If you get to the second stage of the job application process and are invited for interview, you may well find that candidates are required to give a presentation - a prospect which terrifies many jobhunters! The presentation generally lasts for 5 or 10 minutes and usually applicants are warned before the interview, but sometimes its sprung upon them on arrival.

Whichever scenario you encounter, you can make sure you are well prepared. If you know the subject of your presentation in advance, this is obviously a great deal easier, but also means much more will be expected of you. So you must take the time to put together a professional presentation and practise it until you can do it in your sleep!

Lets assume you know your subject in advance. Here are a few pointers to ensure a smooth presentation.

Read the Brief

You must make sure you understand exactly what you are required to talk about in your presentation and to whom it will be addressed. The subject matter is likely to be something specific about the company itself or an aspect of the job. Your audience could be anyone - staff members, clients, potential partners, students considering joining the organisation.

Be Aware of your Audience

Its important to prepare a talk aimed at the audience, rather than the interviewers. For example, if you are being interviewed for a post in student services at a university or college, you may be asked to explain the student loans system and other sources of funding to a group of new students. The people facing you will all be managers and HR staff. Some of them will know the system and others wont know or care to know. But you have to imagine that you are talking to a group of students, all of whom are really worried about how they are going to manage their finances. So prepare accordingly.

Timing

If you are asked to give a 5 minute presentation, make it 5 minutes, not 10. A few seconds over or under is fine and for a longer presentation, youll get away with a minute or two. But if you ramble on for 10 or 15 minutes in a supposedly 5 minute talk, you will not make a good impression. What will this say about you? That you are not good at managing time and/or you are not good at following instructions.

How can you ensure your presentation is the correct length?

You can practise!

In this case, practice does make perfect. So practise aloud, with actions, until you get it right. Perform to your friends, relatives, the cat or anyone else who will listen. They can also give you some feedback on content. Well, except the cat, perhaps. Although if it walks off in disgust, you might want to consider making a few changes!

The more presentations you give, the easier it gets in all respects, including timing. So if you are used to presenting, being put on the spot should not cause a problem with timing.

And What If You are Dropped in at the Deep End?

If you suspect you might be required to give a presentation without warning, you can still do plenty of preparation. Choose the topics which you think are likely to come up and prepare those. Think about the job and what will be expected of you what sort of knowledge and skills will you be expected to have already? And make sure you do your research on the company the presentation could be designed to test how much homework youve done. Come up with a few general points which would fit a presentation related to any job in the field youre applying for and then before each interview, prepare one or two points which are specific to the post concerned.

Even if you dont get an exact match with your prepared talk, youll be so used to presenting that youll able to put together an alternative very quickly.

Waller Jamison 2005