Elevator Speech: A Pitch Party

This activity aims to explain the importance of introductions and building an elevator pitch.

Discuss

When meeting someone, it’s important to know how to introduce yourself. A good introduction helps people remember you. While it might come naturally or easy to some, many need to practice. Introductions can happen in person, virtually, or through email, so practicing what you want people to know about you is key.

You can create a strong introduction with a well-crafted elevator pitch. An elevator pitch is a short, 30 to 60-second speech that tells people who you are and what you do. Your elevator pitch should include your name, a bit about your background, and what you hope to achieve. Let’s practice your introduction! Today we are going to use the resources to help us create an elevator pitch that we can practice using to help us when we need to pitch ourselves at a job fair or other event. It’s ok if this doesn’t feel natural. Practicing can help you feel more comfortable and confident.

Watch

Networking: Elevator Pitch (2:47) This short video explains how to create an elevator pitch for use during networking situations, such as a career fair or conference.

Resources

Here are some resources to help build an elevator speech. Students may use whichever resource would work best for them.

Elevator Speech Social Script – students can write in their answer to guided prompts. Students may need help picking and choosing which prompts to answer. Feel free to complete one as an example or do together with students.
Graphic Organizer for your Elevator Speech – provides a visual way to organize thoughts and write your ideas.
The Ohio State University College of Arts and Sciences: Writing Your Elevator Pitch – college resource explaining an elevator pitch and provides examples.

Interactive Opportunity

Creating an elevator pitch is only half of the solution, the other half is actually using it! The best way to do this is by practicing with your mentors, classmates, friends, family, or really anyone that will listen.

Today, we are going to throw a pitch party. Each of you will get up and give our elevator speech to the small group to help practice using it and your peers will let us know if we covered the key components of the elevator pitch by using the Pitch It! Rubric.

We will want to focus on whether our classmates had a clear introduction, including their name and school; if they used a professional tone of voice that was clear and energetic; if their pitch was 30-60 seconds in length; how they carried their body, was it calm and under control? Did they look towards the person they were talking to and was their intention clear and make sense?

[Note for Instructors: You can decide the best way to complete this activity. Depending on your group of students this can be done individually with the instructor, in small groups, or in a large group. Depending on how the activity is structured, the instructor and/or peers will be completing the Pitch It! Rubric.]

Resources

Pitch It! Rubric this tool can help you understand what to expect from an elevator pitch and how to provide feedback.