The Old Joel on Software Forum: Part 3 (of 5) - OT: presenting your personal & career growth

OT: presenting your personal & career growth

Dear JOS readers:

In 2 weeks I will have a presentation to the General Manager, HR Manager, and IT Manager (my boss) for my probation period for one of the top 4 oil & gas/energy company. I have been preparing my presentation mostly as a 'catalog' of my personal and team (during my probation I was selected as team leader) objectives and achievements.
Unfortunately, my boss gave suggestions that the GM and HR Manager interests is not only of my job but my personal growth, potential, difficulties, transitions - from someone who works before for sales & marketing company, starting as analyst, to someone who is because of combination of personal traits + exposure to other area of business will be deemed have an excellent value to be recruited permanently for oil&gas company (in my company since it's energy company for support function it's not easy to become permanent employee - and in my country being a permanent is much more beneficial than being a contracted person).

If you have similar experience could you please share it with me and give hints and tips to create a good "personal growth and value " presentation ? Or any hints to a website ?

Pardon my bad english, and thank you beforehand,

Dandy Putra
Monday, October 20, 2003

This sounds like they want to see if you know enough about the company and where your talents might fit in to identify yourself as a good candidate. So sell yourself.

Lou
Monday, October 20, 2003

Lou,

The problem with me is that I don't know how to sell myself in these 10-15 slides of presentation. The way I sell myself in the past (including my cv and during interviews) has been always by showing my work achievements. I know this is a chance for me to learn more about this "selling myself" stuff, therefore if you have hints could you be more specific please.

Thanks

Dandy Putra
Monday, October 20, 2003

Yes it does seem like they are trying to find out if you will be able to fit into the new role properly.

Till now during your probation you would have interacted with various people in different departments and at different levels. Use the inputs gained from those interactions to prepare your presentation and try and *sell* yourself to your GM and HR person.

The best way to do this would inculde:

* Highlight the shortcomings in the current functioning of various departments/processes.
* Show that how you can be useful in bridging those shortcomings.
* Try and present some ideas which will help the company grow in the years to come.
* Put more emphasis on where *you* can help the company grow in the way you described earlier.
* Make it a point to mention what you will *need* from teh company to achieve those objectives.

This may not be a complete list, but will still help you get started on things.

Best of luck !!!

Shai
Tuesday, October 21, 2003

Slides are bad at this kind of presentation.

My Work Day
- Work Hard
- Play Hard
- Read JoS

You're better off putting up a picture of a waterfall and talking to them for a few minutes. If you talk to them rather than read from a slide you'll make a better impression (it will also allow you to get mildy off topic to address questions as they arise).

I agree with the previous poster. Talk about the projects you've been on (executive overview here, they don't need technical details like how you solved the space time continuum in order to allow your messaging application to deliver emails before they're sent, they just want to know what the problem was (and how was it identified), how did you assemble the team (or how was it assembled and by whom), what you did (we implemented a new Oracle Based transaction server that, due to the sheer number of tables, warps the space around it creating a micro-singularity), and what the end result it (we saved the company 5 cents per email and accidentally killed the janitor).

A note on the above, if you learned a lesson (don't let janitors near singularities), mention it. But don't put up a slide that reads "Lessons Learned" or use that phrase, its a bear and can make people disinterested. Instead just put it in while you're talking about the end result. (We realized that going forward we need to use heavier duty locks on the doors).

You can give a similar overview of your time at the company. Where have you worked what have you done, who have you worked with (department and personnel they might know). What systems have you worked with or are familiar with, and what do you want to do going forward? (Now that I've worked with Commander Spock on the Real-Time Transaction Server I'd really like to get my hands on the Tricorder development over in Engineering - I think my analytical skills and my knowledge of the RTTS will be a real asset to the team - and I know how to get rid of pesky janitors).

Good luck. And remember, this is probably more of a conversation than a presentation, so don't stand 50 feet away or behind a podium. Have a conversation at a normal tone of voice and invite them to ask questions (with your body language and presentation style, not with "Any questions? No... good!" - clearly they have them).

Lou
Tuesday, October 21, 2003