Dos and don’ts

  • Goal is to attract more attenion, not convincing people to hire you upfront
  • Around 30 secs ~ 80 words. No need to recap the entire history. Focus on what matters most
  • SLOW DOWN. To fix it, record your speech, but avoid the trap of over-practice. That makes it sound unnatural
  • Structure
    • Who you are, and your background
    • What you do, and your unique selling propostition, i.e., what can you bring to the team
    • What you want to do/Your goals. What you are looking for
  • Omit negative/dislike areas
  • Use terms based on target audience. Use different pitches for different audiences

My technical elevator pitch

As a backend engineer, I have architected and maintained systems that serve > 20m users and > 1k TPS. I was part of the team that build the leading payment app in Japan from the very beginning, and my code processes billions of dollars each month. I am also the system architect that increased the throughput of this app by a factor of 3. I am excited to work with top engineers to deliver new impacts in the fintech domain or with high traffic systems.