Interview case study presentation

[Tailtwister]

I may have an interview coming up where I will be given a case study to do a presentation on. They give you 1h to do a Powerpoint presentation which is expected to last around 10 minutes.

I've never done one of these and I'm not the most confident presenter. The thought makes me nauseous quite frankly and I worry I might not be able to think straight to write the presentation in the first place. Has anyone done one of these before? Any tips?

Basically I haven't worked for about a year. A combination of small children and an ill relative have made it only possible for me to return to work recently. Also, after 2 mat leaves one after the other in the past 5 years, I feel I've lost some confidence.

[LaGuerta]

Yes I have done something similar although I was given the material a week before the presentation and prepared it at home. An hour to produce a 10 minute presentation is pretty tough, so they won't be expecting perfection, but will be more interested in your thinking on the subject.

Firstly are you familiar with PowerPoint? From your post I'm not sure. If you aren't familiar with PowerPoint then I would suggest "playing" with it ahead of the presentation so you know how it works.

It goes without saying that before the interview you need to research as much about them, their industry, current press interest in them or the field, so that you feel as confident as possible that you understand the background before you are given your task on the day.

Estimate on having 1 slide per minute, so only 10 slides for the whole thing.

Don't type out verbatim on the slide that you are going to say. Stick in a brief bullet point or two and expand on the point when you speak. Use a graph or diagram if appropriate and explain that verbally.

Don't even think about getting tangled up with clip art, slide builds and sound effects. They aren't IMO very professional, and they will distract you from the business content that you want to get across.

I would probably structure it

Slide 1: what I am going to say (briefly)

Slides 2-9: say it

Slide 10: what I have said

I hope this is of some help. I don't know what field you are in, but this is how I would do it from a strategy / marketing background.

Good luck

[Tailtwister]

Thanks LaGuerta, that's all very useful. I'm just in the middle of my preparation atm, so will let you know how I get on.

I have used PowerPoint in the past, but I've been out of the game for a while so will do a quick review of it. I suspect they'll have their own company specific template with their logo on it etc, but just in case I'll be sure to know how to do it from scratch.

I'm going to prep a few case studies in advance around the kind of topics I think they might ask about. That will give me some practice if nothing else!

[Tailtwister]

Just to let you know LaGuerta I did the interview yesterday (3 hrs!) and got an offer today! It's a good offer, but feeling a bit eek about it since I've been out of the game for so long.

In any case, thanks for the advice, it obviously worked!