In addition to the related questions in this website, I have been reading about chalk talk (e.g., here and here). My assumption was that this is the common routine everywhere in the North America for all kind of positions. However, today I asked a question about this from my PI (at a Canadian institute), and she said she has recently attended two (STEM-based) search committees in none of which they had a chalk talk (like asking the applicant to get to a board, writing his vision, aims, discussing them, answering questions in between, and overall defending his candidacy by selling themselves to the committee). Alternatively, she said they had something like a "round table" during which questions where kind of not too formal, and there were no board, or anything particularly focusing on the format expressed in the references above. My advisor stated that, to her estimation, the main focus of the committee to decide about an applicant, was on their teaching and research demos, rather than their post-launch private session with the committee.
Now, I am wondering whether or not the chalk talk notion does exist at all in the case Canadian (STEM-based) tenure-track campus interviews? Overall, what should one expect about the mechanics of private interviews of such positions?
