Preparing for and surviving the ERC Starting Grant interview

This post is long overdue, and it’s going to be a long one.

Those lucky ones who received their interview invitations did so about a month ago, and perhaps the initial joy is now mixed with anxiety about the upcoming interview. It is an important step of the process, but once you’re invited, you’re so much closer to the goal than you’ve ever been - which is a reason to be proud.

For me, it was also a reason to be worried. It feels like there is a long wait between the interview invitation and the actual interview: in my case, the interview was scheduled in the third week of June (it can be earlier as well as later, depending on your panel; they meet in different weeks). That leaves 3 months to prepare, which may seem like a long time. But I was grateful that I had it: these months were also teaching-heavy for me, so in addition to preparing for the interview, I had to teach several classes a week and supervise master students, who were becoming increasingly antsy as their own thesis deadline was approaching. I’m pretty sure that almost everyone invited for the interview will find themselves in a similar position.

Therefore, I tried to spread out the work across these three months. I used spare moments to re-read my application (yes, it’s unbelievable how quickly you can forget the details of what you promised in the proposal) and develop a strategy for the presentation and possible questions.

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The presentation

The requirements and expectations for the presentation will differ between panels. I had only 5 minutes and 5 slides to showcase my proposal. Some panels allow for longer presentations and don’t limit the number of slides. There are even specific panel requirements on the use of animations and other visuals. The requirements are clearly stated in the interview invitation document you receive, and you must stick to these.

With my 5 slides, I wasn’t sure initially what to focus on. So I went back to my mind-mapping and diagramming analog tools, and decided that since I only had a few slides, I need a good diagram or something to visualize the project. I came up with 5 slides with an animated diagram which - as I thought at the time - represented the puzzle quite well.

I got to test it out at the workshop for candidates invited for an interview organized by my university. We were several people, all from different faculties and with vastly different topics, and one speaking coach. We made our presentations - it was quite an interesting experience to listen to someone trying to convince us to support a project in a field I had no idea about. Quite eye-opening actually. Then we gave each other feedback and received feedback from the coach. The group hated my slides. They were too boring and too grey. In the course of the training, I changed some things, and the group immediately gave feedback on whether it worked better. It was very useful.

I continued tweaking my presentation - and made it very colorful, among other things. These colors could make your eyes bleed. But apparently, that can be a good thing, if it helps you communicate your ideas. There was one slide where I tried to present the whole complex project structure, the team, and the objectives; I spent days on figuring out just this one slide. Later, I got feedback at my mock interviews that this was a very good slide. I’m still amazed at how much time and effort went into ONE SINGLE SLIDE. But it did pay off.

Questions

In addition to your - rather short, in my case - presentation, the big part of the interview is the questions from the panel. My preparation strategy for this part involved several things.

I’ve sent the proposal to several colleagues and asked them to come up with questions (and be as critical and picky as they could). When they shared their questions, I put them in an Excel spreadsheet, classified them by topic, and added bullet points of possible responses.

I’ve re-read my proposal (it helped that there was already some distance) and acted as my own harshest critique: I picked on the weaknesses I could now see. It’s inevitable that you, too, will see some weaknesses. At the same time I thought: wow, that’s a pretty cool proposal, the panel would be wrong not to support it (I’m rarely that arrogant, but I do think my project is pretty cool). I added my own critical questions to the Excel.

Finally, I asked ChatGPT to come up with some standard ERC panel types of questions. And added them to the Excel spreadsheet.

Eventually, I had a very long list of topics and questions with bullet points. I wouldn’t recommend writing out full answers - there’s no point in trying to memorize things and attach yourself to particular phrasings, because the questions will not be the exact same as you planned. But bullet points and general categories of possible critique proved to be helpful.

Mock interviews and practice, practice, practice

I cannot emphasize enough how important they were. I organized two, with three or four people in each mock panel. These mock interviews took place about a week apart, and I made changes based on the first panel’s comments. My generous colleagues listened to my presentation, asked questions, and then gave me feedback on both the presentation and the way I responded to questions. I took notes about what they asked and added it to my Excel. I also added some information to my slides, realizing that I actually missed important bits there.

Having tried presenting and answering questions in a situation as close to the actual one was super helpful. After I settled on the content of my presentation and my slides, I practiced the hell out of it on my own. I recorded myself on MS Teams: it allows you to transcribe your speech in real time, so I could use good ways to phrase things later. I kid you not, I practiced a million times like this - I wanted to be sure that even if I’m too nervous during the interview, I can do this on auto-pilot and still finish within my 5 minutes. I also practiced my background, the height of my laptop - I wanted to stand, so I had to improvise a setup that would allow me to do that (I don’t have a standing desk at home, and I had planned to have the interview from home). I sent screenshots of me in different outfits with different backgrounds to my mom, who told me what to wear. So it was also fun, I actually enjoyed this part.

The day

Since Covid, ERC interviews take place online. Before that, people had to go to Brussels, and I can’t imagine the stress. Online is still stressful (because technology), but at least you can sleep in your bed before the very consequential day. I had set up a monstrous pyramid of cardboard boxes on my dining table to be able to do this interview standing up, checked again that everything worked, called myself on the Cisco Webex (important to check that you know how to use this software that the ERC prefers), and went to bed.

In the morning, I could not eat, as usual before an important event, and connected to Webex about 5 minutes before the time I was allocated. I prepared to wait - I’ve read somewhere that panels can take a while before they actually let you in. So I walked around my room, petted my cat (he’s another reason why I preferred to do the call standing up - he likes to join me on work calls), and then I heard the panel chair calling my name - oops, I had to run to be in the frame. They actually let me in only a few minutes after the assigned time, so don’t be like me and stay near your laptop.

I could see the room with 15-ish panel members (I’m not sure about the number, to be honest). The chair welcomed me and said I can start with my presentation, which I did. Despite all my practice, I didn’t manage to finish my last phrase - and was cut off by the chair. But luckily, it was not too much; still, when you practice, keep in mind that you may still need a bit of a buffer time for the real situation.

After I finished my presentation, several panel members asked me questions. Only four of them did so, and it appears that only these designated panel members read your proposal and prepare questions: based on their own opinion and based on the comments of external peer reviewers (I realized it later when I saw the reviews). Panel members compile all questions and ask them, taking turns. I received some questions that also came up during the preparation, and was happy that the Excel spreadsheet with bullet points paid off!

I felt well prepared for the Q&A session, but what caught me off guard was something I haven’t prepared for: after answering questions, the chair suggested - you have a few seconds to make your case again, why should we fund this project? I didn’t have this prepared, so I said something that afterwards I wasn’t sure about and was quite anxious about. My first reaction was: I did not need to repeat myself and had to say something good about the project that I haven’t mentioned yet. So I said “I know the ERC cares about the scientific excellence, but” and went on to talk about the societal relevance and urgency of the project. Afterwards, I was hitting myself for saying that about the ERC - I’ve read about it somewhere and that’s what you hear about them in many trainings, that all they care about is science. But it felt wrong throwing it at the panel like that. I still have no idea how it worked - in my favor or not really. But it was a genuine reaction.

So there you have it, my experience of preparing and standing for an ERC starting grant interview. I felt almost good about it afterwards, but was really drained. The whole thing took only 27 minutes, but it was so intense I felt like having a nap immediately after.