Quick post to address a question that came up on the ecoevojobs.net discussion forum recently: as a faculty job seeker, should you list job talks on your CV, and if so, how? My advice is to do as I did: list your job talks on your CV as invited seminars, along with any other invited seminars and without distinguishing them from any other invited seminars. After all, a job talk _is_ an invited seminar! It’s not in any way misleading, or “padding your cv,” to list it as such. My anecdotal impression is that this is common practice in ecology, although I’m sure it’s not literally universal.* But perhaps I’m totally wrong about that, in which case presumably commenters will say so. 🙂 Some of you may be wondering: but what if search committee members see those job seminars, and infer/speculate that I interviewed for a faculty job and didn’t get it? Won’t that look bad to them? To which: no, it won’t look bad, for several reasons. First (and least importantly), the search committee won’t know it was a job seminar if you don’t label it as such. Second, search committee members already assume that you’ve applied for faculty jobs in the past and didn’t get them. Because what are the odds that the faculty job application they’re reading is the only one you’ve ever submitted? Third, search committee members know perfectly well that failing to get a faculty job for which you applied in the past doesn’t reflect poorly on you. There are usually multiple strong applicants for any given faculty job, sometimes many. So the fact that you interviewed for, but didn’t get, a faculty job doesn’t reflect poorly on you at all. Indeed, just the opposite–giving invited seminars, including job seminars for jobs that you weren’t offered, is a _good_ thing in the eyes of search committee members. It’s one line of evidence, among many others, that you’re establishing yourself in your field, building a good professional reputation, and doing research that other people want to hear about. Look, I know it sucks to interview for a job you wanted and not get the offer. It feels bad. It might make you doubt yourself. And maybe it’s not something you want to be reminded of every time you look at your cv. But remember: how it feels to you has absolutely nothing to do with how it looks to other people. An unsuccessful interview for a faculty job might feel like a failure to you, but in the eyes of the search committee for the next faculty job you apply for, it’ll be a success. Don’t hide your successes from the search committee; list your job seminars on your cv as invited seminars. *Few professional practices are _literally_ universal, meaning that literally _everyone_ follows them with _no_ exceptions. ### Share this: * Click to share on X (Opens in new window) X * Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook * Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit * Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email * Click to share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon * Click to share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky * Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn * Like Loading...

The International Biogeography Society and Aarhus University are excited to welcome you to the 12th Biannual Conference in Aarhus, the city of Smiles.