At one time the elevator speech was regarded as one of the most effective ways to communicate information about your background. It was based on the amount of time you might be on an elevator with someone.
Social media and mobile platforms have moved marketing your background onto a different arena. Take Twitter, for example. With its 140-character limit, it literally forces users to reduce their communication to bite-sized bits of information. There’s no time to ramble.
Attention spans have been reduced to seconds, and in order to capture attention, it helps to have a laser-focused introduction that helps guide your listener and catches their attention.
The elevator-speech mindset has turned into the escalator pitch.
Visualize the time it takes to ride an escalator from one floor to another. It takes about 15 seconds, maybe a little less. That’s the amount of time you have to pitch your background. At least, that’s what Laura Allen, an expert in the field of communications, discovered when she found herself job searching.
Laura described her average workday: Long hours spent climbing the corporate ladder. Intuitively, she knew there was a better way to build a career, but she was caught on the “work zone with no time to network” merry-go-round.
After she lost her job and was out in the market talking to people, it became clear that most job seekers struggled with how to effectively introduce themselves. Her communications background gave her the edge she needed to analyze how others described themselves during their job search.
At one point, she felt overwhelmed listening to job seekers use the “kitchen-sink pitch,” which lumps all their skills together with no strategy or purpose.
While listening to people, she found a couple of things missing, including a clear concise point to their introductions.
Out of her own experience she cofounded a company that helps job seekers, business owners, or anyone interested in connecting to others develop a crisp introduction. The point here is you can’t expect other networkers to pull information out of you. It’s up to you how to define your skill sets.
Unfortunately Laura’s experience is not unique, it happens daily when job seekers start networking without being prepared.
A hiring decision-maker once told me about a highly regarded job candidate whose introduction started at the beginning of his career and ended with his most recent position. The introduction took 15 minutes. As you can imagine, the job candidate gave the impression he was not prepared and shared unrelated information.
When starting a job search, keep these things in mind: the purpose, your audience and your desire to connect with the other person. Handing out business cards in a robotized fashion will not make you memorable in the eyes of a hiring decision-maker. These days, it takes a well-defined pitch that keeps the escalator ride in mind.
I would like to hear your introduction experiences. Can you see that an introduction statement adds value to your job search?
