Course Content
Welcome
Congratulations on being invited to an ERC grant interview. Advancing to the second step of the evaluation procedure is an achievement in itself. It proves you have an excellent proposal and impressive resume. Yet, there is still a hurdle to overcome: the interview. This course will support you through the sometimes stressful period that lays ahead.
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Overview
Opening remarks
Preparation and support
Module 1: Strategy
In your research proposal you have tried to fit years of research into a few pages. You managed. The document convinced the panel and external reviewers to invite you to evaluation step 2. In this final phase you have an online interview consisting of a presentation and Q+A at your disposal. Depending on the panel you may present your proposal in only ten, eight, five, or even three minutes and you have time to answer around ten questions. That is it. How do you turn this given opportunity into a success? In this module you create a solid strategy in four steps. In step 1 we first explore the low hanging fruit: what does the panel expect from you? Then we have a look at the panel and show how you can use this knowledge to improve your chances of reaching your goal. Step 2 is all about adapting to the online environment. Then we discuss the core message in step 3. Finally, in step 4, you brainstorm about your unique selling points.
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A foundation for success
Step 1: Audience and Goal
Convincing the panel members to fund your proposal. That is what counts in the interaction you are now preparing for. We first mention the low hanging fruit of checking the boxes and then move on to audience and goal.
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What this step is about
What is expected of you?
What is expected of you?
Mapping your audience
Map your audience
Extra assignment: Interview a panel member
Goal
Step 2: Online
ERC organizes interviews online. Our advice: design for online. Here we hand over a list of things you can do to make it work.
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What this step is about
Online vs in-person
Set it and forget it
Light, camera, and composition
The perfect picture
Background and sound
Cloting and technology
Setting your sound
Other adaptations to the online platform
Step 3: Core message
Audience, goal, and setting: check! Now let us have a look at the actual content of the proposal. We will start with its shortest version: the core message.
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What this step is about
Core message
Testing your core message
Strength and weakness
Step 4: Unique Selling Points
So you have formulated your Big Idea into a sticky core-message. But, why would they buy it? The presentation and the Q+A offer plenty of opportunities to mention (and demonstrate) the reasons for awarding you. Before thinking about integrating them in a storyline, it pays to list your, what marketeers call, unique selling points. These USPs make you and your proposal stand out amongst your competitors. A good way of creating this list of USPs is by brainstorming using five questions. They are: Why this? Why now? Why like this? Why you? Why here? These questions aim at the importance, urgency, approach and methodology, CV, and network respectively. Let’s dive deeper into each of them.
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What this step is about
Why this and why now?
Why like this?
Why you and why here?
Do the Five Whys Brainstorm
Module 2: The presentation
So far you have explored the panel, defined your big idea, listed and prioritized the arguments that will make them buy it, and you learned how to optimally use the online environment. The second module focusses on the first section of the interview: the presentation. In four steps we here help you to translate your strategy into a coherent story and slides. We follow a route that fosters creativity and out-of-the-box thinking in step 5 and 6. They respectively deal with composing a compelling storyline that integrates your best unique selling points and sketching the slides that help you to bring it across. You thus design a storyboard. In step 7 and 8 your translate this sketch in a script (the words you will say) and a slide deck. Here we focus on the practical aspects of text writing and slide design.
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Storyboard, script, and slides
Step 5: Storyline
You have formulated your Big Idea. And, you know why the panel would buy it. Convincing is not a matter of just sharing the facts. It is a matter of creating a story that makes the panel members believe. What makes a story a story? Let us dive deeper into it.
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What this step is about
Story matters
Beginning
Middle and End
Exercise: Storyboard
Step 6: Sketching slides
Thus far you have been approaching your presentation from a textual perspective. Now we welcome a true rhetoric superpower aboard: images.
