Microsoft Interview – 10 minute presentation

I have been through several stages now for a job at Microsoft and my final one is this thursday.

As well as interviews I have to create a 10 minute presentation, I’ve not done many before the theme is this:

"If you were the General Manager of Microsoft UK what key things would you focus on to ensure Microsoft retains its position in the market place?"

The stuff I have at the moment to talk about is:[list=a][*]Customer Focus e.g. research technologies and functionality that they require (productivity)[*]Rival Companies e.g. what are they doing? what markets do they have that we don’t? etc[*]Staff e.g. do our current staff keep up to date with tommorows technoilogy? are the staff we are hiring keeping up? do they know how to implement this?[*]Technologies e.g. are we researching technologies that will give out customers more freedom with the latest technologies but easier to use?[*]Marketing e.g. out we marketing our products correctly? what are we using to market them?[/list]
My key word is "Research", I was thinking of starting off with a quote like "95% of all people will choose a product where research is visible than one that is not".

I am doing a computer science degree, and I really have no idea how to cover this in 10 mins or how to really cover it in a way that will impress.

I have only flip charts to use with pens and I have 20 mins to create my presentation, 10 mins for hte presentation and 10 mins for questions.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

p.s. someone told me not to do any more than 3 pages for a 10 mins presentation…can anyone help me on that?

It sounds like you’ve got a lot to fit into 10 minutes. So…

Ask yourself what five things (some say you should stick with three, but you’ve been given more than 3 areas to cover) you absolutely want to point out in your presentation?

Then focus on expanding for a minute and a half on each. So you’d have one point about research (like your quote by the way) and then one point about marketing.

If you can find other anchor quotes like you did for the research area then use them to transition from research to marketing and so on.

Good luck. I hope you get the job.

Ross Bowring

http://www.publicspeaking****er.com
****ing the ****iness out of public speaking