How to Prepare for an Interview Presentation

During your career development journey, there will be times where you’ll be required to prepare an interview presentation. Your Hiring Manager and other members of the senior leadership team may provide you with a task to present to them to see how you handle presentations and check that you can carry out performance or number orientated tasks.

In this article, we review walk you through the framework to help you from the preparation stage through to the presentation.

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Interview presentation tips

Below we have listed out a few interview presentation ideas, for you to implement for your next job interview presentation.

Keep your interviewer engaged and interested from the start 

The easiest way to do this is to think of your presentation as half of a conversation, which you lead, as opposed to a dialogue that you give full of facts and figures. Take them on a journey and support them with information along the way.

Remember the 80/20 rule of engagement

The goal here is to have 20% of your slides focused on being thought-provoking and the remaining 80% to be insightful and informative. Each slide can have this same balance, helping to create an engaging session.

Keep it simple

Your slides do not need to be full of information, images, or bullet points. Put in what’s needed to convey the message but use the time for each slide to explain your message yourself. This way you can keep your audience focused on the topic at hand, rather than reading ahead.

Cut down on the number of slides

As a rule of thumb, you should use one slide per idea or message. This will help you to stay focused on your current message and not deviate between ideas, especially if you’re nervous.

Use transitions 

When creating your presentation, use the transition tool! This helps to keep your momentum fluid and interesting. With the ‘Morph’ tool you can have images and text transition in different ways. You can even include sound. Don’t overdo it and always keep it professional.  

Learn how to prepare for an interview.

Job Interview presentation template

We have put together an example of how you can structure your interview presentation. Feel free to use this as the baseline of your presentation or add to it to sort your own requirements. (10 slides reflects 1 slide per minute of presenting).

Slide One: Introduction – Share the objectives you’ve been set and describe the structure of your presentation.

Slide Two: About you – Showcase your professional background and experience, highlighting skills and your working style.

Slide Three: Answer the brief – Provide your responses to any questions you’ve been asked to answer or tasks you’ve been set.

Slide Four: Q&A session– Add a slide for questions and answers, so that your Hiring Manager or hiring team can ask you specific questions.

Slide Five: Conclusion – A summary of the essential points you have made, with any conclusions drawn and your reasoning explained.

Slide Six: Personal achievements – End the interview on a positive note by including a slide of your achievements and why you would be successful in this role.

Learn how to prepare for a second interview to help increase your chances of success.

How to showcase your abilities in an interview presentation

So how can you use the interview presentation portion of your job interview to stand out from your competitors and highlight your skills and abilities? Follow our three training tips to ensure your interview goes off without a hitch:

Align your skills to those the company are looking for

This is an essential part of these later-stage job interviews. If you have relevant skills, you must show the Hiring Manager that you can align these skills with what they are looking for. Doing this successfully will help increase your chances of a successful interview.

To be able to do this, you will need to know what the company are looking for, which will be in the job description/post. Make sure you have read through this a few times and fully understand what it is the company are looking for, so you can align your skills to what they are looking for.

Use the STAR method

The STAR method stands for Situation, Task, Action, and Result, and you can use this method to provide specific situations where you’ve used your skills to resolve a business issue, improve a process, or support a team on a project.

Always end your interview with questions 

When asked if you have any questions, it’s always good to have a couple of questions prepared, as contrary to popular belief, not asking questions at the end of an interview does not indicate strength. In fact, often, the reverse is often true, and you could hinder your chances of success by remaining quiet.  

Asking questions shows genuine interest in the job role and is an indication that you have been paying attention throughout the process.  

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is a basic interview presentation?

A basic interview presentation is typically a short persuasive speech, which makes up part of your job interview or assessment.

The Hiring Manager will ask you to prepare a short presentation on a specific topic ahead of time. For a marketing role, they could ask you to sell or market a product or service or predict a certain trend.

What is the best way to prepare for a presentation?

Preparation

• Keep your slides simple
• Use a range of formats
• Include quotes from industry leaders
• Incorporate company brand colours and fonts where possible
• Always check your spelling and grammar thoroughly
• Practice your presentation multiple times and know your material

Delivery

• Keep your interviewer engaged
• Frame your story
• Plan your delivery
• Develop stage presence and present confidently
• Be enthusiastic and excited about what you're presenting
• Be prepared to adapt
• Keep within the allotted time

Have you been offered a job interview? If you feel like you could use some additional help to prepare, we have developed a guide about how to prepare for an interview.