Aspiring MSL Insights: The Do's and Don'ts for MSL Presentations

In this video, Michael Pietrack shares three best practices to implement and the three pitfalls to avoid ❌ in your MSL Presentation.

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1️⃣ Best Practice #1 is to know your slides by heart. Literally, be able to do the presentation without looking at your slides. This will enable you to have a deeper engagement and connection with the audience. And also, know when and what to say as you transition from slide to slide. Not only will this make your presentation very strong , but it will save you in a pinch.

2️⃣ Best Practice #2 is to anticipate questions. So ahead of your presentation, think about what if you were in the audience, what would you want to know? 💬 And if you get a question that you don’t know the answer to, don’t guess the answer. ❌ You want to be able to answer every question, but if you don’t know the answer, simply say, “I want to get you the most accurate answer, so let me follow up with you on that.” And then, after the interview, follow up.

3️⃣ Best Practice #3 is to stick to the time frame they give you. If they ask for a 15-minute presentation, allowing for 15 minutes of Q&A afterward, and you go overtime, that will be a strike against you.

Now of course, the pitfalls are the th ree opposites of those. Reading from the slides , the inability to answer questions , and going over time. But here are three more pitfalls to avoid:

1️⃣ Pitfall #1 if you’re going to use slides that are already created, make sure they are non-proprietary and from the public domain. I had one candidate use slides that had CONFIDENTIAL watermarked on each page. Don’t do that.

2️⃣ Pitfall #2 is presenting outdated data. That is a surefire way to lose the interview, and you would be surprised how often it happens.

3️⃣ Pitfall #3 is don’t data dump. Don’t overwhelm the audience with excessive details. The presentation should be a story that captivates the audience from beginning to end, where the data is used strategically to help the story along.

There are many pitfalls to watch out for, but those are the biggies.

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