How to create your career elevator pitch

What is an elevator pitch?

An elevator pitch, also known as an elevator speech, is a quick summary of your background or your organization’s background, purpose, and experience. The name comes from the fact that it should be short enough to present during a quick elevator ride. This pitch is a professional introduction that should be about a minute long and can help you start a conversation with potential investors, customers, employers at a career fair, or connect with university alumni and faculty members.

What is a career elevator pitch?

While a traditional elevator pitch may be attributed to someone attempting to sell an executive on an idea during an elevator ride and needing to make an impact, a career elevator pitch is a little more personal. A career elevator pitch is intended to introduce you to business connections who can help build your professional network and explain who you are, what you do, and what you’d like to be doing. It helps you meet people who can assist you in getting a job or connect with new coworkers on your first day at the office. This pitch is a summation of your best qualities as they relate to your career goals and experience and shows what you’ve done and why you’re an asset.

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You need an elevator pitch for your job hunt because over 70% of jobs are found or acquired through professional networking. You can uncover new opportunities as a result of having authentic relationships with others in your industry that can point you to job openings that might not be public. In some circumstances, a company may create a role especially for you based on the strength of your skillset and your relationship.

By participating in networking activities like career fairs and team building you can meet other professionals in your industry and raise awareness of your personal brand and share your abilities, skills, and background. By taking advantage of networking events like these, when people hear about relevant job opportunities, they may also think of you and pass the information along or nominate you directly. If you’re actively job hunting or looking to make a career change, your career elevator pitch should be how you respond when an interviewer inevitably asks you to tell them about yourself.

How to create a career fair elevator pitch

Your career elevator pitch will be wholly dependent on your own experience and skill set. Follow these guidelines to help you get started:

• Use the STAR technique (situation, task, action, and result) to define a few experiences that you’d like to highlight in your pitch. If you don’t have professional experience yet, think about how you’ve excelled in school or situations where you’ve really felt like you performed well.
• Shorten each experience to a sentence or two, with focus paid to your specific actions and the results of those actions.
• See if you can pick out some common themes within these experiences. Do these communicate what you’re good at, what you like doing, and your strengths?
• Make sure that your pitch can be tailored to your specific audience and isn’t too generic.
• Put everything together into a conversational format. Think about how you choose to string everything together and how you can use this pitch to make a person connection with the person you’re talking to.

Tips for preparing your career elevator pitch

Your career elevator pitch should, at a minimum, communicate your skillset and what you’d like to be known for. It should answer the questions “Tell me about yourself,” “What do you do,” and, “What would you like to do next?”

With that in mind, these tips can help you think about your elevator pitch and make sure it’s perfect:

• Keep it brief. Your pitch really shouldn’t be longer than a minute. Remember, this isn’t a rehashing of your resume, it’s a short recap of who you are and what you do that’s designed to pique someone’s interest.
• Be persuasive. Even though this isn’t a long speech, your pitch should be compelling enough to make your listener take interest in what you have to say. This is especially necessary if you’re participating in a group interview and need to stand out.
• Talk yourself up. This is not the time to be humble. Think about what you bring to the table and how your skills and achievements would make you a valuable addition to the company you’re interviewing with. Focus on assets that bring the most value and try to do so without sounding like you’re bragging.

Once you’ve figured out what you’re going to say, practice your pitch. It may feel a little funny to do, but this way you won’t use filler words when you have to make your career elevator pitch for real. Instead of feeling nervous and robotic, you’ll feel comfortable, confident, and ready to answer some common interview questions. Practicing also gives you the opportunity to varying the conversation and finding out what sounds natural and what can be edited.

A career elevator pitch can be a great way to make you stand out from your peers and stay at the top of a recruiter or hiring manager’s mind. Be positive and persuasive and focus on your goals; you’ll be sure to find success in your chosen career.