Job Interview Presentation

Ferndog

I have been invited for a job interview in a couple of weeks and have been asked to do a 5 min presentation as part of the interview.  I have never had to do a presentation as part of an interview so looking for some advice/tips.

The job is an admin job with a strong focus on financial reporting.  The presentation is to be what type of information you might advise the Project Manager on the current financial position of the budget.

Any advice greatly appreciated.

Robin9

KISS -  no fancy bells and whistles.

Use a 80/20 rule concentrate of perhaps 5 indicators

kimwp

Consider if there are any financial aspects that might be specific to the company or industry.

On-the-coast

Two halves to this

1st content - list out briefly the sort of things you guess would be important in this line of work.  Doesn’t have to match reality - you’ll find out what that is if you get the job. 

2nd presentation.  If you really want to make a good presentation then practice. 

Write it out in full - just as you would speak it (not as you’d write it for an emailed report)
practice reading it to a friend. Or video yourself and play back. 

Slow down your speaking. Make eye contact. 

Think what you’re doing with your hands. Often a good idea to hold your hands together so you don’t do something distracting with them. 

Possibly hold a fake folder

Rewrite your presentation
be interesting as well as factual
maybe try something topical (the effect of recent news on project… holiday season, tariffs etc etc. 

repeat the test presentations always speaking out loud. 

once you’re  really confident reduce it to down to speaking summary points that will fit on a post-it note or your phone screen and practice speaking from those very abbreviated notes
don’t appear to be reading from a script…

Brie

Will you be expected to write things on a whiteboard or similar?  Do you want to do a powerpoint presentation?  

If your handwriting is rotten have it already written out, in which case a powerpoint is better.  But don't write down every single word you're going to say.  That's boring.  Have key points on which you elaborate.  

gwynlas

Do you have anyone you could practice with?

You could try recording a video of yourself and looking at areas where you think you could do better.

LeafGreen

5 minutes is nothing, so focus on timing as I expect they will not be impressed if you're still going after 15mins. 
Practice with a friend or family member - this might feel weird but is great prep for the real thing.
Based on the limited time available, decide on your key points and present them in as clear a way as possible.
Maybe at the end, invite any questions.

Exodi

I had to do a Powerpoint presentation for my current job.

One thing (not just for this but in general when giving presentations) - please, for the love of god, don't type the full text content on the slide and read it off word by word.

Also make a strong effort to slow down your speaking. People that are nervous naturally speak much faster.

Your slide could show something like this:

Performance Summary

Over/Under Metrics

Important Considerations

Exceptionals
Forecast

Which you might accompany be saying "Firstly I'd provide a 'Performance Summary' which is a overview of our current position, neatly bulletpointed including whether we are on track, or where there might be variances. Next I'd deep-dive into 'Over/Under Metrics' which highlights the specific areas that we might be overspending or underspending against budget on, such as reporting that Marketing is 10% over budget, for example. Following that I'd touch on 'Important Considerations', for example highlighting that while marketing spend is 10% higher, sales are up 20%, or that a product launched earlier than expected. After that I'd touch on 'Exceptionals', which points out spending or savings that were not predicted or included in the budget, such as redundancy costs or bad debt, for example. Lastly, I'd provide an end of year forecast, which is intended to compliment the budget giving an indication of what the financials may look like at the end of the year.

Just as an example.

Savvy_Sue

Exodi said:

Lastly, I'd provide an end of year forecast, which is intended to compliment  complEment the budget giving an indication of what the financials may look like at the end of the year.

It probably doesn't matter one jot, and I don't usually nitpick, but just in case @Ferndog actually includes that word in their Powerpoint ... we are supplementing the budget not telling it how well it's doing / how pretty it looks. (And I'm guessing @Exodi knows that!)

My own tip, if you're using Powerpoint, make sure you really really know how to drive your slideshow, smoothly and without a load of hiccups. This, after a training session yesterday when the person clicking through the slides had to get someone else to do it because for some reason the next slide wasn't presenting. 

Savvy_Sue

Robin9 said:

KISS -  no fancy bells and whistles.

Also this: just because there are 99 different ways of getting additional lines of text to appear on your slide, doesn't mean it's a good idea to use ANY of them other than the good old CLICK: NEXT LINE. Likewise ONE easy to read font rather than the fussiest one you can find. 

DullGreyGuy

Ferndog said:

I have been invited for a job interview in a couple of weeks and have been asked to do a 5 min presentation as part of the interview.  I have never had to do a presentation as part of an interview so looking for some advice/tips.

The job is an admin job with a strong focus on financial reporting.  The presentation is to be what type of information you might advise the Project Manager on the current financial position of the budget.

Any advice greatly appreciated.

Have they given you any more guidance? Had to do a presentation for the 2nd time ever for an interview just recently but they gave a scenario at the start of the interview and 30 minutes to prep to present the answers to 3 questions based on the scenario. As such prep was more difficult as have no idea what the scenario was going to be (turned out the junior person who'd given it to me gave me the wrong one but at least showed by ability to pivot/ deal with the unexpected)

If its all you are getting then should be fairly straight forward tracking OpEx and CapEx spend -v- budget; reforecast going forward, burn rate -v- progress, any particular line items that are driving any deviation from plan. Can mention benefits tracking if appropriate either as where we are if realisation has started or discussion on how they can be tracked if not. 

Probably telling you how to such eggs but tracking against progress is always key as against budget alone doesnt tell you anything, you could be 10% under budget but if you are 50% less through the delivery than anticipated you are actually potentially significantly over budget in reality.