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What this step is about
Visualizing your ideas
Complete your storyboard
Adding images
Extra exercise: test your storyboard
Step 7: Script
In the previous step you have completed your storyboard by adding sketches. Now we go back to text again. Text and images provide different angles on the same story. Iterating between them allows you to both finetune your texts and images.
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What this step is about
Writing a script
Write your script
Extra exercise: test your script
Step 8: Designing slides
You have finished your storyboard and your script. Now it is time to open your PowerPoint and actually make slides. Here are some guidelines that help you to translate your story-board into slides that do not confuse, but do create impact.
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What this lesson is about
Avoide confusion
Create impact
Create your slides
Extra: PowerPoint tips & tricks
Module 3: Delivery
You strategized in module 1 and compiled your presentation in module 2. Module 3 is about bringing it home. Strategy and presentation are central aspects of the preparation. But, they are useless if you cannot access what you have prepared in the heat of the moment. Due to the nervousness you experience during the interview, your working memory diminishes. It makes thinking clear and accessing your short term (the things you have prepared) and your long term memory. Therefore, we put the working memory at the centre of this module. In step 9 we explain what the working memory does and why it fails you when you experience a high level of stress. Also, we teach you how to regain it and keep it up and running by breathing, grounding, and functional movement. Step 10 builds on that and explains a way to train little behavioural changes that promote connection with you and the content you present. Then, in step 11 we teach you how to stay in control during the Q+A by defining and structuring what we call answer drawers and how to access them in the heat of the moment. Finally, step 12 provides ideas for how to organize mock-interviews in such a way that they help you make the finishing touch.
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Bringing it home
Step 9: Dealing with stress
In module 1, you have been working on your strategy. Module 2 was all about the presentation. Both are essential parts of your preparation. However, a perfect preparation can only be completed by a convincing performance. The most important selling point is a demonstration of genuine enthusiasm during the interview. But, how can you be enthusiastic and authentic during a stressful event such as a grant interview? Stress diminishes your working memory and therefore the accessibility of your memory, the place where all your knowledge is stored. Let us have a look at how this works and what you can do about it.
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What this step is about
What happens inside
Working memory
Breathing
Grounding and functional movement
Step 10: Presenting
What do you like the most: presenting or Q+A? Most people have a preference for one or the other. Some like the presentation better. While presenting you are in control. One can rehearse the script till they fully master it. Others prefer the Q+A part. While in conversation they feel connected with your audience.
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What this lesson is about
Connection
Exercise: Staircase learning
Extra: Understanding your challenges
Extra: Body language
Step 11: Answering questions
Of course the presentation is an important starting point. The Q+A is where you really bring it home. After a mediocre presentation you still can convince the panel with a strong Q+A. A perfect pitch will be ruined if it is followed by a weak Q+A. But, because of the difficulty to predict what the questions will be, many applicants put a lot of effort in finetuning the presentation and almost neglect to prepare for the Q+A. Here we give you the tools to master the Q+A in advance.
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What this lesson is about
Preparing the Q+A
Answering tips
Example questions
Step 12: The last stretch
We are almost there. You have worked your way through the presentation and you know how to present it. But, the proof of the pudding is in eating it. Organizing a few mock-interviews can complete your preparation. These simulations provide the outsider’s feedback on your presentation and answers. With this feedback you can finetune your story, slides, and answers. But even more important is the pre-exposure mock-interviews provide. During the confrontation with the mock-panel member, you will experience the same type of stress responses that the actual interview will evoke. This pre-exposure helps to better cope with the real interview itself.
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What this lesson is about
Organizing mock-interviews
Just before the interview
Keep on learning
ERC StG interview
Mapping your audience

