Ultimate Presentations

Master Interviews and Presentations to Land Your Dream Job

Jay Surti

• Publisher: Kogan Page
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781398601765
• eBook ISBN: 9781398601772
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Meetings & Presentations

Presentations: they may fill us with dread, but they're essential to getting ahead at work, and can be vital to landing your dream role to begin with. You don't have to be frozen with fear, or bored to death with a dull PowerPoint deck! In Ultimate Presentations, business presentation expert Jay Surti guides you through the most common obstructions to giving good presentations and how to overcome them, from nerves and uncomfortable body language, to voice tone and physical habits. Insightful guidance on coping with the unexpected, such as interruptions, technology breakdowns or difficult questions helps you to feel prepared and confident, no matter what happens during your presentation. Ultimate Presentations covers every aspect of fantastic and effective presentations:
-how to prepare
-how to structure a great presentation
-using technology and visual aids
-communicating a strong message
-tailoring your presentation to your audience
-highlighting your personal skills through your presentation
-time management and dealing with Q and AsNow including a new chapter on presenting your personal brand, Ultimate Presentations will help you to deliver outstanding presentations when it counts. About the Ultimate series...
The Ultimate series contains practical advice on essential job search skills to give you the best chance of getting the job you want. Taking you all the way from starting your job search to completing an interview, it includes guidance on CV or resume and cover letter writing, practice questions for passing aptitude, psychometric and IQ tests, and reliable advice for interviewing.

01

Why presentation skills are important

Presentation skills are important in the workplace both for individual success and business success. In the competitive world that we live in, it is no longer enough just to have the necessary capability to carry out your job. You need to be able to communicate effectively as well. This means conquering your fears and learning to love speaking under pressure.

Whether you’re speaking to a client on the phone, or presenting to an external audience, your presentation skills not only reflect you but also your organization. You act as a representative of your company every time you enter into an interaction with external stakeholders such as clients, suppliers or other partnership agencies. This is why employers are looking for individuals that can impress through a well-crafted and confident presentation. Honing these skills gives you the best chance of securing the career path of your dreams.

A good presentation can be a very powerful way to communicate an idea or message. It is a skill that is highly valued and is one that anyone can improve upon.

Improve your personal brand

Becoming a good presenter will also raise your profile and enhance your personal brand. All too often people put too much focus upon the content and don’t give enough attention to how they deliver it. It doesn’t matter what career or industry sector you’re in, we are all in the business of selling. Whatever roles you take on along your career path, you will need to sell an idea or concept in order to get buy in from others – colleagues, managers or clients. Whatever industry you are in or looking to find a position in, here are some of the benefits of improving presentation skills:

• You become more visible and get noticed – not many people take up the challenge of giving presentations. Those that do get more exposure by having the opportunity to get in front of people they don’t see on a day to day basis sitting at their desks or within their teams.
• You are memorable – by mastering presentation skills you build a reputation for being a great communicator.
• You are able to win people over to your ideas when you know how to connect with them and can set out your arguments clearly and persuasively.
• You are chosen to attend more client meetings and can become more integral to client relationships by virtue of the fact that you have a reputation for being an effective communicator.
• You come across as confident.
• You develop a wider network – people get to know who you are and what you can do so will approach you more often.

All of the above can help you strengthen your career path as well as give you a strong foundation for leadership opportunities. Great leaders have great communication skills.

When we think about presentations we often conjure up images in our mind of formal speeches in front of a large group. In reality we present and influence every day through our daily interactions at work and in our personal lives. In this book, we will look at how to leverage what you already do and help you become more effective. Even if you don’t have to give presentations as part of your job right now, you probably will have to in future.

Your personal brand follows you everywhere, and is what people say and think about you when you are not in the room. It is your reputation – both online and offline. There are many factors that influence your reputation, from face-to-face interactions to social media presence to written communication. If you have any kind of online presence then that forms part of your brand – your bio on a company/institutional website, any articles/blogs you have written or comments you’ve posted on someone else’s social media updates. People form an opinion about you, whether you do anything or not, but it’s something that you can influence and you can create a positive impact if you are proactive.

In their book The Start-up of You, Reid Hoffman (co-founder of LinkedIn) and Ben Casnocha discuss the concept of thinking of ourselves as entrepreneurs. What they mean by that is not that we should all think about starting companies but that we should all create our own brands and take responsibility for developing ourselves. Today there is huge global competition for jobs. The traditional career pathway where employers sponsor your education is gone. There is an expectation now that you hit the ground running and can bring more to the party than your fellow applicants. You need to develop a competitive advantage and being able to communicate with your audience persuasively gives you that edge.

Think of improving your speaking and communication skills as a proactive way of enhancing your brand. Having a strong personal brand is helpful and necessary in order to stand out when applying for a job or promotion – it helps you get hired. As you progress in your career, managing your strengths and any areas for improvement by setting regular goals will be a good strategy to employ.

A personal brand is not, however, just a series of skill sets. It is also ideals such as thoughtful leadership, authenticity, community engagement and consistency through actions and words.

How fear of speaking can hold you back

Depending upon which article or research survey you read, the fear of presenting in front of others seems to be among the top three most common human fears – right alongside the fear of dying!

This might sound extreme but public speaking taps into a very real and deep-seated fear that humans share: the fear of rejection. We worry about being judged or looking silly in front of others during a presentation. It’s an irrational fear but there are things we can do about it.

