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Hey everyone, welcome back to the Data and AI
with Mukundan show. Today, we'll be talking about
how you can use AI to create your own elevator
pitch. When you're in an elevator, for example,
if someone asks you to tell you about yourself,
give me like a 30 second overview about yourself.
That's what an elevator pitch is, if you're not
familiar with it, right? Have you ever had that
moment where someone really asks you tell me
about yourself and your mind starts to blank
immediately let's say you're you know you're
in an interview right interview with maybe the
hiring manager and you prepare for this question
like hundreds of times over but on the day of
let's say you are maybe in the middle of your
work and you get switched on to this interview
so you had this interview in the middle of your
work day right and then you had to do some context
switching and suddenly if someone asks you i
can't tell me tell me about yourself and you're
just wondering what was i doing before this oh
sorry what did i learn when it's so it's so hard
to context switch from what i was doing before
man i just got over like a really tough meeting
how do i get out of that right so how do i get
on get out of that and focus on this so there's
there's those things right so tell me about yourself
suddenly you can feel like a world the world
is like on your shoulders that's what it feels
like at that moment well at least to me right
and your mind instantly blanks so you can have
so much so much preparation before the interview
you could be preparing for three to four weeks
not just for this interview i mean you don't
get three to four weeks for an interview so not
just interviews it could be let's say an important
presentation um that you're walking into But
the audience doesn't know you in this presentation,
right? And you're probably meeting them for the
first time. So that kind of stuff. Or it could
be while you are doing like an in -person interview,
you are waiting in the lobby area and you meet
somebody in the office who you might end up interviewing
with later. This could be as part of your final
round interviews, right? you meet end up meeting
the whole team usually during this round so you
end up seeing them in the lobby area and you
are trying to replay every answer every possible
answer in your mind like what what is the the
best way to say this right how how do you How
do you basically answer this in a way so that
like your career still advances and you are able
to convince the interviewer or anybody whom you
meet why you should be a great fit for the role,
why you should be delivering this presentation
in that important presentation and why you matter.
And if you give like some vague answer or some
off topic answer, here's what happens. People
don't see the real you. Giving a generic answer
doesn't really cut it. So this was during a recent
panel interview I had. So what happened there
was it was one of the latest stages of the interviews
and I was asked to present on my most important
project I've worked on in my career to this audience.
But on this occasion, I was asked to deliver
a presentation to this panel talking about this
project. And one of the first questions before
I even get into the presentation was, tell me
about yourself, right? That was one where I felt
like I really stumbled that one. That was something
that I was thinking about. so i guess it was
a lack of preparation on my end right but and
i eventually i didn't get the job since i'm talking
about it in a negative sense but yeah obviously
didn't get the job but what i've learned from
that is how i can make myself better what i can
do to make myself better right so that was one
case and then there was another one where i was
part of like a networking event right and and
then the people who were at this networking event
i guess at this point i would say people who
mattered at this event were very very smart and
like you know they would come up to you and they
would talk to you and they'd ask you hey so tell
me about yourself and i'd like ramble on say
two or three things and then like completely
go off topic or even those two two two three
things which i did say they weren't like super
memorable right sure like i mean i'm a nice guy
so not like saying i i'm not saying that i made
somebody uncomfortable it's just i don't think
i made an impression right yeah so the you know
they look for an opening after like at some point
and then they did uh leave so it wasn't wasn't
great right So that was, you know, I mean, that
obviously I was lost opportunity because I don't
think I was able to connect to a level where
maybe I got the business card, but it didn't
really mean to anything. Tried reaching out after
asking for, you know, any openings in the company.
And if there were any openings, just wanted to
try to see if I could reach out to them. But
there was nothing that they could do. Right.
