To Ace Interviews, Become A Better Speaker (Here’s How)

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2021-07-22 14:30:09

Earlier this month, we shared some actionable tips for improving your presentation when interviewing for new opportunities: what kinds of questions to ask, information to share, and Zoom backgrounds to avoid.

While important, these practices are icing on the cake. In the case of interviewing, the metaphorical cake is your ability to speak in a clear, concise, and compelling manner.

Of course, improving your public speaking skills is valuable even if you’re not currently interviewing: leading teams confidently, presenting at workshops and conferences, and pitching investors all require an incredible amount of communication discipline.

But besides finding your notes from high school Public Speaking 101, or making your friends and family listen to you speak and give disjointed feedback (I’ve tried this and, yes, it is as awkward as it sounds), how can we become better speakers?

While working early on at Lyft, Raman Malik, co-founder of Rhetoric, noticed that the engineers and data scientists who were having the largest impact and being promoted quickly were those who could deftly sell their work across the company. It was clear that excellent speaking skills were a prerequisite for success. Fast-forward to COVID times, and we’re speaking into microphones all day at work, rather than happenstance conversations in hallways. Suddenly, our speech is measurable and quantifiable, providing a unique opportunity to understand how we communicate (and how we can improve).