Presentation Skills Development Personal Pitch Assignment During your time at Foster you will have numerous opportunities to practice your presentation skills. Your first chance will come during Orientation. There is a lot of information in this message. Be sure to read all the way to the end. The Assignment Prepare a personal pitch that is 3 minutes or less on the topic outlined below. Present this pitch to your Core Team and Gregory Heller, the MBA Program’s Business Communications Advisor, and Senior Associate Director of Career Management. Another career coach may also be present. Your MBA Core Team will be assigned a one-hour time slot during Orientation during which you and your team members will deliver your speeches. You will be notifie d of your team’s slot after teams are announced on Tuesday, September 5 th . The Prompt For Your Pitch Respond to this request: “ Tell me about yourself .” This question is not an invitation to narrate your resume, rather it is about telling the story of you came to be where you are now, and add more depth than can be revealed through a resume. What are you passionate about? Why do you want to get your MBA? or enter the field you have chosen? Another way to think about crafting this pitch is to answer the question: Why have you chosen to interrupt your career and come to business school? This question may be posed to you in the future as, “Why are you getting your MBA?” or, “Why did you get an MBA?” You might share a story about how you came to make this important decision. About a specific moment in time or experience that will illustrate why you made this decision. The decision was perhaps made up of a series of events, but you should choose one event or moment as opposed to a chronological account of how you came to Foster. One event is much more interesting for your listeners. Be specific, but not necessarily detailed. Many students have used this exercise as material for job interviews or to hone their personal pitch for networking. Remember, what is important is to create a story with a point that engages your audience.
Some points of guidance for preparing your speech. 1.) What’s The Point? Decide what point you want to make. You will be telling a story, but the story needs to have a point. Perhaps the point is that “education gives the power to change your life” or “you learned that without the courage to try something new, you wouldn’t have come to business school” or “sometimes you need to fail to succeed”. Start with the point of your speech cl early in your mind as you develop your story. 2.) Give Them A Reason To Listen At the beginning of your pitch, give your listeners a reason to listen. Beyond the fact that they are your teammates and are stuck in the room with you, why should they listen to you? It is useful to give some direct or indirect indication of where you are heading and why they should care. 3.) Be Brief And Cut Out The Details After you have given the listeners a reason to listen, tell your story briefly and logically. Cut out as many details as possible. The details may seem very important to you, but ask yourself if your listener needs to know those details to understand your story. Most often, they do not. 4.) Tie The End Of Your Story Back To The Beginning You started with, “education gives the power to change your life” ; you told your story that supported that idea: now tie the end to the beginning, “So I hope you see why I believe that education gives the power to change one’s life.” 5.) Practice Take the time to practice your pitch, out loud. Work on your vocal variation, pacing, pauses, hand gestures and body language. I recommend that you run through this pitch at least 10 times before you present it to your team. Additional Details Personal Pitches will be recorded and posted on Canvas where you and your classmates will be able to view them. You will receive verbal and written feedback on your pitch from Gregory Heller and your assigned career coach. There is no need to dress up the day your team is presenting; whatever you are wearing that day is fine. You should prepare to deliver this pitch without the assistance of notes. This is your story. While you may come up with some specific phrases that you want to use verbatim, your presentation will be more
authentic if you internalize the content of your story and tell it as you would at a cocktail party or networking event. You are not going to pull out notecards in those situations. Make time to practice. Do not prepare PowerPoint or other visual slides for your Personal Pitch . This will be one of the few, if not the only, speech you will give this year using no visuals. If you have any other question about the assignment or the upcoming sessions, please do not hesitate to contact me at gheller@uw.edu. You may also review the Presentation Skills Resources page on Canvas for more information and tips about public speaking and storytelling.
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