How to Develop Your Personal Elevator Pitch

Edited by Kira Wampler, Krystle C., Jack Herrick, Tyler and Stacie and 16 others

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Many structured interviews, particularly those at large companies, start with a question like "tell me about yourself." The interviewer doesn't really want you to go back to grade school and talk about your childhood. This is a specific question with a specific answer...in two minutes or so, the interviewer wants to get you to relax and loosen out your vocal cords, understand your background, your accomplishments, why you want to work at XYZ company and what your future goals are.
The term "Elevator Pitch" began as a term used to describe a planned and rehearsed 30 second pitch you could give in the short time you would have when you meet someone on the 20th story of a high-rise building elevator and you have until ground floor to tell them of your job hunt and get them to offer a key connection or referral (30-60 seconds). That conversation usually starts out something like this. "Oh, Hi Harry. What are you doing on the 20th story of the XYZ Building"? Or, "What brings you to the grocery store today?" By your answer, you will either waste the next 30-60 seconds or use it to give your "Elevator Pitch" and get another contact or referral to further your job search.
Here's how to narrow your life down into a brief but relevant and professional answer.

Edit Steps

1. 1
   Spend about 1-2 hours writing down your top five work or personal experiences. These experiences should follow this format - situation/task, action, result (STAR). What was the situation, what did you do, and what happened?
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2. 2
   Narrow each down to a paragraph. Think about the STAR format on a 100 point scoring pie: Only about 15-20 points should go to the "situation" with about 40 points going to your actions and 30-35 points on the results.
3. 3
   Think about the themes that come across. Are you all about growth, customer focus, sales excellence, product innovation, etc. and how do the themes come through? How do your experiences reflect a recurring theme?
4. 4
   Pick your top themes. What are the top 1-2 things you want the interviewer to remember about you? When you have finished answering the question, the interviewer should know clearly what these top 2 things are.
5. 5
   Put it together. A good way to finalize this is to use the word-count feature on your word processor. At 150 words per minute, you should not use much more than 350 words for your pitch. You'll generally want to start with undergrad, unless that was a very long time ago. Quickly move past undergrad and launch into your work history, keeping in mind that you want to highlight your top 3-5 experiences and not every last thing you did in each job. Keep your undergrad and work history to 75% of your time. Save the last moments for why XYZ company and what your future goals are. These goals should match the new position and/or the opportunities at this company.

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