And really hear back anything from them. So that
was a missed opportunity as well. so and another
one which was like there was a lot of tech issues
when i was on my zoom call the other day i was
a lot of having a lot of internet connectivity
issues specifically my wi -fi was not working
the way i wanted it to so yeah and then i was
trying to like convey myself and it's just something
that did not work in my favor neither in my phone
also right so i guess i was just in a bad internet
area because a i was not in my home office where
i normally am and i was just maybe i think it
was a cousin's uh place at the time so it wasn't
um it was very spotty internet right but that
being said like so that kind of tech issues threw
me off as well and it was it was a bit difficult
to come out of it and just like focus on the
actual interview questions so eventually we did
end up rescheduling that interview but i felt
like yeah i mean it's just something i wish could
have gone better so i did feel so bad i think
the next round did kind of okay um still can
get through so yeah that was again a missed opportunity
also so these were like some cases where i felt
like i was asked to speak about myself like in
30 seconds or you know roughly that And I wasn't
able to. So it was a lot of self -doubt, self
-criticism started creeping in during this time.
And a lot of nagging, which I felt like I had
the skills, but I'm not able to communicate what
I did. So this was what was happening. So I wanted
to do something about this. well obviously like
you know this is holding you back and one day
i just decided well what if and this is i mean
this is not even at a time where i'm like interviewing
this is just something whenever you know a time
arises but i have to do this and i'm thinking
well um since i'm building a lot of ai apps what
if i can build one to pitch myself in in in an
elevator like I have an elevator pitch ready
for me so that was an idea that I was thinking
about and I feel like it could be done made so
many apps before why not this why not take myself
to the next level so many rejection emails financial
pressures and the flash of hope you get after
an interview is done like oh you know what i'm
still in with a chance because i didn't get a
rejection well i just gave the interview so i'm
not gonna get the rejection right the next second
but i mean you know it'll be coming soon if i
don't speak about myself the way i'm supposed
to um so that's why i wanted to do something
about this and um just relieve my stress right
had a lot of doubts in this time as you can figure
out by the conversation i'm having so far and
what i wanted to see was like how do i make it
past this i just wanted to get past the what
if it fails voice and felt like doing this kind
of ai for an elevator pitch that should be the
next step here so Here's what I did. I tried
to think, what can I do? What can I do to relieve
myself of the stress? So, a few weeks ago, I
just decided, well, let me think through. So,
just keep in mind at this time, I'm not looking
for jobs, but it's something that... if i was
looking then obviously that ideas come to me
but like if you're not looking actively it does
take a while to come up with it so anyway but
i still came up with it after maybe spending
a week or so on it when the spent a lot of time
coding and and eventually you had to see what
the prompt was that made sense right and when
others other prompts did not like what a prompt
does not and coding is stuff where like but these
days with ai it's definitely easier but you still
have to think through what what exact solution
you want what kind of problem you want to solve
how you want the code to look like how you want
everything to look like so that kind of thing
you still need to train ai obviously and finally
just you know build this app right and it was
a cool python based app i use python streamlit
python and streamlit which is like a python based
front -end library which helps you to write very
easy code to display your code on the front end
right like so let's say you build an app everything
that you see on the front end would be based
on streamlit and not like some javascript or
anything this is streamlit is so easy um i don't
know what's being used in the back end maybe
it's javascript being used in the back end But
Streamlit is so easy to use. Because I personally
don't know coding, so Streamlit helps in that
aspect. And if you've heard my other episodes
so far, you've probably noticed that I've been
using Streamlit a lot. And I did in this example
as well. So when I built this app, it was again
a simple app, but the prompt was what mattered
here. here is what i tried with the app and i
asked a couple of my friends to give me their
opinion like what kind of questions should i
should try with what kind of ai pitches would
they like to see and um they gave me some ideas
but like i think eventually just went with the
ones i asked sad jpt i mean the app itself which
uses ai on the back end i asked that ai itself
to give me three prompts right like i'm just
asking got some ideas from my friends one of
