus visit. In that case, if they ask about your research, you have to give a very non-technical explanation. In my view, the biggest mistake that people make here is to try to educate their audience about the technical aspects instead of giving a non-technical version. For example, if the main analysis in your paper is an instrumental variables regression, don't try to explain instrumental variables regressions so that they can understand your paper. Instead focus on your paper and explain it in a way that someone doesn't need to understand instrumental variables regression to understand.
In addition to differing levels of expertise about your field, you can expect your audience will have differing levels of familiarity with your paper. Many, but not all, will have read (or skimmed) the introduction of your paper. Few will have read the whole thing. That means that just like a presentation, a pitch has to be self-contained. It can't be the case that someone has to have read the paper to follow what you are saying.
The last challenge that you will face in this area is differing levels of expertise about your field or your paper within a given interview. You may have a situation where one interviewer is an expert in your field and has read your paper carefully, but the others aren't and haven't. The expert may zero in on very specific things in your paper that are a bit of a distance from the pitch and leave the others lost. This is a challenging situation. The expert probably has a lot of sway over the assessment of your candidacy, but if most of the room is bored or lost it is bad news for you. The best way of dealing with it is to answer the expert's question, but help catch the others up. For example, suppose the expert asks about a particular column in a table of results. You can say to the rest of the room "That's a good question. What he is asking about is this column, where I am trying to do ____. " Then answer the very specific question. Then go back to the more general pitch that everyone can follow.
Don't forget to motivate your paper.
The question "why should I care about your paper?" should always be answered in your pitch. No matter the audience or the length of the pitch. That is what is going to make people remember you. People care a lot less about a clever identification strategy or a neat model if they don't care at all about the question you are studying. So motivation should not be skimped.
Here it is also important to know your audience. Motivating the paper to someone within your field is different than motivating it to someone outside of it. Inside your field, people will have a general sense about the big open questions, so you can tell them how you fit into that. Outside your field, you want to do more of a "this is why a person on the street would care about my paper" explanation.
Remember: Because knowing your audience is so important, it is always a good idea to find out who is interviewing you and look them up. If you are invited for an interview, and it is possible to do so politely, ask who is interviewing you.
Answer the questions you are asked, don't just pitch
This is another area where rank of school makes a difference. At top schools, the interview generally opens with "tell us about your job market paper". And generally candidates are trained and rehearsed to answer that question. At lower ranked schools, things might be considerably different, and you should answer the questions they ask.
For example, it is common to ask "tell us about your research agenda". In that case, you can definitely spend a lot of it talking about your job market paper, but you shouldn't miss the opportunity to situate it a broader agenda, and touch on some other work or ideas as well.
A more teaching focused school might ask "can you explain your paper as you would to an undergrad", as a way of both learning about your research and your ability to communicate with students. If the position is a pure teaching position, your research may not come up at all.
One year I was on a hiring committee and we decided to open each interview with a few minutes of casual chat. We would explain our expectations for the position and ask a couple friendly questions like "why did you choose your field?" or "why did you choose your graduate school?". Somewhat to our surprise, a decent proportion of candidates went off into a job market paper pitch long before we asked them to. It made them seem overly rehearsed, awkward, and even slightly aggressive, none of which are ideal.
Plan and practice
It is important that you plan your job market paper pitch carefully before the market. You will need to use it a lot, and without a good one, you are dead on arrival. Plan it out carefully and practice it with colleagues and hopefully your advisors. At the same time, be careful about sounding overly rehearsed. You want a more conversational tone. The best rehearsals are with a faculty member or another grad student who interrupts you with questions. That is what is going to happen in an interview.
One piece of advice that worked for me is that I tried not to use the same language each time I gave it, except for particularly technical or complicated parts where an ad-libbed explanation could go south quickly. Since I was always figuring out what words to use as I went along, it sounded a lot less forced.
Telescoping pitch
You want various lengths of pitch. One that is less than a minute, another that is 5 minutes or so, and another that is in the 20 minute range. This is analogous to the abstract-introduction-full paper version of your paper. Each level should convey as much of the important features of the paper as possible within the time frame. And because you may not know going in which length of pitch is called for, you should be able to transition from one to the other without looking like you are saying "oh, you want a longer version, let me circle back and start again". Just like you want the main body of your paper to flow from your introduction.
In another post, I described how interviews are different at different ranks of schools. Each type of interview presents a different challenge for a job market pitch.
Top ranked schools are going to spend the vast majority of your interview dissecting your paper, so you are almost certainly going to use the full length pitch. But they may spend a lot of time interrogating areas they are concerned about. So you may run out of time. One thing you may want to do is plan out some areas to skip or skim if you are getting bogged down with questions. If you are going to have to give a pitch that is 5 minutes shorter than you planned, it is not likely the case that the last 5 minutes is the part you want to lose! For the same reason, if you include a summary of your main results in the introduction of your pitch, there is no risk the interview will be over before you get to those.
