If you only had one minute to pitch your story
March 08, 2009
You have surely heard about "the best job in the world" contest by now created by Australia's Tourism Queensland (if not, here's a BoingBoing post). In order to get an interview for this dream gig, participants do not send in a resume and an essay (boring), but instead submit 60-second video presentations explaining who they are why they should be selected. You can checkout some of the top candidates still in the running on The Best Job in The World website. Currently there are 50 on the short list. TQ will choose 10 to interview plus one more wild card pick based on viewer's votes. Some of these are quite good. Remember: the goal is not to land a job in the one-minute video presentation, the objective is to state your case (or make your pitch) and make a connection in such a way that you can land one of the interviews. The interviews are where you really make or break the deal. In a way, then, this is similar to a resume in "the real world." No one's going to hire you based only on your resume (or your video, or your blog, or presentations, your book, etc.) alone. But the effective presentation of who you are, regardless of medium, is the first step to opening the doors of opportunity. So, if you were asked to make a one-minute video presentation for your dream job (or business idea, etc.), how would you do it? Checkout the Best Job website to view the videos. Below are some of my favorites (though I have not seen them all, so feel free to point out the ones you like best).
Clare from Taiwan
Mitchell from Canada
Anny from Canada
Mieko from Japan
Ben from UK
Magali from The Netherlands
The samples above are not necessarily the most popular or technically superior pitches, but somehow after watching them I'm curious to hear more. Anny clearly has a future in broadcasting and Mitchell has a future on stage. There are others which are excellent on the site; which are your favorites?
You'll have to do a follow up, If you only had 500 words to wow the judges.
Days fly by fast when you're obsessing about The Best Job In the World and trying to write a witty yet informative yet eye catching essay with only 500 words to work with.
http://www.islandreefjob.com/#/Adeline
Posted by: Adeline | March 08, 2009 at 04:04 PM
clare's video resume is absolutely my favorite one, and mitchell should really be on stage! great job.
Posted by: Sebastiano Mereu | March 08, 2009 at 07:03 PM
It seems that the ones at the top were more about their passion than about themselves. All of them were great and very creative.
Posted by: Michael Sporer | March 08, 2009 at 11:49 PM
They're all really cool. I like Mitchell's a lot, because the whole clip was one long scene, which must've been hard to do; they probably had to take a lot of takes. Anny was really cool and funny and I think Ben's craziness and outgoing style will make him fit the job really well.
Oliver
Posted by: Oliver (ReThink Presentations) | March 10, 2009 at 06:39 AM
Mitchell wins my vote. Just spectacular. Love the tongue in cheek opening about Canada being too cold.
Posted by: Denise Young | March 10, 2009 at 05:37 PM
Mitchell and Ben were definitely my favs.
Mitchell's was definitely sticky, whether the job suited him or not.
With Ben, I felt he could handle the job without a problem and make blog readers keep coming back.
The key, for me, was that the person didn't seem rushed in their 1 minute. One PZ blog entries talked about "go deep or go broad". The entries that tried to do both didn't fly with me.
The people who left me wanting more were the ones I'd call in for an interview. If I can know everything about you (or feel that I do) in a minute...there's not much there.
Posted by: Jill | March 12, 2009 at 11:15 PM