Tom Tran makes another guest appearance on the podcast, this time to talk about internship presentations. What are they for, and what should be in there, and in particular, the importance of getting buy-in during the presentation development process.

Episode transcript:

Matt Krause
Alper today, we have a guest on the podcast. Tom Tran. He is back on the podcast. Many of you listeners remember Tom from his recent appearance on our podcast, but for those of you who don’t, I’ll give you a few reminders about Tom.

Matt Krause
Tom is an associate brand manager for a pharmaceuticals company. And before that, he got his MBA from the University of Michigan. Tom does a lot of mentoring for recently graduated students, many of them recently minted MBAs. And that directly ties into today’s topic, which we’ll get to in a moment. But before we get started, Tom, just so I don’t forget to do this later. If people want to get in touch with you, where can they find you?

Tom Tran
Yeah, you can find me on my personal blog, TomKyTran.com, or shoot me an email or find me on LinkedIn.

Matt Krause
And okay, so on to the topic for today. It’s almost the start of the summer internship season, which means that pretty soon we’ll have a lot of people building their internship presentations. Tell us more about that process Tom, and in particular, I for one would like to know, what are a couple things that really need to go into those internship presentations? And why do they need to be there?

Tom Tran
Yeah, so most MBA level internships will have a presentation component. And it’s a it’s the deliverable at the end of your summer internship. But the goal of summer internship is to see if you’re a good fit for the company, and to show what you can do over the course of the summer. So the presentation is one of those ways to do that.

Tom Tran
But the ultimate goal is to get a return offer. So I have three tips for students who are starting their summer internship.

Tom Tran
The first is, you know, show your work early. And often. I think as soon as you start have those one on ones get to know people on your team, because know people on other teams get to know the partners that your team works with.

Tom Tran
And then you’ll start putting ideas down in PowerPoint on in the presentation, you don’t have to have things perfectly figured out. But the sooner you do it, the easier it is because what happens is, as you go and meet with people, in the one on ones, after you get to know them a little bit and their story and their background, it’s nice to have something that they can react to. Because that just helps you iterate so much faster.

Tom Tran
What happened. So three years ago, I was an MBA intern at Dell in Austin. And what I saw during the course of the internship was that there are some students who waited to have the big reveal at the midpoint and at the end…

Matt Krause
By the way, let me interrupt you for a second. When you say the big reveal, what do you mean there?

Tom Tran
Yeah, I think it’s, you know, it’s easy to kind of like want to make things perfect before you share it with your manager or someone on your team. And to kind of, you know, keep working on it, keep working on it without getting that feedback.

Tom Tran
But when you do that the first time you get the feedback, you won’t have enough time to kind of continue iterating. So I think the sooner you can share what you’re working on and how you’re thinking about a problem, you just get such great feedback.

Tom Tran
Because people that you’re working with know so much more they know how to where all the resources are, and when finally they can tell you and give you a really, really tangible ideas that you can work with.

Tom Tran
So the earlier you can show something, the faster that they can give you feedback, they can work into the presentation. And it makes you more collaborative, people love giving advice and tips. And it’s very flattering when you ask, you know, a coworker or potential manager or someone on a different team for their feedback on your presentation. So my yeah, that’s the first big idea. Show your work early and often.

Matt Krause
Okay. And you you mentioned, I think you were talking about the importance of networking with other team members in other departments and including other team members in other departments. Is that correct? Was I hearing you correctly?

Tom Tran
Yeah. Because during the summer internship, you’re also trying to figure out if the company is right for you, is the culture right for you? Are people collaborative? Or is it really, really competitive?

Tom Tran
So when I was in my internship, my manager in the onboarding process, I had to have, you know, one on ones with maybe 20 or 30 people, and that was just such a great way to get to know other functions and kind of discover like if you got an internship in marketing, but you’re also curious about finance or operations, that’s your chance.

Tom Tran
And when you have that, when you’re in the internship program, you have kind of like a free pass to meet with whoever you want, even up to the director or VP, if that’s what you decide to do.

Tom Tran
So it’s just such a great opportunity to learn and just soak everything in, and build those relationships. Because what happens is, at the end of your internship, everyone who you interacted with, basically gives you a thumbs up or thumbs down for a return offer.

Tom Tran
So the more relationships you have, during that time, the moral issues you’ve built over the course of the summer, the more likely you’ll have people kind of in your court.

