In all industries and professional circles, there is the necessary skill of being able to talk about who you are, what you do, and why that matters-- both why your work itself matters and also why your approach to that work matters. My name is Steve Keating, and I'm the Associate Director for Speaking at the Writing and Speaking Studio and, today, I'd like to talk you through the development of this skill which is often referred to as being able to give your elevator pitch.

So, again, an elevator pitch is a brief interpersonal pitch or presentation that is used to outline who you are, what you do professionally, and why any of that matters. When I say interpersonal pitch, what I mean is that this pitch is given in conversation rather than from behind a podium or in some other formal way that you might think of when you hear the word speech. It's often given during networking scenarios. But, when we hear that word "networking" something generally comes to mind too which is very hyper professional settings like an industry event an academic conference or even a job interview, and although the elevator pitch certainly has a place in those environments, it's also something that can be used more regularly just on a day-to-day basis, especially at a school like FIT.

At FIT, a lot of your professors and peers(maybe even you) are already active within the industry that you're working to get into, and for that reason, it's really important to be able to talk to the people around you. Aligning who you are and what you do and why that matters, outlining basically your vision for something, is essential for being able to connect and hopefully collaborate with your peers. Let's think of the elevator pitch as a bit of a verbal business card. You're not giving all of the information about yourself because, first of all, that's impossible and, second of all, it's not all relevant. You're just giving enough in the moment to hopefully inspire some further communication at a later point. This is hard to do though. It's hard to talk about yourself and it's probably even harder to talk about yourself in a professional way, and for that reason, we need to have a plan that we need to prepare. And, in this video, that's what we're going to do; we're going to first figure out where we are with this process, where we are in this ability, and then we're going to talk about some guidelines for best practices and crafting an elevator pitch that you can feel comfortable using. Last, we'll talk a little bit about some ways you can go forward with this skill and continue to improve it as you go through more classes and have more professional experiences.

The first thing that I'd like us to do is to establish a baseline to figure out where we are with this ability. And, the best way to do that is to just jump into it. So, what I'll ask you to do is to pause this video and put yourself on the spot. I'm going to ask you to turn to someone next to you and introduce yourself. Both of you can introduce to each other, again, focusing on who you are, what you do, and why that matters. And just see where it takes you. So, again, pause the video and, without really any preparation, introduce yourself to the person sitting next to you.

Alright, now that you've given your first elevator pitch, I'll ask you‚ how did it feel? Very likely it felt a bit awkward, but that's okay. This is a very important first step of figuring out how to develop your own elevator pitch. I'm going to ask you to pause the video again in a moment but I'm going to first give you some questions to ask yourself. First of all, what came easily to you? What did you feel you did well? Don't brush past this question. Really take some time to think about it, because oftentimes people just go straight to the correction: what do I need to do better? Focus on what you do well here because you're going to be able to expand on that and build on that and maintain that. You can first review yourself, but also, you're free to ask the partner that you had about what they took away and what stood out to them. Second, you can ask yourself what you feel you need to do better. Do you feel like you said enough? Do you feel like you said what you wanted to say? Did you find yourself trailing off or going into tangents that you didn't intend to? And then think about it strategically too‚ do you think you've given an effective pitch for yourself? Do you think the person you're talking to now knows enough about you and the work you do to make a judgment call, for example, about whether or not they want to follow up with you or offer you a position or even invite you for an interview? Take some time to talk. Really, take as much as you like and write down your thoughts here. Even give yourself a list of points for things that you're doing well and points for things that you'd like to improve. Then, once you're done with that conversation, you can play the video again and I'll talk with you about some best practices or at least some considerations to keep in mind for an effective elevator pitch as you're working to revise and strengthen your points.

I hope you've had a productive conversation and, again, I hope that you spent some time talking about what you did well because, anytime I talk with students about their elevator pitches, they really do some things well in ways that I hadn't expected. This is a really personal practice. There's not one template or one right way to make it happen. It's kind of a bit of an art, being able to talk about yourself and what you do and why that matters. So, at this point, I'll say that everything I'm about to say (these best practices, these considerations to keep in mind), they're not all hard and fast rules. You can certainly break them or think critically about them, but they are practical considerations to have in mind as you put your elevator pitch together. The first thing I'll say is that an elevator pitch should hopefully be concise and definitely be uncomplicated. And, that's for a few reasons. First of all, I want you to think about the scenarios in which you're using an elevator pitch. Okay, so you need to be able to have whatever you're saying understood in the moment, and concise is short or brief, is because of the fact that when someone gives you a lot of information in a very short amount of time, what happens is that you have an information overload. Think about if you were sitting in a classroom and a professor read an entire chapter to you word for word, would you remember it? No, at least not all of it. You'd remember little bits and pieces. But, generally what the mind does is it just gives up. There's too much to take in,and, although that's an extreme example, the same thing happens when you shrink that time to like 30 seconds and then someone is giving you a ton of information about themselves. 

