Archive for 'elevator pitch'

Elevator Pitch Fest

You ever fumble around with that “so what do you do for a living” question? Most of us have at one time or another, and not only when looking for a job or interviewing but just with meeting new people or networking in general. Well, there is a simple, free, tool online that you may want to check out. Take a look at the Pitch Wizard at 15SecondPitch.com. Push the green play button when you are on the site to be prompted with questions to help you generate your elevator pitch. You may need to edit it slightly or you may wish to generate several different pitches customized for different audiences.

In fact, let’s make it an Elevator Pitch Fest! My colleague, Susan Ireland, is collecting elevator pitches generated in the comments at her blog — The Job Lounge. You’ll find my elevator pitch at the top of the list. Please consider this a personal invitation for you to join in too. The goal is to reach 100 elevator pitches and, frankly, I think we can blow that one out of the park! Thanks much.

Powerful Networking

One of the first things you find in situations where you are meeting new people is that they want to know about your work…what you do. They don’t want some long drawn out life history and it would obviously be rude and nonproductive to wave off their interest. Yet, you need to be able to effectively and naturally deliver the info they seek. Stuff like, what your work consists of now, what your experience (work &/or education) is, and maybe a bit about your career goals. They just need to be able to categorize you a bit. Getting categorized sounds rude but it is meant to be helpful. If an opportunity comes up that they want to share, they need to be able to quickly pull you out of their mental filing system. Many people love to make connections and help others this way especially if it is easy and they know just the right person to refer.

So, have you spent time practicing your one minute bio? The exercise feels kinda lame and unnatural but the important thing is that you give it some thought and practice putting your voice to your thoughts about your work — where you have been careerwise and where you are going.

There is an art to networking. It is quite difficult to remember to take a moment to understand who you are interacting with and how to best present yourself in various situations. But keep your mind on it and stay aware for opportunity, not just opportunity for you but opportunity to help others somehow — that is powerful networking. The person you help may not be the one to help you but you set wheels into motion by being generous with your knowledge, info, and positive energy.