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I am in the process of interviewing for faculty positions and trying to keep my CV up to date as I go. Should I include research (or teaching) presentations given during on-campus interviews as invited talks? Or are they considered just a part of the interview process and better left off the CV?

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I disagree with Dave. An invited talk is, by definition, a talk that you've been invited to give. Yes, interviews count. (More-or-less inviting yourself is not necessarily different than a non-interview invited talk.)

I agree that you shouldn't reveal which of your invited talks are actually interviews, but that's only an issue if all your invited talks happen in the last semester before you submit your thesis. (And maybe you should wait until after interview season is over to add them. The people who are interviewing you are desperately curious about where else you're interviewing.)

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    Perhaps our difference of opinions could be due to interview formats in different countries. When I interviewed for my present position (in Belgium), the presentation was given to a very small group of people, namely, the interviewers plus some of the other professors in the group I would join. This talk didn't have the same look-and-feel as an invited workshop/conference presentation.
    – Dave Clarke
    Apr 17, 2012 at 19:41
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    I've given invited talks to three people (where I was invited out of the blue and paid an honorarium) and to 200 people (where I volunteered and paid my own way). Which was the "real" invited talk?
    – JeffE
    Apr 18, 2012 at 3:27
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    I agree here, but there may be cultural differences. In Germany, only a small number of those who applied for a professor position will be invited for interview (which are held publically). Therefore, competition for these interviews is (much) harder (and the talk thus more noteworthy) than for many a conference.
    – Raphael
    Aug 16, 2012 at 9:03
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I would say no. Leave them off the CV.

Apart from the fact that you more-or-less invited them to invite you by applying for the position, thus they are not really invited talks, it's probably not a good idea to advertise all of the places you've unsuccessfully applied to or declined.

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    Here, competition for interview talks is harder than for conference talks.
    – Raphael
    Aug 16, 2012 at 9:04
  • @Dave if one shouldn't advertise unsuccessful applications, does that mean you don't think one should have a CV of failures? academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17873/…
    – mankoff
    Jun 13, 2014 at 12:53
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I wouldn't say it's unethical to list them, since I think they could legitimately be considered invited talks, but I would strongly recommend leaving them out. Partly that's because it's not worth the (probably small) risk of offending someone who really doesn't think they belong there, but mainly it's because in my experience most people don't list interview talks on their CVs, so listing them will look a little unusual. In particular, it may make people wonder whether you felt you didn't have enough other talks, whether you're doing other unconventional things in your CV that they should watch out for, etc. This isn't likely to cost you a job by itself, but it's not what you want readers to be thinking about.

There's a general meta-principle here: you should make your CV look like everyone else's, not because doing it differently would be wrong, but because you don't want readers to focus on the differences.

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    Curiously, in my experience the majority of CVs I've looked at do include interview talks. Or at least a substantial percentage: it's hard to look at hundreds of CVs from people I don't know and notice the interview talks they haven't listed!
    – Pete L. Clark
    Jun 18, 2014 at 15:23
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    How do you even tell if something on a cv is an interview talk? Mine are listed on my cv as they were announced (mostly colloquia, a few seminars). It would seem weird to list them as "interview talks", but I've never seen that on anyone's cv.
    – Andy Putman
    Jan 7, 2015 at 3:30
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    You can't tell for any given talk, but if most of the invited talks on a CV took place during interview season in years in which the candidate was on the market, then it looks like interview talks.
    – Anonymous Mathematician
    Jan 7, 2015 at 4:08
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It depends on which CV you are talking about. Hopefully you have better things to include on a one-page CV. Everything you do belongs on your "full" CV. I put departmental seminars in a different category from conference talks. I divide up my conference talks into invited and not invited (and maybe someday keynote). Interviews talks generally either go in external departmental seminars (as opposed to internal seminars) or guest lecturing depending on if it is a research talk or teaching demo. If the interview talk is only given to the search committee, then it goes under positions interviewed for and does not make the seminar list. My full CV lives on the web, but if I am asked to send a CV I purpose tailor it.

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