Presentation Skills

By | February 19, 2015

Everything you need to know

10251145144_6ff9c5c365_zYou will be allocated a topic prior to the trauma and orthopaedics interview day and asked to prepare a short talk.  It is important to put the time in well in advance of the interview day and get your presentation fully prepared, including printing of any acetate overhead projection sheets well in advance.

When given your topic such as ‘100 years of battle, what have orthopaedic surgeons learnt?’ you need to start by going away and researching the topic.  You will only have a limited period of time (usually only 3 minutes) to talk about a broad topic.  Therefore you need to narrow down to a particular area that you are interested in within the broader topic.  You could give and review and summary of everything that has happened over that time frame, but this will be very boring and lack passion.

Once you have narrowed down what you are going to talk about you need to think about how you are going to structure your presentation.  The structure of the talk should be introduction, main content, conclusions, summary (1 line).

Introduction

You do not need to waste time telling them your name or where you work.  Simply give a structured, passionate and informative overview of the topic.  You need to cast out your bait to the interview panel and get them to bit, then hook them in and keep them interested.  Be clear, precise, and set about telling them what you are going to tell them and why.  (if you have 3 mins you should probably spend 30-40 seconds on this)

Main Content

The beef of the presentation.  You need to put your points across showing passion for the topic, positive body language (smiling, stand up tall, hand gestures if necessary) and show confidence in what you are saying by maintaining eye contact with the audience.

Draw relevant examples to be able to use to highlight key points. Make sure the presentation flows to demonstrate a clear thought process behind your content.

Conclusion

The key points from what you have said starting to draw in all the relevant facts that you want to place in the front of the audiences mind.

Summary

This is a one line take home message that you want to get across.

Everything you need to do

Preparation, preparation, preparation

Piss poor preparation, leads to a piss poor performance.  A quote to never forget.  You need to be on top form in the interview and need to know the topic inside out.

As soon as you get the topic start reading around the area and coming up with a plan of what you wish to talk about.

Slides

You will likely only be able to use on slide.  Keep it simple and well structured.  The panel won’t have time to line after line of text.  Don’t allow it to be cluttered and busy.

Delivery

Practice makes perfect.  You need to practice until you have the timing down to perfection.  Allow youself to finish just before the 3 minute mark to allow for slight mishaps on the day. Make sure you slow the pace of delivery right down so that its well polished and easy for everyone to follow.  Generally talk with a slow pace and then talk even slower and that will be about right once the adrenaline and nerves have kicked in.

Keep to time

Over run and loose points or be stopped mid sentence.  Either way it shows a lack of preparation.

Vocals

You need to talk with a clear and audible voice.  If you are naturally quiet or have an accent then you need to work hard on this to make the audience be able to understand you.  Again practice practice practice.

Good luck for this station, this is a station that you should be walking into with full marks, they are only there to be lost.  You need to be positive, enthusiastic, clear, concise, logical and deliver your arguments in and well structured manner to allow you to deliver a compelling argument.