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
Organizing mock-interviews

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, 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.

 

Organizing a mock-interview

Mock-interviews are not automatically constructive. They can deprive you of self-confidence when mock-panel members are too critical without giving advice for how to improve things. Also, they can give you the wrong impression of what the panel expects. And, often different pieces of feedback contradict each other.

Here are a few guidelines that can help you to organize effective mock-interviews:

 

The right panel

The most easy thing is to invite your direct colleagues. Be aware that the actual panel will be much broader. With a too narrow mock-panel, you usually harvest detailed questions about methodology from their specific perspective. The actual panel is much broader and might also ask broader questions, or detailed questions from unexpected angles.

Organize both the generic and specific questions. You can try to have both generalists and specilists on the mock panel. Or you organize one (or two) mock-interview with panel members far from your field and one (or two) with an audience close to your field. If possible, try to involve people who were in ERC panels themselves or at least who have been interviewed themselves.

More is not per se better. Usually a group of three panel members plus someone who analyses what you do (can be someone from the supporting staff, or a coach) without participating in the discussion is enough.

Ideally you involve people with experience as ERC panel member or ERC interviewee. If you do not have them in your network, probably you know panel members or interviewees who have first-hand experience with other grants. Their lived-experience will be of much added value.

 

Assign roles

Ask one panel member to act as a chairperson. Ideally this person has experience as an ERC panel member or as an interviewee. The chair explains the procedure beforehand, discusses the questions to be asked by whom and in which order, welcomes you to the room, stop you if you run out of time (or not and record how much extra time you needed so you know how much to cut), and say good bye at the end of the interview. Next to the chair, you can also assign the roles of the panel member with distance to the field who asks broad questions about e.g. impact and leadership skills, and specialists asking the detailed methodology-oriented questions.

 

As realistic as possible

Do your research on how the actual setting will be (as described in Step 1). Mimic this procedure. Many mock-interviews start with a bit of chit-chat between interviewee and colleagues. After the presentation, the evaluation of the presentation starts and blends in with questions and tips on how to improve it. Our advice: have an interview phase and an evaluation phase. The interview phase starts with you being invited to the room, a welcome by the chair, your presentation, Q+A, and ends with you leaving the room. Upon you returning, the evaluation starts. Realism also means that you ideally organize the mock-interview on Webex (if that is the platform of the real interview).

 

Make it difficult

What questions are you afraid of? What communication styles do you react badly to? What non-verbal cues from the audience make you nervous? Ask the panel members to simulate these so that you can practice the things that frighten you. Also practise the iteration between specific and generic questions. These transitions require you to switch between modes of answering, which is a thing many candidates struggle with on the spot.

 

Ask for the right feedback

Often mock interviews end up as detailed discussions about the contents of the presentation, your slides, and your answers. Try also to get feedback on the impression you make. This works best if you invite a fly on the wall who does not participate in the interview, but analyses what happens. The majority of the real interview’s panel is not taking part in the Q+A. They are spectators. Ask feedback on the following aspects:

  • Contents: is it clear and convincing? Ask for direct feedback. Is there enough science in the talk? Does this example work, or should I use another one?
  • Time
  • Structure
  • Slides
  • Verbal and non-verbal communication
  • Interaction
  • Answering question

 

Update your Q+A document

Collect the questions you received during your mock interviews and store them in your answer drawers. Ask you mock panel members to help create answers to them that would convince them. Often the best answers to potential questions come from your mock panel members. Also ask for the questions they did not ask during the mock interview. Another tip here: ask your students to write five questions each on post-it notes. This will result questions from unexpected angles.

 

Stand your ground

Use what is useful for you, and ignore what is not helpful. What worked for your colleagues does not per se work for you. After all, you are the one who is doing the interview. Stay who you are and stay close to your personal style that works for you.

 

General rehearsal

Apart from your mock-interviews, you might schedule a general rehearsal with a presentation coach (it is part of our trajectories). The mock-interviews will tell you what are things you can improve, the general rehearsal can provide the safe environment to work on them with a specialist.

During the general rehearsal you give your presentation, you answer questions following the strict format of the interview. It helps you to internalize the process. It is also about the finishing touch. How many answers can you give? What is the average time for the answers? Do you manage to regain controll after loosing it? If challenges arise, there still time to do some experiments.

 

Timing

Usually two mock-interviews and a general rehearsal are enough. This is a matter of funneling, every step it gets better. The first one will help you to receive feedback that you can use to work a bit extra on those aspects that weren’t there yet. Update your storyline, or slides, or revisit one of the previous steps of this course to further improve your answering techniques. It can be tough, because you get a lot of general feedback. The second mock-interview will be better and the feedback will be more detailed. Progress is shown. Finally a few days before the interview you have the general rehearsal which is a closure of your preparation.

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