Matt Krause
So I’ve got a question for you, Tom. So you’ve mentioned the need to be networking. And you’ve also mentioned that other people in other departments might be giving this intern a thumbs up or a thumbs down. So and I know that in every company, and in every group, the process is going to be slightly different.

Matt Krause
But in your experience, in what you see in front of you, how does how does the selection process happen? deciding who gets to come back? Or who gets an offer? And who doesn’t get an offer? How does that happen?

Tom Tran
Yeah, so I’ve been on both sides of it as an intern, and then as a full time employee kind of putting in the vote. So last summer, we had all the interns wrap up with a big final presentation in front of the VPs, the current ABMs, the brand managers, etc.

Tom Tran
And at the end, we all had a form to fill out a very detailed form about you know, what was like to work with this person? How did the presentation do? What was their impact, so it was very quantified.

Tom Tran
And obviously, a lot of it will depend on the business needs and your manager. So the most important relationship during the summer is with your direct manager, because they’re gonna have to say, because if they say, you know, this is not a good hire, no one else is really gonna go to bat for you. So you need your manager to kind of be on your side.

Tom Tran
And then everyone else, all the other recent grads, those are like the best resources, because they just went through the experience, and they’re gonna have like the best tips on how you can be successful and how you need to frame up certain issues, and how you can talk about certain business problems in ways that resonate with the key stakeholders in the org. But it’s very meritocratic overall experience.

Matt Krause
Okay. And Alper, you mentioned that you had a question about the big reveal. So what’s on your mind about that?

Alper Rozanes
It was not a question as much as a realization that I was also guilty of that big reveal before. So I would prepare for a big presentation. Well, big for me, I would prepare for a presentation not show anything to anyone expect to have a stellar show and at the end, impress everyone with some big reveal or a big bang or something.

Alper Rozanes
And most of the time, that wouldn’t happen. And that used to come with with with disappointment for not creating the effect that you want, as well as the hours or the days or the weeks that you spent.

Alper Rozanes
So Tom, I would like to ask you, in your in your capacity as one of the people who are listening to these presentations, did you ever see that like, did you see someone keeping something like a big reveal towards the end? And maybe not working out? Did you ever find yourself in this situation? Either as the presenter or, or the listener? Let’s say?

Tom Tran
Yeah, I would say you know, a few other interns, when I was at Dell kind of took that approach. They saved their work. They worked on it really, really hard. But they didn’t really shop it around and get feedback, because I think what happens when you actually show people is that you get their buy in and their support. So they feel like they’ve had a say in your work.

Tom Tran
And so when you actually finally present it at the very end, they also have ownership and pride in what you present because they were able to be part of it in an indirect way. So I think that’s really the benefit of showing your work often and early.

Alper Rozanes
They have they have some skin in the game, I think when you show them beforehand, because they don’t want to revert back on their ideas or their position, maybe and they might end up supporting you more. Yeah.

Alper Rozanes
Rather than saying I don’t like it. That’s it. I have no previous interaction with you. I have no prior communication with you. I have no prior information on topic. So nice. Nice work, but I don’t like it. It’s I think it’s easier to just say pass at that moment.

Matt Krause
I think this is a really interesting area. And I would like to ask Tom a question about that. Is that okay with you Alper?

Matt Krause
Of course.

Matt Krause
So Tom, what do you think is a good stage? You mentioned phrases like it’s important to shop around your presentation. It’s important to show your presentation to other people as you’re developing it.

Matt Krause
What stage do you think it’s good to get their buy in on the presentation? Are we talking like, before you start making slides when you just you have a, you know, a text based outline of what you’re going to say, you know, or or does it need to be like 90% done with the slides made and the graphics? When When do you think is the right time to start shopping it around?

Tom Tran
Yeah, I think you can go too far in any extreme. But when I was at Dell over the summer, it was really helpful to have something going into these one on ones and these meetings. And I think it would be a mistake to kind of come with something too, well defined to perfect because then people feel a little bit more hesitant about giving their true feedback, because it looks like you’ve, it looks like you’re done.

Tom Tran
So no one wants to make you feel bad. And so and pulled back a little bit of what they’re really thinking. So it is helpful to come with something sketched out. And it’s a little bit of personal preference, if you’re really early on an outline, and a Word document is totally fine.