So, we need to keep this fairly concise to keep the interest of the person that we're talking to but also to make it manageable so that they can actually walk away and have some information about you, other than just "they spoke to me a lot about something." Uncomplicated for some of the same reasons: we want the person that we're talking to to be able to hold on to bits of information about us. If it is overly complicated or abstract then it's going to be difficult for that person in that short amount of time to walk away knowing you. So concise and uncomplicated. There is not a rule for how long an elevator pitch should be; different resources may disagree but I would say aiming for about 30 seconds is probably ideal and that probably sounds like a very short amount of time and it is but if you think about it in conversation with somebody just as you're passing by them as you run into them it's actually a fairly significant amount of time. 

Another reason is that you can't tell them everything in the moment so you really shouldn't try--concise and uncomplicated--they don't need to know everything about us, they don't need to know every class that we've taken or every project that we're starting on. They need to know the essentials. I often ask myself, "what does this individual need to know in order to want to continue a conversation with me?" That's going to depend on who it is and what my agenda is for that moment but that's an important question to ask yourself. We can't cover everything so what do we want to cover

Last, I think you want to hook them by telling them just enough. Again this is an opportunity to inspire more communication so as opposed to again trying to cover everything or sum everything up or put everything into a small box tell them something that's going to interest them to the point that they're going to want to have more communication with you in the future; that is the goal of the elevator pitch is to foster more communication whether it's an email connection or an interview or something else. In addition to your elevator pitch being concise and uncomplicated I think it should be personal and unique. So when I say personal I want you to think about the fact that you are not the only person who is likely pitching to this individual, especially at events like conference or some sort of industry event.

There are likely a lot of people going up to this person and talking to them trying to sell themselves in some way and the reason it needs to be unique is that if you start in the same way as everybody else, how can you expect to stand out or be memorable? You're just going to be one in a large crowd. So one common mistake that I often see people make is starting in the same way: their name, major, year. "My name is Steve  Keating, this is my major, I'm a sophomore, and I'm whatever." Remember we only have 30 seconds and if we start in that way likely the same way that a lot of other people started, often times the person will start to tune us out. 

My own example when I'm at conferences if I start and talk about the fact that I have a master's degree in communication studies, a bachelor's degree in communication arts and humanities, I've taught public speaking and interpersonal communication, I'm aligning myself with a lot of people at that conference that have done the same sort of thing as me. Instead I might try to start with some sort of personal unique inspiration point. So for example, I'm a teacher. My goal is to create lessons that don't fall apart once they leave the classroom. Okay so that's just one example of a way to start that is personal and unique;it kind of functions like a thesis statement then my job is to support that statement as I go but think about how you can kind of create that thesis for yourself that is personal and unique that you'll be able to sum up and talk about in a concise and uncomplicated way - catchy. 

This goes to my last point, something that may make someone think. Again my example there: I want to come up with lessons that don't fall apart once they leave the classroom. What does that mean? For me that's talking about lessons that are relevant in students'everyday lives and they consider the real complications of the outside world. So conflict for example in communication and misunderstanding in communication. This is going to be something that is extremely personal to you, but again something catchy that may catch someone's attention and make them want to hear a bit more from you about this idea. 

Another point that I often recommend is for students to consider themselves as more than students. Oftentimes as students go through this lesson they're positioning themselves just as a student, just as someone who's learning,just as someone who was taking classes, and although that's true and that's great, that's worthy, you're also more than a student and you always have been. You came to FIT for a reason, you applied for this program for a reason, and again you do what you do in a unique way and it's really important to communicate that.

So position yourself as more than a student. There is a strategic reason for this as well: when we're talking to somebody and we are talking about ourselves just as a learner just as somebody preparing to go into a field it's difficult for the person we're talking to to imagine us in some other position. So instead when we talk about ourselves as thinkers, as designers, as humans who are also learning who are also students, it can be a bit more effective. I think it makes it easier for a potential employer to imagine you in the position that they are looking to fill or imagine you as someone that they could collaborate with.

