Yostivanich

Engi­neers and Pre­sen­ta­tions don’t mix I have noticed over the past sev­eral days, and why is that. Why is the stereo­typ­i­cal engi­neer a klutz when it comes to pub­lic speak­ing, why does this stereo­type even exist is the bet­ter ques­tion. Frankly, because it is true. I have over the past sev­eral days been see­ing pre­sen­ta­tions by engi­neer­ing com­pa­nies on their com­pany and why you should join said com­pany when grad­u­a­tion rolls around.

Before I start cri­tiquing the com­pa­nies, let say what they did right. They brought engi­neers to talk to engi­neers, they brought Alumni of the school, and most impor­tantly they brought engi­neers. Why do I like the engi­neers com­ing, because we (engi­neers in train­ing) want our ques­tions answered by engi­neers. We want to know the ins and outs of what the com­pany does and what we will be doing day in day out. Same thing if the com­pany was going to be talk­ing to mar­ket­ing stu­dents, they would hope­fully bring peo­ple in mar­ket­ing to recruit. The alumni is an easy way to estab­lish a some level of cre­dence with the students.

Okay, that is what the com­pa­nies did right, what went wrong:
    1.   Poor and unskilled use of Pow­er­Point
    2.   Not being able to answer ques­tions about the num­ber of peo­ple in a divi­sion or cus­tomers asso­ci­ated with                   that divi­sion
    3.   No body move­ment, no inter­ac­tion, no real level of excite­ment, hands stay­ing in their pock­ets
    4.   Bor­ing pre­sen­ta­tions
    5.   In-Fighting
    6.   Clear lack of coor­di­na­tion both with com­pany line and amongst the group
    7.   Major need to project
    8.   Either read­ing scripts or read­ing from the Pow­er­Point
    9.   Not talk­ing about any­thing cool (why should I join you over Google or any other company)

The prob­lems are ridicu­lous and could be solved very eas­ily. Coor­di­nate a group of engi­neers who are actual engi­neers, but whose sec­ondary job is recruit­ment. Say one week a month, they leave the office and go fly around the coun­try and give pre­sen­ta­tions at dif­fer­ent col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties recruit­ing stu­dents. These engi­neers should be smart, but they don’t have to be top of their field, you obvi­ously don’t want to lose some­one too valu­able to your orga­ni­za­tion 12 weeks out of the year. Cre­ate a good, use­ful Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tion that can be pretty much uni­ver­sal or cre­ate mul­ti­ple ones depend­ing on the speific field you are tar­get­ing. Take these engi­neers and either find ones with some good nat­ural speak­ing and pre­sen­ta­tion skills or train them. Coor­di­nate them, have them work together, have them respect each other and what each of their dif­fer­ent divi­sions do. Make sure they know the com­pany line on cer­tain ques­tions. Have them work with a marketing/communication  per­son to get a really good 5–10 minute spiel together. That mar­ket­ing per­son is your coor­di­na­tor for this team. They will open the pre­sen­ta­tion, coor­di­nate with col­leges, gather mar­ket­ing mate­ri­als, and keep the pre­sen­ta­tions inter­est­ing and mov­ing along.

That would be a recruit­ment team that would win. You would have a great pre­sen­ta­tion and recruit­ment would increase sustainability.

Also these com­pa­nies would only talk about how they were with the
com­pany for x-number of years and how it was so odd to stay with a
com­pany for that many years. What if I don’t care about stay­ing with
you till I retire, what about show­ing me some­thing cool, some­thing that
makes me want to stay late at the office? Where is your cool gad­get?
Why should I join you over Google, Intel, Microsoft, any one of a
bazil­lion other companies?

The more I think about this the more I think this would be some­thing I wouldn’t mind doing. Hmmm, an engi­neer­ing degree with a minor in mar­ket­ing or com­mu­ni­ca­tions. That would be a first, but you know what engi­neers are just as capa­ble as any­one else of being awe­some pub­lic speak­ers. It sim­ply takes time and train­ing. The stereo­type of an engi­neer being a bad pub­lic is unfor­tu­nately more cor­rect than we would care to admit and yet we have to present all the time.

Towards this end I ask for two things, engi­neers go out and get some real pub­lic speak­ing skills, not the one’s pre­sent­ing a cir­cuit dia­gram in front of peers. I am talk­ing about giv­ing a speech in pub­lic on a topic in which you may not feel com­pletely com­fort­able with, that is real pub­lic speak­ing. Com­pa­nies design a bet­ter recruit­ment sys­tem, the cur­rent one doesn’t inter­est me. Show me some­thing cool, give me some engi­neers who not only are smart but work well together and give a kick-a pre­sen­ta­tion. Now you’ve got me beg­ging to join your company.

 jtyost2