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
Why this and why now?

Five Whys

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.

 

Five whys

 

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.

 

 

Why this?

Why would the panel care about your proposed research? We interpret this question about the importance in terms of impact. What panel gets for their money. The benefits rather than the features. The high gain that is worth the high risk. This impact can be formulated on three different levels: the impact on your field, the broader academic impact, and the societal impact.

 

Impact on your field

Let us start with the one you are probably most at ease with: the impact on your field. This question about the proposed research comes in many shapes:

  • What do you contribute to your field?
  • Why do your peers care?
  • Why would this make you a key-note speaker on international conferences?
  • Why will you be able to publish highly-cited papers in high-impact journals?
  • If we open the freshmen’s textbook of your field ten years from now, what chapter/paragraph based on your research will be in there?
  • What is the title of your most important publication?
  • What will the [insert name] model/theory/method be used for?

 

Broader academic impact

The questions above are all about the concrete deliverables at the end of the project. Things that are, if the project succeeds, added to the library of human knowledge. However, the impact of your project will extend beyond its own scope. You will enable new research. Questions about this broader academic impact are:

  • What kind of new research will be possible thanks to the [] you will develop in this project? At the [] you can insert e.g.:
    • Approach
    • Paradigm
    • Theory
    • Methodology
    • Models
    • Datasets
  • What kind of papers will site your work?
  • What do you see as the next step?
  • What will the proposal after this one be about?

 

While filling in these questions, think about the disciplines present in the panel. Will some of them directly benefit from your work? Make them see what is in it for them.

 

Societal impact

The third level of questions are positioned at the societal impact. Think about questions such as:

  • How will this project change the daily life of the patient/consumer/teacher/public servant/nurse/pensionado/other relevant stakeholder?
  • What does the tax-payer get in return for their money?
  • Why should your neighbor/parent/sibling care?
  • What is the technical spinoff?

 

Dichotomy #1: Fundamental vs applied

While discussing impact, we often encounter a tension between academic and societal relevance. There seems to be a trade-off between fundamental and applied research. A proposal dealing with fundamental scientific questions automatically could feel societal irrelevant. Why should society pay for your intellectual hobby? If there is societal relevance it needs extra highlighting. Thus you show the win-win situation. On the other hand, a study that very clearly impacts society might feel as not scientifically relevant. Why should this be done with public money if it could also be done on the R&D department of a company? A proposal with obvious societal relevance becomes extra interesting if the scientific challenges are made explicit.

 

Why now?

Great, the panel members see the importance of the proposal. But why should it be done now? What is the urgency? Can it wait ten more years? The answer is clear when the problem heads towards an irreversible tipping point. Also an increase of what should be decreasing (deaths, tumors, costs, suffering, sea levels (unless it is the Death Sea)) or a decrease of what should be increasing (income, equality, life expectancy, acres of tropical forest) ask for a solution as soon as possible. That is also true for an obstacle that hampers the advancement of your field. But hey, if it is so urgent, why did you not start the research ten years ago? The answer can be that the machines are available for the first time, or recent discoveries (maybe they are even yours) brought to the desired breakthrough within reach. This looking backward in time highlights the project’s innovativeness.

 

If you are able to answer both questions, you show that we should, but also can do it now. Now is the time.

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