What is the Elevator Speech Or “Me in 30 Seconds?”

Feb 28th, 2011 | By Bill | Category: Employment News, Interviewing



 

You are looking for a job and decide to join the local Chamber of Commerce to do some serious networking. The first event you attend is for new members. The room is full of people sitting around large tables. The announcements are over and suddenly you are alarmed to hear that every person in the room is going to get a very brief time to tell who they are and about their business.

One thing you notice is that:

1. Many of the people give a brief personal introduction including their career objectives or type of job they are looking for.

2. They might mention three or four specific accomplishments they have done and perhaps a few character traits or adaptive skills that set them apart from their neighbor to the right.

3. If they are looking for a job, they might end with a probing question like, “Who do you know who works in such and such a field?”

You are amazed at the amount of information these people give out in such a brief time frame. They didn’t seem to have a memorized speech, it sounded very natural. They didn’t use any technical words that others couldn’t understand. You wondered how they could get up and give a talk like that just off the cuff.

So you keep your eye on one of those people. When the meeting moves into the social gathering stage, you go up to that person and ask how she did that. She give you a big smile and says that she was giving a “Me in 30 Seconds” or “Elevator Speech”. This is a technique that most of the people in the room have learned to use in situations like the Chamber function or interviews.

You ask why it’s called an “Elevator Speech” and she tells you that most people generally only listen effectively for 30 to 60 seconds. When you tell a little about yourself that way, it piques the interest of the listener who might invite you to tell them a little more about yourself.

You take this information home and do a little computer research. After learning that you already have all the knowledge you need, you write yourself an elevator speech and start rehearsing. You put copies of it in different places at home to remind yourself to practice and in case you forget something. You tell it to yourself out loud when you are alone in the car going to the store. You practice it on the kids. They learn it faster than you do and enjoy coaching you into getting it right.

A month has now gone by and you have an opportunity to go on a job interview. The interviewer smiles at you and asks you to tell him a little about yourself and your give him your elevator speech as naturally as if you just thought it through.

Congratulations. You are on your way to getting a new job.

A. Mullen has been writing for two decades. Mullen’s website Self-Help Discovery covers self-help reviews on a wide range of topics.

 

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