Going Up?

The Elevator Speech

I took some time between Christmas and the New Year to review my professional toolbox: Resume, Personal Website, Brand, and LinkedIn profile. There’s a bit of work to do to get it all updated and current across my social channels. Taking a wholistic approach, it dawned on me that I was extremely illiterate when it came to communicating who I am, what do I do, and why does it matter to me and you. My personal brand was not communicating well and I had no elevator speech to tie it all together. What is an elevator speech? Simply put, an elevator speech is a brief piece of messaging that communicates who you are and why a company should hire you, and is part of delivering a great first impression.

Easy enough? I tried to freestyle my own elevator speech and I choked like Jimmy “B-Rabbit” Smith (Eminem) in 8 Mile. The beats were pumping, the crowd wanted to get some, and I didn’t have a single thing to spit into the mic. It’s then that I remembered that B-Rabbit had to go through this whole painful process (beat up, thrown out of the trailer park, lost his girl, his job at the factory was day to day) before he finally faced his fears and broke out of his shell to battle rap Papa Doc and the Free World. I’m pretty sure my elevator speech isn’t going to require me to go through as painful of a process as B-Rabbit; but, it’s definitely going to require a lot more effort than previous thought.

Falling Down An Elevator Shaft

I’ve been reading job descriptions across multiple industries and organizations, flagging positions that I believe are a great fit. During the search, I was mostly focused on aligning my past experience to the job description to qualify myself as a strong candidate. I searched Deloitte’s website and found a position for a Senior Project Manager (Scrum Master). My profile and this position are a perfect match.

The plan was simple. First, I would use the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) methodology to apply to this highly sought after position. Next, I would submit my resume to the job posting, receive a call from the recruiter within 10 minutes of submission and I would have a job offer complete with a signing bonus within 30 minutes. Easy Peasy! Finally, I would call all my friends for a socially distanced Happy Hour on Zoom to celebrate and bask in the likes, .gifs, and memes I was going to receive.

The part that I did not focus enough on was how I would present myself to the recruiter (i.e., the gatekeeper, the doorman, the bouncer, the right or left swiper) to put the plan in motion. How would I come off to someone that doesn’t know me? Would I be perceived as cocky and arrogant; even though I was really trying to be confident, humble, and insightful? Would I provide too much information leaving the recruiter to draw negative conclusions about me so they can find an opening to wrap up the call after a few minutes of my ramblings? The importance of the elevator speech was starting to weigh heavily on my mind.

Sometimes the best way to solve a problem is to just ignore the problem or work around the problem long enough to make it someone else’s problem. Right? Instead of taking the elevator to the top, I’ll take the stairs. It’s safer. Problem solved. It may take a while longer to take the stairs, but I would get there eventually; and most importantly, safely. Wrong! Elevators are still safer than taking the stairs, which cause about 1,600 deaths per year. More than 1 million Americans are injured by taking the stairs annually, and it’s not just the elderly, Reuters reported, based on data from American Journal of Emergency Medicine. I guess I’ll take the elevator then. My immediate problem is I only have a bunch of half-baked ideas, competing visions for my future, run-on sentences, conjecture, false equivalencies and a Hail Mary pass in my bag of tricks. Some people would call this the musings of a man disconnected from reality.

Ironically, the organization (Deloitte) that made me extremely self-conscious about my lackluster elevator speech is the same organization that would provide the template to crafting my elevator speech. According to Deloitte’s recruiting page, an elevator speech should be succinct and consider the following 4 questions:

1. Who are you?

2. How can your skills and experience be a benefit to the employer?

3. What make you different from every other candidate?

4. How do your goals for the future align to the organization’s?

First Floor – Who Are You?

This usually comes in the form of an inquiry. Something like, Tell me something about yourself. I’ve made a sincere effort at addressing this in my About page on the website. I’ll need to revisit this section and extract and distill the best parts of this to let my audience know that I am “in it, to win it”.

Second Floor – How can my skills and experience be a benefit to any employer?

This is the part of the elevator speech where I galvanize interest in my candidacy. For this, I will turn to the Strengths page on on my personal website.

Third Floor – What makes me different from every other candidate?

This is the part of the elevator speech is where I can totally crash and burn. It’s the part where I need to make sure I don’t appear to be like any of the other candidates that will seize the opportunity to shine brighter than I do. This is going to require adopting an active voice. I will look through emails and past deliverables to mine specific examples where I crushed it.

Fourth Floor – How do your goals for the future align to the organization’s?

I believe this is presents the opportunity to wrap this up in a nice package by showing that not only is a great opportunity for me; but, a great fit for the new organization. I believe this part of the elevator speech will give me the opportunity to show my knowledge of the organization.

How Do You Get To Carnegie Hall?

The answer is always “practice, practice, practice.” The elevator speech is a living document that gets practiced over and over and over again. The majority of the elevator speech is about what I’m going to say, but an equally important part is, “How I say it.” Eunoia is the goodwill a speaker cultivates between themselves and their audience. When the what and how are put together, it’s important to be fluid and dynamic in my communication style. Once again, “practice, practice, practice.”