Range of Employability Skills and Business Pitch

Business Pitch

This task involves delivering a short business pitch to demonstrate a range of employability skills. Employers almost always demand the following skills and qualities from graduates: a. Interpersonal skills b. Good written and spoken communication skills c. Confidence d. Professional appearance and behaviour e. Ability to organise, analyse and present information effectively f. Enthusiasm and energy The presentation task is a way for you to practise and demonstrate these key employability skills.

A business pitch is usually delivered when an entrepreneur is presenting or describing his/her ideas to potential investors in order to obtain funding. The pitch should give an overview of the main points of your start-up business plan and get the right people interested in your business. If you have a physical product to show, examples of your marketing materials, etc please do - we love to see what you have done. It is usually followed by a question and answer session.

1. Introduction - you, your credentials and the business name

2. Opportunity and problem your business is going to solve

3. Solution and  business idea

4. Market research and your potential target

5. Competition and your Unique Selling Point (USP)

6. Sales and marketing strategy.

7. Business model – how do you plan to generate income?

8. Funding requirements What is it assessing?

This task is assessing your verbal and non-verbal communication skills and your ability to structure content and effectively address a given brief. You will be ‘pitching’ a business idea to a team of investors, made up of lecturer and the classmates. You are encouraged to use creative and striking visual material. You will be assessed on the knowledge of the academic content you convey (albeit in jargonfree terms), you will also be assessed on your professionalism and business style. So, effective visuals, concise language and professional manners are expected in the presentation.

The professional business people offer practical advice and expertise on your delivery, while the academic staff assess the academic content and overall presentation. The whole scenario is designed to represent a business environment, so the room, the layout and even the attire are business-like in appearance. This is done to give you as realistic an experience as possible of a ‘real world’ business environment. 

What does the task reflect? How is it relevant to your employability? This task has been included to reflect the kind of situations that you are likely encounter during the recruitment process or when starting up a business. You will almost certainly have to undertake some kind of interview when applying for jobs where your communication skills (both verbal and non-verbal) will be assessed. It is also becoming increasingly common, for candidates to be asked to prepare a presentation as part of the recruitment process. Aside from the recruitment process, presenting forms an important part of many jobs, whether as a formal presentation or presenting ideas to colleagues in a meeting.

This task will help you to develop the skills needed by going through the process of preparing and delivering a pitch to an audience. Very few people are naturally highly skilled presenters. Actually, going through the process of preparing and delivering presentations, and gaining feedback is the best way to improve your presentation skills. Completing this task will help you to start developing these skills and increasing your confidence.

An Introduction to Lean Canvas As an entrepreneur, one of the most important tasks you can perform is getting your idea(s) out from your head into a tangible format so that you can communicate that with others. The idea behind the Lean Canvas is to quickly sketch the business idea instead of taking several weeks to develop a business plan.

1. Problem Each customer segment (CS) you are thinking to work with will have a set of problems that they need solving. In this box try listing the one to three high priority problems that you CS has. Without a problem to solve, you don’t have a product/service to offer.

2. Customer Segments The problem and Customer Segments can be viewed as intrinsically connected?— ?without a CS in mind you can’t think of their problems, and visa-versa.

3. Unique Value Proposition In the middle of the canvas is the UVP. A value proposition is a promise of value to be delivered. It’s the primary reason a prospect should buy from you. A way to get your head around this is to think why are you different and why should your CS buy/invest time in you.

4. Solution Finding a solution to the problem is the golden egg! You’re not going to get this right off the first bat?—?it’s OK, as that’s what Lean is all about. So, go interview your customer segment, ask them questions, and take those learnings.

5. Channels Channels are ways for you to reach your CS. And remember that in the initial stages it’s important not to think about scale but to focus on learning. With that in mind try to think which channels will give you enough access to your CS at the same time give you enough learning. Channels can be email, social, CPC ads, blogs, articles, trade shows, radio & TV, webinars etc. and BTW you don’t have to be on all of them, just where your CS are.