How should I use a five-minute presentation at the beginning of an academic job interview? I have been invited for an interview for a tenure track assistant professor position. The interview will be conducted virtually. At the beginning of the interview I am supposed to give a five minute presentation by way of introduction. Very little was provided by way of instructions for this presentation, apart from the time limit.
I don't really know how best to use this time. They have already seen my application materials (research plans, teaching philosophy etc), and will presumably have them to hand, but should I give a summary of what I consider the most important points of those? Or should I give a summary of my career so far emphasising the most relevant experiences? Or should I be trying to introduce some new information that they won't have seen in my application?
Five minutes is pretty long, so I would at least ask your interviewers if they expect you to cover completely new ground.  I don't know if academia is much different to the real world, but in the real world quite often the interviewers haven't done their homework and going back over previous ground is not unusual.  Not only that they may have reviewed so many people that they think you are someone else.  Often they think they have the star candidate in front of them and the worst thing you can do is let them know otherwise