The Art of Pitching Yourself Right!

Does your mind go “Umm...” when you hear someone saying tell me about yourself? When was the last time you had a good answer to this question? Like a really good one that could create a great first impression?

“Tell me about yourself” is one of the most common, seemingly benign yet challenging to answer questions. Right?

When someone asks this question and you think “Okay, I will start at the beginning and will walk you through my long, loaded resume”, that’s the red flag right there. No one wants to hear about your resume as they already have gone through it. The answer to the question "Tell me about yourself" lies in the strategy that I am going to share today. A strategy that will help you make your pitch perfect! 

What most of us don’t understand is that “Tell me about yourself” is not a close ended question. Rather the purpose is to simply get yourself to a second conversation. You have to have a goal for your pitch which is engaged, where you are going to give just enough to get others interested and intrigued, and they are going to ask questions further.

This whole process of getting your pitch right has three elements only. Strategize them correctly and you will be able create an impactful impression. The beauty of this strategy is that you do not need to know your 30 second/60 second pitch and memorize it. You just have to know three things:

• Your destination
• Your backstory
• How to connect the dots

Your Destination:

The most important piece of your pitch is your destination. Unfortunately, it is also the hardest one. The biggest challenge is that we often do not know where we are going next, why we are having this conversation, what we are trying to accomplish. If you do not have a good answer to these questions, there is no way you are going to make a good impression.

Every single conversation, you are going to lead with your punchline. Start with your destination which is critical I know. The questions you need to ask yourself before having any conversation are, what am I excited about right now? What do I want to do next with my career? What am I trying to achieve from this conversation? You have to have answers for these questions first and foremost, because if you do not, no one will be interested to stick around for the second conversation.

Let me share a blast from the past. I went for an interview and after the initial greetings I was asked to talk about myself. Oblivious to how to respond to it, I gave the most basic, boring introduction of myself. Of course I did not receive the second call. After a while, I followed up with one of the guys from their HR to know what went wrong. The reply was the conversation was not ambitious, engaging. I knew right away that I needed to up my game. Research and conversations with experienced people led me to these three elements that changed everything.

I remember when I was interviewed for SureCash, I knew my pitch goal. I am an HR person. Of course a big part of my expertise is recruitment but not the only one! I talked about my passion for recruitment marketing, employee engagement, building culture and how my interest and ideas can benefit SureCash. See, I gave the interviewer enough to intrigue him to continue the conversation. That’s what you need to know. The goal, the punchline, the outcome. If you do not know about your destination, get a pen and paper out and write down what you are passionate about, where you want to go next. Because this is the hardest part of the whole pitch. It is like the foundation of your pitch. So lay it right to create a strong impression.

Your Backstory:

Your backstory is the easiest piece of my pitch perfect strategy. Everyone can talk about themselves, right? It is really easy to talk about your resume. Although, very few of us want to hear your resume in reverse chronological order. So here is what you need to do instead. When you are talking about your background, create a backstory. What is a backstory? It is what you decide to tell the others. When I meet people today, I do not talk about the fact that I have worked for MNCs, or that I am a gold medalist. I talk about the fact that I am an HR and Marketing enthusiast who loves to explore these two fields and create a bridge between them, that I have a knack of penning down my thoughts and I love building things from the scratch. Backstory gives you the freedom to pick and choose what you want to include into your pitch.

So what should one include? You can either talk about relevant experience, or you can talk about your transferable skills. If you have relevant experience to what you have talked about regarding your destination, then bring it to the table. For instance, if you have worked in product development for a few years and have launched any new product, talk about it.

If you do not have relevant experience, sell yourself on your transferable skills. Are you visionary? Are you a quick learner? Bring them to the table. I once was approached by one business graduate who has spent three years in business development. But now he wants to focus on digital marketing. We were having this conversation where he was talking about how he should make that shift? I said, talk about it. Whenever someone asks you what you do, do not tell them about the last two/three business collaborations you have worked on. Talk about the fact that you are really excited and passionate about digital technologies and how it has changed the way marketing works. You see the wave of the future going in that direction and you want to be part of that change. Now those individuals know you and your interest. Then when they ask about your experience, talk about how your exposure to different business collaborations paved the way for you to know how digitalization is moving business forward, and this is why you are the right person to help them take their business to the next level. You sell yourself right there! It is a compelling story that is relevant and intriguing.

Connect the Dots:

Connecting the dots is you talk about how everything fits together. What you have done, what you want to do in the future, and how it all comes together. The reason behind you not landing the job or not getting the second call is your story. It is not because you do not have the skills rather it is because you could not convince the others with your story. You have not convinced them about your destination. You have not connected the dots right. Your pitch should be relevant enough to connect the dots that will let us give you the benefit of the doubt where you are doing something new or different, and we would be able to say, "Yeah, we are on board!"

When I was interviewing with SureCash, I was pretty excited yet a bit confused. Leaving behind MNC was not easy nor the other alluring potential offers. Before the final interview, I talked with my dad to clear my mind out. After hearing what SureCash is and how startups could be a time bomb ticking around, my dad said to me, “Well, you do not want to be in a startup for sure! Risks are there, stakes are high.” And in that moment, I decided I was going in, and I was going to get that job. I wanted to be a part of the startup ecosystem, explore, learn, and build everything from scratch. But until I convinced myself, no one else was buying what I was selling. If I would have shared the great opportunities come with working in startups and how they can help shaping my expertise, my dad’s verdict would have been different. So I went down for the final interview, and I got the job!

Now that you have got the strategy framework, I have good news and bad news for you. The good news is that all this takes is practice. It is not a rocket science and with practice you certainly can nail your pitch. The bad news is you might need more than one pitch. One pitch will not work for every conversation. If you are interviewing for a job, that will be a different story than if you are trying to raise a capital. It is going to take some work on your part but is 100% in your control. So keep on practicing!