Who is your audience?

Checking and obeying to the above mentioned requirements is low hanging fruit. Getting to know the panel and its members is crucial. You have to convince them. They will decide on rewarding or declining your request. In all the coming steps to the interview you should keep in mind what the panel members need, what they know, what will excite them, what will convince them, what your message means to them, how receptive to your ideas they are, etc. Try to look at things through the eyes of the panel.

 

What works for them

It is the ERC panel member’s job to check for the sole criterion of evaluation: scientific excellence. This criterion both applies to the proposal, which should be ground-breaking, ambitious, though feasible and to the candidate who should have the intellectual capacity, creativity, and commitment needed to successfully deliver. The right mix of motivation, suitability, and ambition (which includes a clear idea of the career’s direction) paint the picture of the high quality future colleague panel members are looking for.

 

But, determining the scientific excellence of a diversity of candidates during an online interview (especially if the candidates are from distant fields) can be a difficult task. Envision yourself being part of a panel. If your job is to rank a biologist (if you are not one yourself), how would you answer the following questions:

  • What would you look for during the presentation and Q+A?
  • What will you base your judgement on?
  • What in a candidate will give you the feeling that the tax payer’s money will be well spend?

 

You cannot rely on your knowledge in the field (since you have close to none), but have to turn to much more impalpable things:

  • Do you trust a candidate?
  • Do you like this person?
  • Do you believe that they are capable of delivering what they promise?
  • And, what do you base this judgement on?

 

What works for you

The ideal performance hands over those things the panel members need in order to become your advocates (what you say and show). On the other hand, they will be best convinced when you present what you truly believe in (how you say it). You are the most convincing when you are genuinely enthusiastic about what you say. So within the ingredients that work for you audience, pick out those that make you really enthusiastic (or formulate them in a way that makes you enthusiastic). A hardly to understand pitch that is presented in an truly enthusiastic way might be more convincing than a pitch that is perfect from a storytelling perspective, but that is presented without genuine enthusiasm.

 

You might recognize this if you have interviewed job candidates. Would you either hire a PhD candidate with a perfect cv, but who does not show any passion for the research topic of the position or rather go for the candidate with a less perfect cv, but who demonstrates a lot of enthusiasm during the conversation?

 

Getting to know the panel

Although ERC does publish the panel’s chair, the names of the individual panel members are not publicly available until after the conclusion of the review process. However, ERC rotates the composition of their panels each two years. So the panel of two years ago (which can be found on the ERC website) gives you a good indication. Google these panel members. Have a glance at their profiles on their university’s website. Ask your colleagues what they know about them.

 

Here you will find an overview of the panel members of all panels.

 

Knowledge of the panel members can help you to predict the questions or critique they might have, or the way they look at your proposal or type of research. For instance, there are always potential clashes between quantitative and qualitative methods, between digital tools and classic hand work, between applied and fundamental research, between theoretical or experimental research, or between mono- and multi-disciplinary research.

 

This realization can also help you to find examples, or highlight aspects of the proposal that are relevant to their field. It also helps you to prepare for critical questions from in the category: ‘wouldn’t it make more sense take approach x [panel member inserts their own field]?’. However, keep this search functional. Stick to keywords. Going too deep into this takes a lot of time, makes you unnecessarily nervous, and steer you away from your authenticity.

 

General remarks about panel members

Besides panel members being individuals with their own fields and personalities, they are also just human beings. As such they do behave in predictable ways. Realize that panels are:

  • A mix of specialists and laymen. Panels are composed of experts with different specialities. Mostly one or two panel members are from a field of research comparable to yours (seldom exactly your field), the rest will be outsiders. When it comes to knowledge on anything outside their research field, panel members are laymen. This means that most of the panel members need explanation of the key concepts and they will never get to the debts of your research. They also need to be reminded why they should care about your work.
  • Panel members are not only rational. You might wish them to look at the logical argumentation only. However, people need more than arguments to become convinced. They also need to believe you as a presenter and get touched by what you say. Only when the panel members feel the relevance of your proposal and when they see you as credible and capable, they will be motivated to do their best to understand your ideas. See more about this at (reference to text frame about logos, ethos and pathos).
  • They have a tough job. While sitting in a poorly ventilated Brussels’ meeting room, they watch talking head with slides from early in the morning to late afternoon. Al the candidates they see, are excellent researchers with brilliant proposals. Choosing between them can be difficult and especially around the tipping point it often comes down to trivial details or personal preferences.
  • Panel members hardly read your proposal. Mostly one or two panel members (the lead reviewers, probably those who are closest to your field) are asked to read your proposal from beginning to end. The others will only scan the proposal quickly. This means that you cannot assume that everybody in the audience knows everything about your proposal. Meanwhile, researchers are trained to look for the week spots in the argumentation. Even without having read your proposal in depth they will try to spot the week points.
  • Panels have their own group dynamics. Like in every group of humans, there probably are tensions between some panel members, clashing communication styles, differences of opinion, cultural differences, etc.
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