Get access to tips, tricks and insider-secrets here at our Ultimate Assessment Day & Interview Guide
Presenting a presentation is difficult, tough and could be scary for some. Do not fret, however, as through this guide, we shall provide you tips and show you how to create and deliver a powerful and impressive presentation for your job interview assessment centre.
Starting point resource
- Listen and get some tips from our podcast episode here.
This guide comes with three sections.
Part 1: Create –planning and building your presentation.
Part 2: Display- how to connect a projector to your device such as iPad
Part 3: Deliver- expert tips for delivering your presentation.
Assessment centre interview presentation: a dark art
Delivering a strong presentation is a skill that you must have if you wish to join good companies, businesses and industries. It is highly valued and ensure that when you are presenting you are:
- A strong presenter. Being able to convey your presentation well enhances your personal brand. Presenting is also an effective way to communicate and deliver ideas, messages and stories.
- Delivering a presentation in a tedious and boring way could bring your profile down the drain.
Delivering a presentation could be scary and nerve-wracking. However, it is also an avenue for you to shine. Accept and embrace the challenge fully and show everyone your wonderful skills.
What is a presentation?
A presentation is composed of group of slides which is created with a tool called Powerpoint or Keynote. The presenter would have to display them and show the slideshow format to an audience.
Assessment Centre Presentation Part 1: Create
For your presentation to be superb, powerful and effective, you must have two things:
- Coherence
- Clarity
For you to be able to incorporate both, you will have to plan. Ensure that your presentation structure comes with a logical natural flow. If your audience sees and feels this, they are more likely inclined to be engaged and impressed with what you are presenting.
Now, let us start making the presentation
As mentioned earlier, planning is an important and vital role in having an interesting, audience-captivating presentation. Having a clear idea of your presentation structure will make your presentation effective, clear, coherent and persuasive. It will also make it easier to build which makes it less stressful.
Tip: Spend 1 hour to plan your assessment day presentation. This will give a huge impact on your presentation.
If you do not have a clear structure in mind, you will tend to keep just creating slides and your ideas will be presented in a scattered format of ideas. This could result you to wasting time and messy presentation.
With clear skeleton, you will be able to build your slides with confidence and knowing that you are sending important notes to your audience.
How to structure an interview or assessment day presentation in 7 easy steps
One way to do this is you will need to have clarity on your title and desired outcome. Then, you could work from there. Take note that most interviews and assessment centres will provide you a briefing such as prepare a 15-minute presentation entitled the greatest achievement of my life, etc.
Presentation Planning Step 1
Sit down in a quiet room with a pen and paper. We discourage you to use a PC or laptop at this point.
Presentation Planning Step 2
Write your subject or topic, title, theme or question in the middle and draw a circle around it.
Presentation Planning Step 3
Brainstorm on your potential sub-topics and themes. What you should include that would captivate your audience and make your presentation interesting. Of course, this should be relevant to your main subject.
At this stage, do not worry about what order they should be in or which is best. Just put in all your ideas and jot it on your paper.
Presentation Planning Step 4
Now that you have more than enough sub-topics, write brief notes under each sub-topic the main things you would like to talk about on that area.
Presentation Planning Step 5
Review your ideas and trim down or cut off the list down as there are too many ideas. Use a different pen at this stage and mark the areas which you think are the best and the most relevant.
Ask yourself:
- What are the most important areas and ideas?
- Does this sub-topic contribute to the main topic? Is it vital information?
- Can I group these sub-topics into three to five larger subject? How can I put it into a logical structure?
- Will I be comfortable talking about and answering questions on this topic in front of an audience of strangers?
- What could I talk about naturally?
At this stage, you will slowly have a concise list of sub-topics where the most relevant and strongest will remain.
Download your copy of a 12-step assessment day cheatsheet and be confidently prepared!
Presentation Planning Step 6
Now you will need to decide on the order of your slides. We suggest to consider the following:
- Which topic is the strongest to make your opening statement to your presentation
- Are there two topics that could be combined?
- Is there a narrative tale you could tell with your topics?
- Is there a natural order? And what order could make the most impact on your audience?
Grab different colored pen and number each sub-topic
Presentation Planning Step 7
The last step is tidying up and draft your final plan. Jot down a new plan that would reflect the changes that you make. Add the following elements:
- A Wow slide which will captivate your audience from beginning to end. What would make them enjoy and stay until the end?
- A conclusion- this will put your presentation together at the end and it emphasizes all the great points you have made all throughout your presentation.
Now that we have completed the first part of this guide, let us take a break and grab a drink and clear your head.
How to Create a Presentation Using Powerpoint
There are different software/tools you could use to build your presentation and the most commonly used are:
- Microsoft Powerpoint- standard for presentations
- Keynote from Apple- high quality presentation and very stylish
- Google Docs- free cloud based software
In this guide we shall focus on Powerpoint which is the most commonly used tool. It has about 500 million users worldwide and about 30 million presentations are created with this tool every day.
For Mac users
If you are using Keynote, you will be able to save your presentations in Powerpoint PPT file format. All you need to do is:
- Go to file
- Export your file
- Select PPT option
Take note that if you do this, transitions will not be available.
We recommend for you to purchase a copy of Powerpoint for Mac. This way you could ensure compatibility. You could purchase it at Amazon US or Amazon UK .
How do I create slides?
Creating slides is very easy. Check this video to learn the basics and to keep you up speed and up to date.
Example slide structure
Slide 1- title slide with background image and powerful, attention catcher title
Slide 2- impact slide like asking a question or putting in highlights
Slide 3- optional – contents or outline slide. You could put here the basic structure of your presentation. Do not have more than 5 topics or sub-branches.
- This slide is not always appropriate. However, for formal business presentations- this is very common. For others such as conceptualized presentations, you do not need this. But, there are some presentations that are better to have a more organic flow.
If you are in doubt, include this slide to let your audience know what to expect.
Slides 4- 6 – sub-topic 1
Slides 7-9 – sub-topic 2
Slides 10- 12 Sub-topic 3
Slides 13-15 sub-topic 4
Slides 16-18 sub-topic 5
Slides 19- 20 Conclusion slides- include the key points and themes of your presentation. Hit your big idea
Slide 21- Q&A slide
Slide 22- Optional – farewell slide. This part you could bid farewell to your audiences and sign off.
The golden rule of powerpoint is the less is more. Do not overcrowd your presentation and ask for your audience to just read everything you are presenting.
Examples of bad slides
Here are some typical mistakes of most presenters. They are often very unappealing, crowded and looks very busy.