Quick Tip – Practice Your Intro

The holidays are an opportunity to rehearse – Issue #98

This time of the year is often busy with holiday parties. Plus, the New Year’s Eve celebration is right around the corner.

You will most likely meet several new people at all of these events. Have you thought about how you will introduce yourself?

I’m going to suggest that you consider something different than the usual introduction that inevitably includes your profession and where you work. You know what I mean:

• “I’m a product manager at Google.”

• “I’m a barista at the Coffee Hut.”

• “I design software at IBM.”

• “I wait tables at the Heyday Cafe.”

Your specific job title and your current employer simply happen to be what you’re doing right now. It represents a moment in time, not who you are and what you want to be.

Take this opportunity to redefine your introduction and practice it with new people. Your intro will be a less formal variation of what you use to answer the job interview question, “Tell me about yourself?”

You can highlight something unique about yourself. Include how you aspirationally think of yourself. Be forward-thinking.

However, the people you meet at holiday parties will still be curious about what you do for a living. This should be aligned with your LinkedIn Headline.

Note how people react when you introduce yourself. Do they seem interested, or does it confuse them? Do they engage and ask you more questions, or do their eyes glaze over?

Try variations of your intro and continue refining it until you’re happy with how it sounds and how people react. Let this experiment set the stage for your career plans next year.