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Updated September 25, 2023You’re reading an excerpt of Ask Me This Instead: Flip the Interview to Land Your Dream Job, a book by Kendra Haberkorn. This powerful work is written by a veteran recruiter for job-seekers who want to find their dream job—not just the next job. Purchase the book to support the author and the ad-free Holloway reading experience. You get instant digital access, worksheets and a question database, commentary and future updates, and a high-quality PDF download.
The elevator pitch—what you say when you have 30 seconds to make an impression—is a great tool in the job seeker’s toolkit. The elevator pitch can be used in passing at a networking event, or to kick off an interview with someone who may not be as close to the role or hiring process (like an executive). As you refine your job search to a specific type of role or company, having this quick pitch ready is in your best interest. (Having it ready means you’ve practiced actually giving it!)
Find the activity in this Google Doc!
My career started in marketing at a small startup and has progressed through roles as a Digital Advertising Campaign Manager and Senior Manager of Advertising Performance and Optimization at Amazon. I shine when I get to lead a team driving digital advertising strategy and ad operations to efficiently improve campaign performance and deliver business results.
I’m curious about how I can apply my expertise within fintech, an industry I know is positioned for long-term growth. I’ve led high-performing teams in my career and am now focused on the chance to lead a department and help build a marketing strategy and organization from the ground up.
If I had the chance to step into the Director of Digital Marketing role, I’m confident my background and excitement about building data-driven, cross-channel marketing programs will enable me to support COMPANY in achieving customer and revenue growth.
As you went through this exercise, did it feel a bit like the cover letter? That’s intentional. The cover letter and elevator pitch can complement and reinforce one another. In fact, reiterating the main points in more than one way is to your benefit. The elevator pitch is a supporting structure, not a script. The goal is to help you think through your experience so that you can practice a time or two (or ten!) on your own. Then, when you have the chance to share your pitch with someone, you won’t have to recite a stilted script—you’ll be confident enough to speak naturally and authentically without missing any of the key points.
If you want to get the most out of the effort you put into your elevator pitch, consider incorporating a very similar structure into your post-interview thank-you notes (or more likely, emails). It’s not required to send a follow-up and it can even be controversial—after all, the company is looking for someone to fill their position, maybe they should send you a thank-you for coming in! But, if you view the follow-up note as a chance to highlight your candidacy, build a relationship with someone who could be a team member—now, or down the road—and to re-connect dots between your conversations and potential to contribute based on your post-interview reflection, taking a few minutes to send these notes can be worthwhile.
The most efficient way to do this is to add a personal sentence or two at the start of the elevator pitch structure highlighting why you enjoyed meeting a particular interviewer and an insight you took out of the conversation.