The Art of the Pitch for Young Designers Who Want to Change the World

Every new person you meet

has the potential

to be an influencer

& ultimately change your destiny.

Then Pitch!

In my career, I’ve met a number of young designers. While many of them were brimming with talent, they often hadn’t had the opportunity to polish their personal skills, something they often don’t teach in design school. Specifically, I’ve found they lack the ability to successfully communicate their ideas, particularly to people who can potentially make a difference in their career.  So, I thought it’d be helpful to give a few insights that I’ve developed over the course of my career.

Hopefully, if you’re reading this, you’re a young designer who’s looking to change the world.

How to Introduce Yourself.

When you’re out in the world and meeting people, every new person you meet has the potential to be an influencer or decision maker about a project or a job, and ultimately your destiny. But you can’t just come right out and tell them your life story!

Why?

Because that person is likely busy and has many other priorities. And while your personal story might be interesting, it’s not likely so interesting to captivate the person for a long period of time.

That’s why it’s essential to compact your story into an elevator pitch. Usually you hear this term in relation to explaining a business in less than 30 seconds (the time it takes to ride an elevator), but it can be applied to introducing yourself as well.

The biggest mistake you can make at this point is to simply rattle off your written CV.

No matter how great it is, or how many amazing things you’ve done, they can look at a piece of paper to read that. Plus, if you’re interviewing for a job, it’s likely the interviewer already has your CV, and any reiteration of it will just be a waste of time.

So what is your WHY? Why did you become a designer?

The most efficient technique to hone your elevator pitch is probably a little marketing advice from Simon Sinek : “Start with WHY,” which basically means starting with your raison d’être.

“People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it,” says Sinek.

I suggest looking deeper into your desires and vision to understand yourself better. That is your “WHY.” The main goal of such exercise is to create an interest for who you are and a connection with your audience project and mission within an existing organization. Means you have no time to describe in detail the « WHAT » but create a link by the pitch of the WHY and the HOW.

For me, it’s my desire to create memorable experiences while also respecting and reinforcing environmentally sustainable practices.

Be Prepared, but Be Flexible

You need to prepare your elevator pitch in advance. Improvisation might be fun with friends, but it can sink your hopes quickly when interacting in a professional setting. This doesn’t mean you need to know your pitch by heart, but you do need to deliver it without sounding like a robot.

What’s more, some flexibility is needed in order to adapt the pitch according the person you’re talking to. For example, it’s a good idea to tone down technical jargon when talking with an HR person. But when you’re talking with a fellow designer, it’s perfectly fine to get technical! This is exactly why you need to practice saying your WHY. It needs to be understandable to a broad spectrum of people.

Additionally, you will want to think about both your hard and soft skills, and consider what’s most important to the person you’re talking to. That HR person might be more interested in your ability to get along with coworkers or your organizational skills, while a designer might want to gauge your thought process and approach to design, as well as your knowledge and skillset with various design tools.

How to Talk about Yourself

One mistake I see young designers frequently make is focusing too much on the narrative of your past experience. It’s important to give people some perspective on the kind of role you would like to play and the kind of projects you would like to be engaged with. Just remember to stay consistent with your WHY!

Another common mistake is to minimize your skill level because you lack experience. Instead, focus on promoting any training you’ve done, online tutorials you do regularly, the digital tools you use daily, etc. Most importantly, remember that you embody the latest generation and have a specific mindset, viewpoint, and expectations. You likely have insights into how your generation thinks, feels, etc. And you also have the advantage of being a digital native, something which even the most forward-thinking designers still struggle with from time to time. Do not underestimate the huge value your experiences are for any company that wants to understand younger people.

How to Present Yourself

As a young future collaborator, you need to get your audience to buy into your vision of yourself. You also need to demonstrate your ability to integrate into an existing team. It’s important here to balance emotion and rationality. That is, you should appear emotionally detached to reassure your audience that you are open minded and ready to adapt yourself to new situations, environments, and contexts.

To be sure, this is not easy. As a student, you spent more than years in an academic setting where the goal was to give you both skills and knowledge, and your confidence in them. The context of the professional world, though, is completely different, so you need to adapt your approach. You were the project, but now you need to convince people that you can invest yourself in a collective project with values you are able to subscribe to.

The pandemic and reduction of travelling habits will expose you to situations where you’ll have to pitch yourself online. This medium, as convenience as it is, has many limitations on body language, and on our capability to keep audiences focused. This means that you need to pay close attention to your video background and lighting in order to avoid any distraction and present yourself professionally.

To give you an idea of how to construct a pitch, here’s one I developed recently.

I put myself in the situation to be able contribute to people have a better life. In order to achieve that objective, I’m both active in hardware and in software communities. Higher connectivity and AI are now challenging traditional processes, supporting a vision of driving people and customers to endorse a local social role with ethical and environmental responsibilities.

To achieve this goal, I have improved my skills in facilitating collaboration in cross-functional settings, and I drive projects with clear KPI’s agreed to by all stakeholders. Each stakeholder needs to have the capability to project themselves in the future and understand their impact in order to negotiate time for acceptable transition. I have practiced design for 20 years and still take time daily to improve my understanding of various methodologies and the tools needed to shape relevant innovations that align with a my vision.

My name is David Carvalho and I’m looking forward to joining your team to create a positive impact.

Please note that I finished with my name to make it memorable. At the end, my audience has the important information he or she needs. This practice might look weird, but there’s actually no need to give your name in the beginning because this is to be used in the context of an appointment where I’m giving someone my CV. This is counter to the common approach, but it also makes me stand out.

This exercise requires a lot of preparation and training in order to customize it to your audience’s culture and the qualities needed for the role. But the more you practice, the more natural it will sound, and the greater you’ll be able to demonstrate your vision, your personality, and your professionalism.

Most importantly, when applied correctly, it will help you create the spark needed to start a promising relationship.

Bonne chance!