What to Look for While Hiring a Presentation Expert

Presentations are a part and parcel of corporate life. Even small and medium businesses conduct presentations for various reasons – to convey HR policies, to familiarize staff with new products, to inform them of new regulations in their industry, and so on. And because of this, you may want to hire a presentation expert. What skills should you look for while hiring one?

Have you attended presentations that made you fall asleep with their lengthy speeches or wordy slides? Unfortunately, this happens to many of us; the person making the presentation may be an expert in their field but does not know how to make a riveting presentation and catch people’s attention. They continue to drone on, not realizing that their audience is mentally transported to another world and are not paying attention to a single word being said. That is why you need a presentation expert to do the job.

Today, we will help you understand what a presentation specialist does and what qualities to check for when trying to hire one for your company.

Who is a Presentation Expert?

A presentation expert is a professional working with a company and designing crisp presentations for top management, outside organizations, or customers. The subject can vary– from manufacturing to education, and the presentations are mostly done through PowerPoint or other similar software. The presentation specialist creates the presentations per the company’s requirements and ensures that the topics are presented clearly and succinctly. These professionals have expertise in various elements like graphic design and visually presenting the information. They must also have good analytical and communication skills be creative, and have excellent graphic software and design capabilities.

What Does a Presentation Expert or Specialist Do

A presentation specialist makes presentations interesting and engaging for the audience while subtly conveying the message their client (say the company) wants; they make sure that the audience understands what is being presented. They transform concepts into powerful visual displays. Presentation specialists ease the burden of the companies they represent by taking this job off their hands, increasing their chance of attaining the objectives of the presentation significantly. They collaborate with business owners, top management, and marketing professionals, get inputs regarding the idea or product to be shared, and build the presentation based on that. When you hire a presentation expert, you can focus on your core business activities and let the specialist do their job.

Now that you’ve decided to hire a presentation expert, you need to know what to look for. A good presentation specialist needs to have multiple skills to be able to make an impact on the audience. So how will they be able to do that? There are two stages – the preparation or before the delivery stage and the post-preparation or actual delivery stage. The skills required during both are different. 

Skills a Presentation Expert Needs in the Preparation Stage

Presentation experts must be multi-talented, as making presentations in today’s world is a complex activity and no longer as simple as putting together a few OHP slides and pointing at the screen while the speaker drones on. With attention spans becoming shorter, presentations must be short, crisp, and engaging; presenters must be smart and think on their feet. For this, they need to be multi-skilled. So what are these skills we keep hearing about? Here is what we put together after talking to a few experts.

Research

Presentation specialists must be able to research a given subject; they should know where to look for information, how to gather it, and then interpret it. In addition, a good presenter will be able to brainstorm and have excellent powers of reasoning.

Organization

The presentation expert needs to be very organized and able to relate the various points with each other and pick ideal stats or examples to emphasize specific points. It’s also essential that the specialist plans in what order they will present the data. Creating an outline that comprises the key points to make it easily understandable for the audience, including the most important points, is also the desired quality of a presenter.

Proofreading

A good presenter never leaves anything to chance and proofreads the entire presentation, ensuring it’s free of spelling and grammatical errors. This is the mark of a true professional. To be a good proofreader, one has to be meticulous and pay attention to detail and be able to edit well. Editing does not mean merely correcting errors but improving the readability and clarity of the presented information to remove ambiguity and make it interesting. The presenter should be able to review scanned images in addition to typed or printed material and improve the formatting of the text blocks to improve readability. Being able to handle mail merging of voluminous databases would be a bonus.

Software

Being skilled in Microsoft Suite is a given; additionally, it is good to be familiar with alternatives to PowerPoint like: 

• Prezi – enables superlative animation.
• Corel – has excellent design templates.
• SlideDog – enables combining elements from disparate presentation software into a single slide deck.
• Haiku Deck – ideal for presentations on iPhone and iPad.
• SlideRocket – a decent alternative to PowerPoint.

