What’s your elevator pitch?
Why the perfect pitch can make or break opportunities
It’s a familiar scene, your interview starts and you’re asked to give an overview of your career. . .
And you know you need to keep it short and sweet but you don’t want to miss out on any of the projects you’ve led so you try to cram everything you’ve ever done into your answer.
And you just keep talking and talking.
Then you lose the attention of the interviewer and it’s very hard to get it back.
So how can you do it better next time?
You need to perfect your elevator pitch.
It’s really challenging as a contractor to summarise a varied, and often long, career into a couple of minutes but it’s the key to getting your interview off on the right foot.
Here’s out 3 top tips to creating your elevator pitch;
Decide What to Say.
It sounds simple but knowing which parts of your experience you want to share is a great starting point. The thing to remember here is that you’re not trying to be everything to everyone. You don’t need to start at the beginning and you don’t need to talk through every role or every project, what you’re trying to do is share a concise, interesting overview of your career.
Tailor It
Here’s your chance to align yourself to what they are looking for. Choose to talk about a couple of the projects you’ve delivered that are really relevant to what they are doing.
There’s no point talking about your complex data migration experience when they’re delivering regulatory change, but if they are looking for someone to manage the upgrade of their intranet and you’ve done that numerous times before, here’s the time to slip that into conversation!
Practice
To get a relaxed and engaging style, a good tip is to imagine you’re chatting with a friend and they ask about your job. How would you describe what you do and what you’ve achieved? This will help you choose the language that suits and will be a great starting point.
It might make you feel a little bit uncomfortable, but practicing out loud will really help to nail your career overview so it’s always good to record yourself and play it back. It doesn’t need to sound word perfect, you want it to be natural but it’s a great way of fine tuning what you want to say and feeling confident in your delivery.
Having a confident career overview prepared for your next interview will make a huge difference. It helps you gain and keep the attention and engagement of the interviewer from the start giving you time to expand on your achievements throughout the interview.
Need help with your recruitment? Reach out to us at info@thesearchproject.co.uk