us was like a marketing analyst one was seeking
a transition to product management and one was
like a founder of an edtech startup back home
so there's like three different cases which i
saw i was asking the the ai itself right keeps
saying chat gpt but technically means ai asking
some friends for ideas and eventually I asked
a GPT or whatever this AI for ideas the AI gave
me some good ideas so one was it said recent
grad seeking a marketing analyst role and here's
what it said it said hi I'm Priya a marketing
analytics grad with hands -on experience in social
media campaigns in my internship at company X
I built a dashboard that increase ads spend efficiency
by 22 percent passionate about data -driven storytelling
and want to have mission -driven brands like
yours reach gen z audiences my goal is to join
your marketing team and translate data into actionable
insights that grow your community let's connect
to explore how i can contribute so now you can
see that was one example there right so it gave
an example of how priya who's a marketing analytics
graduate can talk to a potential future hiring
manager or any hiring manager for that matter
right how she can pitch herself in interviews
so gives that internship experience what kind
of impact she made in that internship what her
passion is and why she wants to join this company
right so that kind of stuff in this first example
and then another example it spit out was a mid
-career software engineer transitioning to product
management so it said hi i'm alex a senior software
engineer who has spent eight years building scalable
sas platforms and over the last year i led a
cross -functioning team cross -functional team
to launch a features pipeline that boosted revenue
by 15 after interviewing users and collaborating
with designers i fell in love with product strategy
i'm now pursuing a product manager role where
i can blend my technical expertise with user
empathy to deliver products that delight customers
and i'd love to discuss how my engineering background
can help bridge tech and business at your company
so that was another example and the third one
is a founder pitching and a tech startup so this
was hi my name is um sam and i'm the founder
of you know company whatever abc and an ai powered
platform that powers personalized study plans
for college students while tutoring underserved
students i saw how one size fits all courses
leave learners behind our beta users improve
their grades by 30 percent with a raptor system
i'm raising seed funding to scale hire more engineers
and partner with universities together we can
democratize I mean, this is raising seed funding
to scale some company. Again, it's like a made
-up company. Hire more engineers and partner
with universities. So this is the stuff that
AI came up with. And it said, like, also together
we can democratize education and close achievement
gaps. So three different examples it gave here.
But it's very interesting, right? How these different
tones... for these different kinds of people
would help them progress in their careers and
it's a bit different than when you're giving
an interview because this is like you know these
are people at your company so you don't need
to give them one um just keep it very high level
it's not like you have to tell them like you
know you worked on sequel a lot even though that's
something i do a lot so Yeah, this was an interesting
experience, but I asked AI to give me the presentation
and what it came up with was very interesting.
It just said, Hi, I'm Mukundan. I've been a data
analyst for like over a period of time. I've
worked across startups and big companies. And,
you know, what I like about the team here is
how everybody is like so fast paced in. and so
fast -paced and agile so that is really continues
to motivate me every day and seeing a very collaborative
team so that kind of stuff that AI told right
so very simple and I'm great to I'm excited to
like meet meet with all of you discuss topic
X you've seen that was like pretty simple as
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So, you know, if you make a purchase, you will
be supporting the show through no extra cost
to you so if you try this there's like a link
to build it yourself this elevator pitch here's
what i wanted to do next like i mentioned there's
a blog post link which has the code of how you
can implement this elevator pitch ai for your
own needs and i'll attach the prompt as well
below in the show notes i would invite you to
maybe try the code by yourself and if you don't
want to try the code just use the prompt right
the prompt is just easy i would ask you to just
send before and after stories of your pitches
what happens before you try the prompt and what
happens after you try those prompt So, I'd just
like to thank you all for listening and for another
episode of Data and AI with Mukundan. Please
know that AI isn't replacing interviews, isn't
replacing you. Maybe some AI -based interviews,
but it's not supposed to replace you. This is
supposed to help you develop yourself. That's
all for today and thank you for spending time
with me. On another episode.