The slide deck that got me my job at Bird

A tactic that might land you your next role

I have always been a mobility nerd. When I was little I was obsessed with trains, in middle school I was obsessed with cars, and in college I was obsessed with Uber. I even cofounded a long distance ridesharing company with friends to learn how to build a mobility company. So when I was looking for my next job and Bird launched in Denver, Colorado I knew I had to work for them.

This was in the Summer of 2018 when escooters were just starting to hit the streets of cities around the world. I had an initial conversation with Bird’s Head of Launch in June, but I was starting to get worried about losing their interest in me as a candidate. I saw this as an opportunity to join the next Uber, so I was going to do whatever I could to set myself apart.

“Make a slide deck”

Scooters were getting a lot of press for their novelty and Michal Naka (@michalnaka) was particularly active in tracking the latest moves of Bird and Lime. Michal was tweeting photos, commentary, and jokes about Bird and Lime and I thought to myself “who better to chat with about getting a job at one of these companies?” So on July 10, 2018 I sent the scooter influencer¹ a DM asking if he’d be open to a call, and we chatted shortly after.

Michal had a lot of great insights into what was going on in the market, but the best advice he had was to put a deck together to send to Bird. He said that because a lot of Bird’s team came from Uber, and Uber had a very deck-heavy culture, it probably was how Bird was operating. He suggested if I were to put a deck together on a problem they may have then it would be well received.

With that, I hunkered-down and got to work putting together some slides.

One of the topics Michal and I discussed was about how the business of escooters was probably seasonal, and that while the companies were still very early, they would eventually have to do something different about their operations in winter. I decided to focus on this topic and made a presentation on how the cold weather would affect escooter battery life and revenue in North America.

The results

When I was finished with the deck, I sent it as a follow up to my contacts at Bird, and it seemed to have resonated well – I only found out later after I joined Bird that TJ, my manager at the time, had circulated the presentation to some of the other managers at Bird because he was so impressed with it. He told me that one of the other managers said “If you won’t hire this kid for your team, I’ll hire him for mine.”

After a couple more interviews and a separate challenge presentation, I was on my way to Los Angeles to start my job on the Launch Team at Bird.

Here’s the deck I put together:

Impact of Colder Climates on Battery Life and Revenue

The slides are below (with some redacted for email length), but you can also view the PDF on Google Drive here.

You can see the interactive Google Map here.

The slide deck tactic is one I’ve shared with friends when they’ve been looking for a career change and it is a tactic that has always gotten them interviews. Next time you’re looking to separate yourself from the crowd of candidates, try putting a presentation together to showcase how you’d solve a problem, and you just might land that dream job.

Thanks for the advice, Michal!

If you enjoyed this post, you may also like these other ones I wrote up a while back:

My work strengths

The end is the answer

The person you choose to be right now

1. Sorry Michal – you earned this title