Another point, and this is probably one of the most important ones, is to be flexible. As we are working through this elevator pitch I think we're going to have this inclination to want to write it down word for word get the absolute perfect pitch and just you know deploy it in all of the right moments but unfortunately one pitch is not going to work in all environments; one pitch is not going to work with every single different person. It's important to consider that we've got different people, we've got different scenarios we're going to be asked about ourselves in different ways and so we really can't just have this one pitch that we deploy. And really maybe thinking about it as a pitch or a speech is not very effective because really it is just conversation, it is just the ability to talk about ourselves in a meaningful, productive, strategic way. 

This comes to the practice. I don't encourage anyone to memorize anything; I encourage you to write out the points that you want to include, give yourself some bulleted lists, and if you want to write out your pitch, absolutely go for it. I think everyone has their own process here. But more so what I recommend is that you practice talking about yourself in different ways, as many different ways as possible. Have people ask you about yourself and respond to them and just let yourself respond in again as many ways as possible. Make mistakes and continue as you make them because that's what's going to happen in any real world situation as well. 

This is a hard thing to do; we tend to want to solidify something and you can do that too, you can create a few versions of your elevator pitch that you'd like to use in different settings. If you know the event that you're going to you can prepare a particular pitch for that environment but really, the best lesson for you to take away here is to be able to talk about yourself in as many different ways as possible: in ways that you feel confident and happy with once you walk away from the individual that you're trying to connect with.

So those are just a few of my suggestions for what you can keep in mind as you are building your elevator pitch. There are certainly other resources out there; they are often very helpful, but what I think is most important to keep in mind is the core utility of an elevator pitch, and that is to communicate who you are, what you do, and why that matters. And you can do that in many many different ways that feel personal and really truly reflect you. I think my last takeaway for you today is that your elevator pitch should never be done. After every class that you take, after every semester ends, after every major project you have, after every moment in which you start to think about your work a little bit differently, I encourage you to revisit your elevator pitch and revise as necessary.

This pitch should develop just as you are in your professional self and in your professional world. So keep all of these things in mind but also be creative and make up some rules for yourself. The elevator pitch is a powerful tool to use in all networking scenarios, personal and professional. Thank you.

We spend a lot of time talking about how to cite things we’ve learned from different sources in our essays and written assignments, but what about oral presentations? When we’re speaking to an audience, how do we effectively and ethically let them know when information or language is borrowed from someone else? 

If we’re using a visual aid like slides, we need to incorporate in-text citations for any information borrowed from external sources, whether we’ve quoted them directly or paraphrased an idea. The options are similar to how you would do this in an essay. In fact, you can check out some examples of how to do this on our student resource site!

But what about the things we actually say to our audience? And what if we don’t have a visual aid? 

This is when we want to make sure we use attribution language. 

Attribution language is phrasing that attributes – or credits – a specific idea to an author or publication. 

Sometimes you’ll see phrases like “According to X,...” or “X asserts that…,” and so on. Using language like this tells our audience that the idea we’re about to share is not our own.

For paraphrased ideas – that is, ideas that we’ve put into our own words – we can go right into the idea. 

But if we are quoting something directly, it’s likely because the language itself is important for the audience to know. Since our listeners won’t always see the quotation marks that designate this, we want to use the words “quote” and “end quote” to signify the beginning and end of someone else’s phrasing.

Lastly, similarly to incorporating a source into your writing, depending on who your audience is, you might need to contextualize your sources by noting who the author is and why their ideas are relevant. 

Okay - let’s look at an example. Let’s say we’re giving a speech about fashion at the 2023 Women’s World Cup. 

Here’s an excerpt of what we might say…

The fashion at the 2023 Women’s World Cup made headlines, prompting the rise of new fashion icons and trends. Irene Kim for Vogue asserts that wearing items like team jerseys, sneakers, and knee-high socks are the new rules for - quote - “channeling your inner Megan Rapinoe, Alex Morgan, or Sophia Smith” - end quote. Further, clothing brands are jumping on the bandwagon and partnering with the US Women’s National Team and FIFA to create bespoke collections. 

According to Rose Minatuglio for Elle Magazine, Nike x Martine Rose created items specifically for the US Women’s National Team to wear. These items embodied the team’s spirit with unique, tailored, and genderless garments. Other labels like Mejuri and Stoney Clover Lane are collaborating with the US Women’s National Team, and Nike, Adidas, and soccer.com are selling official World Cup products, as described in POPSUGAR by Kyley Warren. 

These are just a few of the many ways you can incorporate source materials into your speaking. As long as you are making the origins of your research clear to your audience, you’re doing great.

Happy citing!