What do TED talks and grant applications have in common?

Put a scientist on a stage, and what happens? Some of us panic and mumble. Others are as smooth as a movie star. Most, though, fall back on a well-practiced mode: “self-promotion voice”.

A scientist doing self-promotion voice is easy to recognize. We focus on ourselves, of course (that’s in the name!), talking about all the great things we’ve done. If we have to mention someone else, we make sure to link it in some way: “my colleague”, “my mentor”, “which inspired me to”. All vulnerability is “canned” in one way or another: “challenges we overcame”, light touches on the most sympathetic of issues. Usually, we aren’t negative towards our colleagues either: apart from the occasional very distant enemy, everyone is working with great scientific virtue. If we talk about our past, we tell the same kinds of stories, mentioning our youthful curiosity and deep buzzwordy motivations. Any jokes or references are carefully pruned, made accessible to the lowest-common-denominator. This results in a standard vocabulary: see a metaphor, a quote, or a turn of phrase, and you’re bound to see it in talks again and again and again. Things get even more repetitive when you take into account how often we lean on the voice: a given speech or piece will be assembled from elementary pieces, snippets of practiced self-promotion that we pour in like packing peanuts after a minimal edit, filling all available time and word count.

Packing peanuts may not be glamorous, but they get the job done. A scientist who can’t do “the voice” is going to find life a lot harder, their negativity or clumsiness turning away support when they need it most. Except for the greatest of geniuses, we all have to learn a bit of self-promotion to stay employed.

We don’t have to stop there, though. Self-promotion voice works, but it’s boring and stilted, and it all looks basically the same. If we can do something a bit more authentic then we stand out from the crowd.

I’ve been learning this more and more lately. My blog posts have always run the gamut: some are pure formula, but the ones I’m most proud of have a voice all their own. Over the years, I’ve been pushing my applications in that direction. Each grant and job application has a bit of the standard self-promotion voice pruned away, and a bit of another voice (my own voice?) sneaking in. This year, as I send out applications, I’ve been tweaking things. I almost hope the best jobs come late in the year, my applications will be better then!