The physical symptoms that we associate with anxiety around public speaking include increased heart rate, faster breathing and sweating. What’s happening is that there is an adrenaline rush. This is the body’s way of getting ready for a fight or flight situation – to be on high alert. For our ancestors this type of response helped them to deal with being threatened by a scary beast. These situations are no longer relevant for us but our minds interpret perceived threatening situations like public speaking in the same way.

This fear can be so bad that many of us will do almost anything to avoid speaking in front of groups. I can speak from personal experience because it’s what I did for years – make excuses again and again to get out of having to speak.

For most of my early life I had a debilitating fear of public speaking. I found it incredibly difficult to speak up even in small groups. Somehow I managed to carve out a career in law but still constantly avoided opportunities to present in team meetings or seminars. Ultimately though, I had to represent clients in court. The only way I could get through these presentations was to prepare extremely well but, even then, the fear would make me feel sick. After a few more years into my career I realized that my lack of presentation skills was holding me back: other people were taking opportunities that I could have had. It was clear that the only way I could get ahead was to work on the one thing that I feared the most – speaking in front of groups.

The turning point for me came when I had been asked to give a ten-minute update in a team meeting on a recent development in the law. I had been given two weeks’ notice, which should have been more than enough time to prepare. However, I just kept putting it off because of nerves: I was in denial and buried my head in the sand. On the day of the presentation, I was woefully underprepared and incredibly nervous. I was unable to finish the update so a colleague had to step in and save me. I was mortified. That day I decided something like that would never happen to me again. I was determined to find a solution to my lack of confidence in speaking. What happened next was a process in which I actually started to enjoy speaking and ended up learning so much more than I expected about presentation skills, confidence and techniques.

My first action was to search the internet to look for help and I found a speaking club near my office that I could join. The advantage of this was that I could build my confidence and develop my skills outside of work without feeling embarrassed.

It took me three months to pluck up the courage to get up to the front of the room and give a mini speech at the club, but it was a start. Gradually over the next few months I started to feel a little more comfortable about getting up to speak in front of groups. However, I knew that I needed to do more to become a truly skilled presenter. I took off holiday time to attend presentation workshops and boot camps in the US. The intensity of having to write and deliver speeches multiple times within a short space of time made a huge difference to my comfort zone and my abilities. I then gradually volunteered to speak at team meetings when an update on training was required and steadily became an experienced and comfortable public speaker, with it now being a major part of my working life.

Committing to improving your skills is the most important thing and, in this book, I will give you a roadmap to do just this. Alongside your reading, find a way to get more experience wherever you can.

Some people never get to the stage of enjoying speaking but the point is, anyone can become more confident and competent if they are prepared to put some effort in. I don’t believe great speakers are born. I think we all have the ability to be effective communicators, we just have to focus on honing our skills.

Taking charge and working on improving your skills in this area helps boost your confidence and prepares you for situations where you might be asked to speak at short notice, eg when you have to stand in for a colleague. Having a solid foundation will help towards that. The confidence you gain from feeling comfortable in presentation settings has a knock on effect on other areas of your life.

You could be the best expert in your field but if you can’t articulate your message and engage with your target audience then no one will know how good you are or what you can do. Trust me when I say that I have seen some of the country’s top experts in their fields present at seminars and lose their audience because they didn’t craft their message in a way that engaged their audience.

Think of all the seminars or speeches you have sat through that were tedious and went on too long. Most likely they involved a huge deck of bullet point slides. Poor presentation skills mean that leaders don’t inspire teams, companies lose sales and opportunities are missed. Do you want to be that kind of speaker?

How presentation skills can help with job searching

Job interviews are a kind of presentation, one where you sell yourself by communicating the reasons why you would be the best candidate for the job as clearly and as persuasively as possible. Being able to answer unseen questions in a logical manner is necessary in a situation like that.

In addition to the interview, many recruitment processes involve delivering a presentation. This task is set to test competencies such as confidence, planning and logically structuring content.

You can prepare for each of these aspects by working on your presentation skills. If you are ambitious or interested in moving up the career ladder then presentation skills will help you.

Getting better at networking

There is a close connection between being able to deliver a successful presentation and being good at networking. Both require a level of confidence and the ability to speak clearly and engagingly to others. Becoming effective at networking can give you a competitive advantage. In today’s highly competitive world, developing trusted relationships with people who can help you with your career is vital to career growth.

Contacts in your network can assist you through mentoring, useful introductions and providing access to industry information or best practice.

In order to grow your network and build strong relationships you have to find places to meet people first – typically at business networking events. However, many people feel uncomfortable about going to these types of events because they aren’t quite sure what to say or don’t feel confident talking to strangers. It doesn’t have to be this way. With proper preparation and adopting the right mindset, you can have a much better experience. Many of the suggestions in this book about developing your presentation skills are equally applicable to networ...

Table of contents

• Foreword
• Introduction
• 1 Why presentation skills are important
• 2 Giving presentations at interviews and assessment centres: The essentials
• 3 Giving presentations in your professional life: The essentials
• 4 How to prepare for a presentation
• 5 How to structure your presentation
• 6 Time management
• 7 Presentation styles and techniques
• 8 Presenting as part of a group
• 9 Using technology and visual aids
• 10 Openings and endings
• 11 Personality and message
• 12 Overcoming nerves
• 13 Body language
• 14 Getting rid of bad habits
• 15 Verbal communication
• 16 Coping with the unexpected
• 17 Tailoring your presentation to your audience
• 18 Impressing potential employers in an interview presentation
• 19 Answering questions on the spot
• 20 Audience interaction or participation
• 21 Virtual presentations
• Conclusion
• Index