How Failing Multiple Interviews Helped Me Create My Elevator Pitch For AWS Interview
From 10 min monologue to 1 min elevator pitch. Lessons I learned on how to introduce myself in an interview.
This article is part of a series about my journey to cracking the AWS Interview.
Quick background before I get into the first article of the series. It started with a below chat with one of my LinkedIn connection:
Them:
Hi Prasad, it’s so great to see you starting your newsletter. Loved your first article. I have been following you on LinkedIn for sometime now and your posts have been quite valuable. Looking forward to more articles!
Me:
Thank you so much for the kind words. Glad to know you find my LinkedIn posts valuable. Please let me know if there is anything specific you would like me to cover in my newsletter. I’m all ears for any topic suggestions.
Them:
I remember you posted a while ago 5-part LinkedIn post on your interview experience at AWS. I know on LinkedIn we are constrained by word limit. It would be great in you can dive deep into those posts in long form articles in your newsletter.
Me:
That’s a great idea. Let me find those posts and see what best I can do!
Everyone knows how great LinkedIn search is and how easy it is to find your old posts. So in no time I was able to find my old posts after scrolling endlessly!
For anyone interested, I have added links of the 5 part LinkedIn post at the end of this article. The series was called “How I cracked AWS Interview in 2019 (and how you can in 2024)?”
Indeed, it’s a great idea to expand on these and dive into details.
So by chatting with a LinkedIn connection, I got this idea for a series of articles.
Let’s get started with the first one - How interviewing at other companies helped me build my elevator pitch for AWS interview?
The Challenge of Interviewing
Interviewing is hard. It’s a skill that needs practising.
I had not given an interview in 7 years. I had more than 10 years of work experience, but my skillset was outdated.
When I thought of searching for a new job, it was not easy. And as you can imagine, it’s difficult to start giving interviews when you have not interviewed for long.
I upskilled myself, updated my resume, and started applying for jobs, only to realize that getting an interview call in itself is a big challenge.
I had to iterate a lot on my resume and my job search strategy to get interview calls [Topic for another post!].
Before interviewing for Amazon, I interviewed at 8 companies. And that has immensely helped me to get into the groove.
Here are four ways it helped me:
Perfecting my Introduction
Identifying topics I should prepare
Admitting I don’t know something
Focussing on business benefits
In this article, I will talk about perfecting my introduction iteratively.
Initial Struggles with Introductions
During my initial interviews, I struggled with the question, “Tell me about yourself?” I would go on a 10-minute rant talking about every experience I had in my decade-long career. Big mistake.
I will spare you from the full intro, but here is the crux of what I used to say.
I graduated in Computer Science and engineering in 2007 and joined a Telecom company as a software engineer.
… <talked about my early experience and initial job switches >…
I worked on developing a web application for a financial client. I gained experience in working on X,Y,Z technologies.
… <talked about how I grew from developer to lead to architect> …
I joined my current company in 2012 and for the first five years, I was working on building a financial reporting tool.
… < talked about my product building experience and then working in field team as pre-sales solutions architect for the product> …
In my most recent experience, I helped another financial services client on their digital transformation journey.
… <talked about how I modernized legacy applications> ...
Outside work, I enjoy running.
I used to say all of it without catching a breath and not giving any chance to the interviewer to interrupt me in between.
Learning from Feedback
I had good work experience with some really big customers, but the way I used to articulate it was lengthy and boring. And it did not help me connect with the interviewers.
In one of the technical screening interview that was scheduled for 30 mins, the interviewer stopped my intro after a few mins and said to me politely
Prasad, can you please keep your intro brief?
I had not prepared for a brief intro, and I did not want to skip telling any of the amazing work that I had done in my decade long career.
So, I did not cut short my intro. I just spoke fast - as fast as I could have.
Needless to say, I was not selected, but it helped me understand my shortcomings. And then I used to have 2 versions of my intro ready. A longer version and a shorter version. I used to lead with shorter version and if the interviewer needed more information, I used information from the longer version. But even those were not good enough.
Understanding the Purpose of Introductions
I was not tailoring my intro according to the job role. It took me a few failed interviews to understand, iterate and improve.
That made me realize that when an interviewer asks “Tell me about yourself.”, the interviewer is actually asking, “Tell me why I should hire you?”
So instead of focussing on my entire career experience, I need to focus only on the highlights of my career experience that is most relevant to the job role I’m applying for.
Crafting an Effective Elevator Pitch
You need to have a one-min elevator pitch for yourself. And that one minute not only helps you connect with the interviewer but also steers the direction of the interview. You subtly drop in the keywords and your strong areas on which you would like the interviewer to probe further.
I understand, keeping it under one-min is extremely difficult.
You can have it as 2 min max.
Here is the structure I came up with for writing my introduction.
Career Summary [keep it to 20 seconds max]
This is your hook line to keep the interviewer interested in listening to you for next 1-2 mins while you power through your introduction.
Main Body [45-90 seconds]
Idea in this section is to tell them why you are a good fit for the job role.
In no particular order or specific time allocation, talk about following:
Relevant Experience
Key Skills
Recent Project
You’ll notice in my example below, I start this section with recent project as it matches the experience the role requires. I have not talked about key skills explicitly but have weaved in the two project examples I have provided.
