Going up?

ELEVATOR PITCH: Can you describe yourself and your career goals in under 30 seconds? If not, it’s time you learned. This sort of short, concise description is called an “elevator pitch” — named for the amount of time you might spend in a lift talking to the head of your company. You must be brief if you want to convince this busy person that your ideas are worth listening to.

The elevator pitch can also be useful in job interviews, says Anita Attridge of The Five O’Clock Club, a career counselling company. Attridge, who formerly worked in HR with Merck and Xerox, says the standard interview question, “Tell me about yourself”, often proves difficult to answer. “You’d get everything from ‘Where do you want me to start?’ to their whole life story,” Attridge told Forbes magazine.

Connie Thanasoulis, a career-services consultant at Vault.com, has had similar experiences. “People screw it up all the time,” Thanasoulis comments. “They think they should walk you through their entire résumé.” Instead, she says, job hunters should prepare a 15- to 30-second elevator pitch.

"Don't tell your whole life story." Anita Attridge

Media coach Jane Praeger of Ovid Inc. agrees. “People are too apt to go in with a laundry list of skills: I can do this, I can do that. Instead, say, for example, ‘I can make sure your employees are well supervised and motivated.’”

Preparing your pitch includes practising it out loud, according to Attridge. Do this in front of a mirror, use a recording device, or ask a friend to listen to you. “Practise until it’s as easy as saying your name,” she advises. It’s very important to sound enthusiastic, Attridge adds. “Often the content is very good, but the delivery is so bad you don’t hear it,” she says.

Some career coaches say you should prepare more than one pitch, depending on the job or company. “Develop your pitch with a specific person in mind,” says career coach Win Sheffield. But just because you have a pitch, that doesn’t mean you can ignore other social skills, Sheffield warns. “The pitch is no substitute for developing a relationship with a person.”