Here is the concept: sell yourself to employers in a 30-second speech. Your elevator pitch should be short yet informative. Concise, but still interesting. Sexy but high fashion. Old people keep arguing the importance of this little appeal but I’m finding it difficult to write. Part of the issue is that I’m 20 years old and I have no marketable skills, but there is also something problematic about the format of the elevator pitch.
Let’s start with the underlying metaphor here. This is the situation they describe to help you write the pitch. You are in an elevator with a hiring manager. How do you know she is a hiring manager? Are you just guessing? Who knows! She presses a button to get off on the 15th floor. Why are you in this tall building? Are you following her? I guess you’re just hanging out in a tall building and you coincidentally enter an elevator with an easily identifiable hiring manager. The elevator doors close and she turns to you: “Hello, I’m a complete stranger. What do you do?” Being the business savvy individual you are, you take 30 seconds to tell her why you would make an ideal candidate for a job opening that possibly does not exist.
Do you see what I’m getting at here? This is not a realistic social interaction. This doesn’t happen. When is the last time you spoke to a stranger in an elevator? More importantly, when is the last time you delivered a speech to a stranger in an elevator? Never! You, like any good American, stare at the doors in silence until you reach your floor. That’s why it’s hard for me to get my head around the elevator pitch scenario. Should I make eye contact? I would never make eye contact with a stranger in an elevator. Once you do, you’re trapped. There is nowhere else to look. You can’t opt out of eye contact to look at the door again. But hiring managers love it when you look at them.
Why does it matter that the metaphor is flawed? Well, I don’t know how to write a script for a situation that does not exist. Even if I subtract the elevator from the situation, why would I ever use this contrived format to market myself? Why can’t I just hold a dialogue with the person who might hire me? If I have to have a conversation by myself, it will sound like this: “Hey! I’m Nancy-Wren. I like your skirt. Oh, is that a dress? Haha, I like your dress. The color is really pretty. Like an olivey… brown… so, anyway, if you need someone who is organized, I could definitely become that kind of person. Also, I’m super good with Microsoft Office. Except I don’t understand OneNote, Outlook, Project or Publisher. And I haven’t used PowerPoint in a long time.”
My biggest issue with the elevator pitch is that it is not the best way for employers to learn about candidates. It’s lazy! Instead of asking pointed questions, hirers can just say, “So give me your pitch.” Imagine if you were on a first date and a guy said, “Alright, you have 30 seconds. Tell me why you’re second date material.” You wouldn’t even humor that guy unless he were really hot. He’d have to be a solid eight. Or a really tall seven. Ideally your date would get to know you by asking questions organically. That’s all I want from employers.
So if you have to write an elevator pitch, do it. We are in no position to neglect requests in a job interview. But write it with style and dignity. Stay cool. Open the pitch with an open-ended question like Don Draper and try not to end it with, “God, crap, you hate me. I’m nobody. Just forget it.”
Nancy-Wren Bradshaw is a Senior Associate Editor for The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at n.bradshaw@cavalierdaily.com.
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