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Last active January 2, 2016 03:49
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Intern Retrospective Guidelines

We like to have our interns and co-ops summarize their experiences before they finish. Here are some guidelines to help develop a useful presentation.

Golden Rule: Convince us to hire you!

To be clear, your retrospective will have little impact on HubSpot's decision to make an offer. However, approaching your presentation this way will help you focus on making an impact that will give you a jump start on your career if you do join HubSpot in the future.

This is your chance to put yourself out there to make some very valuable professional connections. When you're choosing what to put on your slides, always think: "Will telling people this make them want to work with me again?"

Some things you might talk about

  • Briefly remind people which year you're in (or expected graduation date).
  • Get an objective measurement of some value you added to the company (reduced Sentries, JIRAs resolved, visitors to a landing page) and make sure the measurement has context to help the audience understand whether it's a big number or a small number.
  • Describe a real problem that customers had and then show a screenshot or diagram of how you solved it in the product.
  • Prove that you pick things up quickly by stating things that you learned at HubSpot. For example: "I hadn't done any SASS styling before HubSpot - here's three tips that really changed everything for me. 1. Don't nest too deeply, 2. Use mixins for cross-browser compatability..." etc.
  • End by telling us what to do next. Should we follow you on Twitter? Email you at your personal address? Check out a personal project of yours on GitHub? Pick one.

Things you should avoid

  • Don't go over the five minute mark. The best way to do this is to "rehearse" the talk and time yourself.
  • Have as little text on your slides as possible. Always look for visual ways to represent what you're saying - Google Images, diagrams, screenshots, etc. Bulleted lists make you instantly lose your audience.
  • Humor is great - but it doesn't work unless your timing is perfect. If you don't have time to thoroughly rehearse it, cut it out and focus on the Golden Rule. Animated GIFs especially tend to backfire by not working correctly during the presentation. If you want to go for it, try putting humor in the beginning of the talk.
  • You probably got dozens of things done during your time here, but don't spread yourself too thin by briefly touching on all of them. Pick two or three big wins and spend all of your time convincing us that they were important.
  • Don't talk too much about how inexperienced you were before you joined HubSpot, or how nervous and unsure you were when you first started out. Instead focus on how big the technical challenge was and how you surmounted it.

Getting feedback

  • Feel free to set up a time slot with Greg Sabo to go over your slides.
  • Beth Dunn is another great resource for refining presentations
  • Check out HubSpot Toastmasters if you really want to master public speaking (a truly indisposable skill!)

We can't wait to see your presentation!

-Greg

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