Unseen Presentation - Tips Please

[whatever1980]

Through to last round of interviews.

Job in local government

Been told will be given 40 minutes in interview to prepare a presentation on a topic that will be given to me. Will be given paper, pencil and an eraser.

Then the interview which is for 1 hour (part of which I assume will be delivering the presentation)

Been told questions will be based on competencies in JD.

No idea what presentation could on though. Looking at their corporate plan etc.

Dreading it. Plus my handwriting is terrible really bad because I type everything these days - can I ask them if I can type instead!?

Any tips please?

You could ask for a ruler or use something else in the room to draw faint lines to help keep your writing level. Don’t attempt to join up your writing - will make it neater and easier to read anyway. I would write out a draft and then copy out to avoid lots of eraser marks. Good luck!

I hope this is for decent pay as this type of interview task is the sort of thing I'd want to be paid a good amount to put up with. Recruiters acting like you are going to be responsible for the whole council here!

How long is the presentation? If it's 5-10 minutes plus questions (which it will likely be if part of an hour long interview) you don't need to say as much as you think.

I would assume the paper and pencil are for you to make your own notes, so it doesn't matter if they are illegible to anyone else.

Basically you'll need to divide your presentation into

1. Introduction explaining exactly what you are talking about (e.g. areas of a wider topic) and possibly to make it clear what you are not talking about
2. Make some broad points with explanations about different facets of the topic
3. Summarise (and draw conclusions if it's that sort of topic).

For a 10 minute presentation you'd generally have around 10 slides. I know you are not producing slides, but it might help to think in terms of that's the sort of amount of information you are going to have to impart.

Unless your job involves lots of presentation, it's unlikely that the sole purpose is to judge presentation skills so think about the elements of the JD that they might be looking to see. So for example, I've previously recruited for a business analyst and was interested in their presentation demonstrating their analysis skills and ability to think logically and summarise key points.

It's common for professional jobs such as social work or legal services to be asked this. You may be given a scenario and asked to present something that demonstrates your understanding of what you would do and why. A local authority lawyer specialising in procurement, for example, would be expected to show that they understand specific regulations and the consequences of any breaches.

I had to do this for my last job. I made a guess at the five most likely topics for the presentation and prepared an outline presentation for each. Happily one of them came up on the day.

1 slide per minute is ambitious. I think you want 5 slides of content max for 10 mins.

Hi all

Really excellent tips here thanks. I'm going to spend the weekend putting together some mock presentations with the format you've suggested.

Will practice my handwriting too - love the ruler tip!

@onlyoneoftheregimentinstep - can I ask which topics you covered please?

This role is head of department over a couple of different departments so managerial/leadership type role but obviously not director level.