Graphic Design

A presentation expert should be skilled n graphic design software like Adobe Premier, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Macromedia Flash, etc. This will help them integrate effective graphic design transitions, perform complex, intricate graphic design, create graphic assets and 

PowerPoint Presentations

This may seem obvious, but it’s essential that anyone who wants to do presentations has to be well-versed in PowerPoint. The individual should be able to customize templates, design, animate, and format content, creating new presentations with animations and transitions. Utilized Microsoft PowerPoint, Word, and Excel for graphing and layout of pitch books and other materials.

Adobe Illustrator

Adobe Illustrator is very useful for creating vector graphics- charts, illustrations, graphs, and so on. The presentation expert should be able to scale the vector images and graphics up or down without compromising image quality.

Animation

Animations also go a long way in making presentations interesting and engaging by breaking the monotony of text or plain illustrations. A good presenter can use animation creatively throughout the entire presentation or a few slides, embed data, and video ads for impact. It can help make the presentation dynamic and memorable, and adding sound can intensify the effect.

Adobe Photoshop

As it is a powerful photo editing software solution, Photoshop skills are a must for any good presenter. Whether you want minor touching up or complete makeovers, photoshop can do it all; this is why you must ensure that the presentation expert you are hiring is skilled in this software.

Skills a Presentation Expert Needs for a Successful Presentation

Preparing the presentation well and being diligent and meticulous are the essential skills a presentation specialist needs in the first phase. Now comes the real test. In the second phase, they require a separate set of skills. Let us see what they are:

Delivery

Researching, organizing, and arranging the data to create a beautiful presentation is half the battle won. Now comes the real test. The actual presentation requires all of these skills:

• Confidence – if the presenter is not confident of their abilities and what they have prepared, they are likely to stutter or stammer. They will lose the audience in the initial period.
• Positive Body Language – slumped shoulders and stooped back are all negative indicators. The presenter should always stay upright and have their shoulders pushed back.
• Memory – it is essential for a presenter to have a good memory, so they don’t have to keep glancing at their notes to know what to say next.
• Strong communication – along with confidence, the presenter’s communication skills should be strong. They have to be capable of speaking to the audience in a way that catches their attention and imagination.
• Diction–language skills are critical; the presentation specialist must have good command over the language they have to present. Suppose the pronunciation, accent, or intonation is incorrect or unappealing. In that case, the audience will not take the presentation seriously, and all the efforts spent creating an amazing presentation will be wasted. The presentation expert should also have speech clarity; mumbling or swallowing parts of words here and there makes for poor presentation.
• Quick thinking – a wily presenter should be able to gauge the audience’s pulse and recognize their mood. Are they with the presenter, or have they drifted away? Are they paying attention or yawning and looking at their phones or watches? If the presenter thinks the audience is slipping away, they must be ready to switch tracks and do something to get the audience back in the groove. This could be narrating an incident that resonates with the audience or simply making them laugh with a funny anecdote. If they appear confused, they should be able to take it down a notch, slow the pace, tone down the language, use simpler words, and explain complex terms or points appropriately. They should be able to skim over the points that are not as important as others and focus only on those. 

Analysis

You may think that once the presentation has been done, that is the end, but a genuine presentation expert does not stop there. They will sit and evaluate how the presentation went, how much of it was a success and how much was not, and what areas they can improve. They should be able to conduct an impartial analysis of how well they performed in each stage and how the audience reacted; were they interested? Could they understand? Did they get the message the company wanted to convey? The presenter should also be able to think about what they can do the next time differently so that the shortcomings of this presentation are not repeated. They should be able to perform a self-evaluation and identify the skills that they need to acquire. A good presenter should be dedicated to his craft and continuously improving.

Final Thoughts

This is a pretty exhaustive list of desired skills in a presentation expert – but it’s not necessarily complete. You may also want to consider some degree of subject matter knowledge, especially if that is important in your industry. Nevertheless, we hope this article is a valuable guide when hiring a presentation expert for your business.