Here's how you can prepare for common interview questions about public speaking.

Understand the Question: Anticipate queries about your public speaking experience and techniques. Prepare Stories: Have examples ready that demonstrate your speaking skills, like presentations or leading meetings. Highlight Skills: Emphasize your ability to organize thoughts, engage audiences, and handle Q&A sessions effectively. Practice Responses: Rehearse answers to common questions aloud to build confidence and clarity. Showcase Growth: Share instances where you improved as a speaker through feedback or experience. Stay Calm: During the interview, maintain composure and speak clearly to reflect your communication skills.

If you're a public speaker, you NEED to be able to speak off the cuff, especially about something that has happened to you! And you can only do that successfully if you KNOW your stories - so you can focus on delivering a performance of that story. Having trouble thinking about stories to tell? Just open up ChatGPT and prompt it to give you 20 areas of interest or problems in your industry. From that list, recall examples that you could use. Write them down. Say them out loud. Now re-write them. And keep going till you have a bank of reliable stories, ready to go.

To ace interview questions about public speaking, start by reflecting on your experiences. Identify specific instances where you’ve demonstrated effective communication and confidence. Practice answering common questions, such as handling nervousness or engaging an audience. Highlight your ability to tailor messages to different audiences and provide examples of successful presentations. Emphasize your commitment to continuous improvement. By preparing thoroughly, you’ll showcase your public speaking skills with confidence. #InterviewTips #PublicSpeaking #CareerSuccess #ProfessionalGrowth #CommunicationSkills #JobSearch #Confidence #SkillDevelopment

Be open to sharing. I see and hear so many interviews where people are afraid of being open and sharing their story. You aren't going to give away all the "secret" sauce. Be vulnerable, teach us. Also you don't have all the answers and it's ok. Share what you know, and if you don't know it is ok. We are all still learning, and the power of a great speaker is your ability to say "I didn't know that." Why? Because now you have something new to conquer/learn and utilize the next time.

This is precisely the same process as preparing for a public speaking event itself - practice your answers, but not so often that they become robotic. You want to leave room for spontaneity but also stay on message, and that's easier to do the more you practice and the more comfortable you become with your responses.

Ask yourself, if you were in their position, "What would I want to know?" Create a list that reflects as many angles as possible - and then play with some answers that might work.

Strongly agree Mentioning examples and situations that a person experiences is more realistic than listing characteristics without evidence, especially when they are influential situations and reactions have an impact.

Start talking out loud. This might sound foreign, but public speaking and interviewing live out loud with volume! Practicing in your head and writing your ideas on paper are fine, but that’s like practicing a tennis serve in your head or writing down how you’d change your ball toss (arguably the hardest part). Start practicing what you’ll say out loud. It doesn’t matter if your kitchen sink is the audience or your golden doodle. Getting your words out, with volume, emotion, and clarity is going to prepare you far more than “thinking” about what you might say. Want to go the extra mile? Film yourself ?? it’s uncomfortable, but you’re going to learn 100x more about how you look, seem, and sound!