At lower ranked schools, the challenge will be that you don't know what length of pitch they want. It may be that after your 5 minute pitch they want you to keep going, or they may want to ask a couple questions and move on. The key is to have a nice telescoping pitch planned and to read the room carefully. You don't want to plow through when they are trying to change the subject, and you don't want to waste the opportunity to explain more about your paper if your audience wants to listen.
Know your audience
This is a really common mistake. I have conducted a lot of interviews for positions outside my field, and candidates often bring up papers in the literature that I haven't read and don't explain them. Sometimes I stop them, sometimes I let it go. Either way it isn't great for the candidate. In one case, we waste time going over someone else's paper. In another case, I am not understanding what the candidate wants me to understand.
The basic rule of thumb should be that you shouldn't assume any field-specific knowledge or knowledge of the literature unless you are confident everyone in the room has it. Which should only happen if you are interviewed only by people in your field and you are citing very seminal papers. The safer bet is to spend a few seconds filling in the field specific gaps.
You may end up talking to non-economists. In rare cases, they may be part of the interview process. More common is a meeting with a dean on a campus visit. In that case, if they ask about your research, you have to give a very non-technical explanation. In my view, the biggest mistake that people make here is to try to educate their audience about the technical aspects instead of giving a non-technical version. For example, if the main analysis in your paper is an instrumental variables regression, don't try to explain instrumental variables regressions so that they can understand your paper. Instead focus on your paper and explain it in a way that someone doesn't need to understand instrumental variables regression to understand.
In addition to differing levels of expertise about your field, you can expect your audience will have differing levels of familiarity with your paper. Many, but not all, will have read (or skimmed) the introduction of your paper. Few will have read the whole thing. That means that just like a presentation, a pitch has to be self-contained. It can't be the case that someone has to have read the paper to follow what you are saying.
The last challenge that you will face in this area is differing levels of expertise about your field or your paper within a given interview. You may have a situation where one interviewer is an expert in your field and has read your paper carefully, but the others aren't and haven't. The expert may zero in on very specific things in your paper that are a bit of a distance from the pitch and leave the others lost. This is a challenging situation. The expert probably has a lot of sway over the assessment of your candidacy, but if most of the room is bored or lost it is bad news for you. The best way of dealing with it is to answer the expert's question, but help catch the others up. For example, suppose the expert asks about a particular column in a table of results. You can say to the rest of the room "That's a good question. What he is asking about is this column, where I am trying to do ____. " Then answer the very specific question. Then go back to the more general pitch that everyone can follow.
Don't forget to motivate your paper.
The question "why should I care about your paper?" should always be answered in your pitch. No matter the audience or the length of the pitch. That is what is going to make people remember you. People care a lot less about a clever identification strategy or a neat model if they don't care at all about the question you are studying. So motivation should not be skimped.
Here it is also important to know your audience. Motivating the paper to someone within your field is different than motivating it to someone outside of it. Inside your field, people will have a general sense about the big open questions, so you can tell them how you fit into that. Outside your field, you want to do more of a "this is why a person on the street would care about my paper" explanation.
Remember: Because knowing your audience is so important, it is always a good idea to find out who is interviewing you and look them up. If you are invited for an interview, and it is possible to do so politely, ask who is interviewing you.
Answer the questions you are asked, don't just pitch
This is another area where rank of school makes a difference. At top schools, the interview generally opens with "tell us about your job market paper". And generally candidates are trained and rehearsed to answer that question. At lower ranked schools, things might be considerably different, and you should answer the questions they ask.
For example, it is common to ask "tell us about your research agenda". In that case, you can definitely spend a lot of it talking about your job market paper, but you shouldn't miss the opportunity to situate it a broader agenda, and touch on some other work or ideas as well.
A more teaching focused school might ask "can you explain your paper as you would to an undergrad", as a way of both learning about your research and your ability to communicate with students. If the position is a pure teaching position, your research may not come up at all.
One year I was on a hiring committee and we decided to open each interview with a few minutes of casual chat. We would explain our expectations for the position and ask a couple friendly questions like "why did you choose your field?" or "why did you choose your graduate school?". Somewhat to our surprise, a decent proportion of candidates went off into a job market paper pitch long before we asked them to. It made them seem overly rehearsed, awkward, and even slightly aggressive, none of which are ideal.
Just because those few sites have big names doesn't mean that the other sites don't provide you with good job opportunities. You need to make sure that you have a wide horizon and that you really search a lot. This will help in making a broad pool for your job search.
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