What’s in Your 30-Second Career Elevator Pitch?

Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

  Career Development  

You have probably heard of the concept of the 30-second elevator pitch. It’s the idea that if you were riding an elevator with a potential customer, or with the CEO of your company, and wanted to convince them that you had a proposal that they should listen to, you need to be able to get that point across in 30 seconds or so before they get out of the elevator.

It’s now used in a broader context, and that made me wonder how many of you have a 30-second career pitch that you can use if the opportunity arises. And if you do have it, how has it changed in the last few year (if it has changed at all)?

So, whether it’s a potential hiring manager at a PMI chapter meeting, a company executive looking to appoint a PM for a critical initiative that you bump into at the coffee shop, or that stereotypical elevator ride, let’s explore what you should be focused on.

Your key attributes
Let’s start by acknowledging that you aren’t going to convince anyone to hire you, appoint you, promote you, or anything else in less than a minute. But that’s not the point. The goal is to plant a seed, to trigger some kind of follow up—scheduling a meeting, agreeing to review a proposal, etc. Your elevator pitch simply needs to get someone’s attention enough that they agree to take some more action.

To achieve that, you need to be able to …

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