Personal Interest [Optional. Keep it very short]
It’s a nice-to-have section section where you can talk about what you do outside your work.
As a mental model, to create your 1-2 mins introduction, you can use this flowchart:
My AWS Interview Elevator Pitch:
So, here was my elevator pitch for the technical round at AWS when I interviewed with them in 2019.
I started my career as a .NET developer and over the last 10 years, I have gained extensive experience in developing and architecting applications using Microsoft workloads stack.
In my current project, I’m working as a tech lead helping a UK financial institution in digitally transforming their re-mortgage platform. Their legacy platform was built as a monolithic application in .NET with Winforms as frontend and SQL Server Database as backend. Their team was following the waterfall SDLC. I, along with my team, are helping them adopt agile development methodology and are modernizing their monolithic application by breaking it into microservices and implementing Jenkins CI/CD pipeline.
Prior to it, in my previous project, I was involved in building a product called the Compliance Management Reporting System (CMRS). The tech stack was .NET, SQL Server, XSLT, Biztalk, WCF, Winforms /WPF - basically it was all Microsoft stack. I started in the project as a senior developer and then became a track lead. Once that product was launched, I moved from India to London and joined the pre-sales team. I helped pitch the product to multiple financial institutions here and implemented the same for them.
Outside work, I enjoy running. Last month I ran the London Marathon. It was tough but was an amazing experience to train for it and run alongside 40,000 runners.
I’m happy to dive deep into any of my experiences.
The pitch was in no way perfect. But it was specifically tailored for the job I was applying for and also the interviewers’ profile.
Job role:
I applied for the role of Senior Solutions Architect, Microsoft Dev tools. The role was to help AWS customers/partners migrate and modernise Microsoft Workloads (like .NET applications and SQL Server) on AWS.
Interviewer Profile:
I looked up the interviewer on LinkedIn. Before joining AWS, they were working as Application Development Lead at one of the Microsoft Consulting company and had written a book on cross platform .NET.
I did not have experience working on Cloud/AWS at that time. My best shot was to play on my strengths and talk about the experience I had with developing applications with Microsoft Workloads. And as this was a customer facing role, I talked about my pre-sales experience.
And it worked out pretty well. Most of the technical questions were on .NET, SQL, application development, Microservices, CI/CD pipelines. In the behavioral question (yes, even in technical interviews at AWS there are behavioral questions), I discussed one of my pre-sales experiences with a major financial custodian.
The Power of Customization
It’s easy to understand that introduction needs to be tailored to the job role, but do we need to tailor specific to interviewer background?
If possible, yes!
For example, in my case, the interviewer had .NET background, so I doubled down on it and mentioned the tech stack. Now let’s say, the interviewer had been from Java background. Rather than focusing extensively on the Microsoft tech stack, I would have emphasized on design patterns and my architecting skills.
If the interviewer held a managerial or leadership position, or came from a business background, I would have emphasized my business acumen and stakeholder management skills rather than focusing on my technical abilities.
It’s about finding a common footing with the interviewer so that the discussion can happen on the topics both of us have knowledge of. So yes, it may be tedious, but you need to do research on the role and the interviewer and accordingly mould your elevator pitch.
Key Takeaways
If I have to summarize my learning, here will be the top 3 key takeaways:
Keep it concise. Between 1-2 mins is the sweet spot.
Tailor your intro specific to the job role and, if possible, to the interviewer.
Subtly drop in the keywords you would like the interviewer to double down on.
Delivery Tips
Remember it is just not about the content in the introduction but also the delivery style. Here are a few things to consider:
Pace of delivery. Do not rush the words when you are pitching about yourself.
Emphasize on the keywords you want interviewer to remember and ask questions on.
Smile and make eye contact with the interviewer as you talk about yourself.
Practice is necessary for all of this.
You don’t have to be like me and fail interviews to perfect your intro.
Practice in front of the mirror. Practice with your friends and family.
Do you have an elevator pitch for yourself? If not, create one now!
For curious souls, here are the links to 5 part LinkedIn posts I wrote on “How I cracked AWS Interview in 2019 (and how you can in 2024).”
𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝟭/𝟱: 𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝘁 𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗵𝗲𝗹𝗽𝗲𝗱 𝗺𝗲 𝗰𝗿𝗮𝗰𝗸 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗪𝗦 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄?
https://lnkd.in/eq67djJu𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝟮/𝟱: 𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝗺𝘆 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘂𝗺𝗲 𝗴𝗼𝘁 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗹𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗮𝘁 𝗔𝗪𝗦
https://lnkd.in/eMzpGSjB𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝟯/𝟱: 𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝗜 𝗖𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗧𝗲𝗰𝗵𝗻𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗣𝗵𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗦𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝗮𝘁 𝗔𝗪𝗦
https://lnkd.in/euWDS4Es𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝟰/𝟱: 𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝗜 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗪𝗦 𝗟𝗼𝗼𝗽 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄
https://lnkd.in/eKCn79r2𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝟱/𝟱: 𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝗜 𝗣𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗠𝘆 𝗔𝗪𝗦 𝗟𝗼𝗼𝗽 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄
https://lnkd.in/e2AWdkDM
Stay tuned for in-depth articles about my interviewing experience at AWS and learnings from it. Expect a generous amount of personal anecdotes in these articles.
Thanks mate.