Tom Tran
My preference is to just start putting things down in PowerPoint, because that is going to be the final deliverable. And then if it doesn’t work out, I just throw it in the appendix and have it so that I can reference later.

Tom Tran
Yeah, if you bring something rough, I think that’s kind of the sweet spot early on in your internship. And as you’re approaching, you know, week, eight, of week of nine weeks, sure, then you want to show a little bit more, you know, closer to the finished product.

Tom Tran
Otherwise, it looks like you haven’t been doing anything, the last [inaudible]. So it’s important to know where you are in that internship timeline, and what would be kind of appropriate at each point.

Tom Tran
No matter what, you got to just get people to basically get people to tell you if you’re going down the right path or wrong path, because you really don’t know. Because all the people that you’d be working with will have been there and probably know the answer to the internship questions that you are being tasked to look into. To be quite frank, it’s a little a little bit of a summer internship, because the summer internship is sometimes you can just think of it as an extended interview.

Tom Tran
So by kind of showing people you’re working on incorporating their feedback that kind of shows how you are as a potential colleague. So it’s also about the process, you know, versus just the actual final PDF that you send to everyone.

Matt Krause
Okay. Yeah. And before we before we wrap up for today. So we’ve got time for just one more question. Do you have something on your mind Alper, or should I jump in?

Alper Rozanes
I have just one question to ask to Tom. For example, would you recommend getting a short feedback in the beginning stages? Let’s say not that not as a hypothetical idea, but I have some slides, extremely basic slides like white slides with black text on them to show okay, this is what I imagined the topic is going to be this is what I imagined the flow is going to be what is your input on that.

Alper Rozanes
And then I get the feedback, I go work on it, days, weeks, months, or whatever. And before the presentation itself, before I before I put all the tedious work, let’s say the nitty gritty details of the slide design, I go back to them one more time and say, Okay, this is the three quarters finished draft. And before I beautify things, I wanted to run it by you. So is this something doable? Can we do it? Can we ask for their feedback more than once?

Tom Tran
Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think with your direct manager, especially with a summer internship, it’s also for you, you’re still a student. And so it’s totally acceptable to ask for as much feedback as you need.

Tom Tran
And each mentor is different. So it’s important to calibrate that. But with my manager over the summer, we had a weekly check in and every check in, I brought something new to show him to get his feedback on okay, because that way, I knew by the end, the presentation was going to be exactly kind of what he had imagined.

Tom Tran
And he would be a co contributor or co creator of it, even though I was doing, you know, most of the work. But I had his guidance. And so, yeah, honestly, I think it is, the more feedback you get, the more often, the more likely you’ll get a return offer.

Tom Tran
If there’s like one thing to take away from everything we’ve talked about, obviously, you can take that to an extreme, but you know, once a week is totally acceptable.

Alper Rozanes
Okay, that’s great.

Matt Krause
So we’ve got to wrap up here pretty soon, but I’ve got one more question for you, Tom. So we just have a couple minutes to go over it.

Matt Krause
So in these internship presentations, what do you typically see that you think… or what do you not see that’s getting left out? And you’re thinking man, you really need to include a few minutes or a slide on topic XYZ and you’re not doing it. Your audience totally wants you to do it. What do you see missing that you think, man, these people really need to put it in there?

Tom Tran
Yeah, I think the thing that can be missing that shows up is whether or not you’ve kind of had whether or not you’re taking the time to really get feedback and get all potential questions because what you’ll get in the final presentation is the executives or the VPs will ask you questions.

Tom Tran
So if you’ve done a lot of practice and you’ve kind of got their buy in, the questions you get should be very easy. But if you’ve kind of worked a little bit more independently, and you haven’t gone and gotten feedback from people outside of your team, or on a different cross functional team, then those questions come up at the end, and you might be caught off guard.

Tom Tran
I think that can show up. So the more that you’ve iterated over the course of the summer, the better your presentation will be when you actually give it especially when it comes to the q&a.

Matt Krause
Sure, excellent. Well, thank you. Yeah. So thank you very much, Tom. And I guess that about wraps it up for today. So thank you for joining us on the podcast and we’ll talk to you soon.

Alper Rozanes
Thank you, Tom.

Tom Tran
Thanks for having me. And good luck to all the interns this summer.

Matt Krause
Yes, good luck to all the interns.