bombed final round presentation
I am an internal candidate for a permanent senior position at my current employer. The role I applied for involves teaching, so the final round involved giving a 30 min teaching demo on researching in history and I emailed hr ahead of time to ask
if I could do a live search demo and she said yes.
I prepared a 17-slide presentation and I tried to keep the content on the slides fairly minimal and put quite a bit of content in the “notes” field in PowerPoint to expand on what was mentioned in the slides. I also indicated how long to spend on each slide (it had to be 30 min) and a cue on when to show a prop I brought in. I knew the material, but I had a lot of content I wanted to cover and was given the prompt at the end of the day on May 27th and had to have the presentation in to hr 24 hrs before the presentation on June 5th so hr could ensure it was ready on the big screen for when I arrive.
I obsessed over every slide and the timing of when to mention certain supplemental pieces of info (which I included in the notes field). I probably worked on the slideshow 12 hours per day, including the research that went into the historical topic I was given which I was not familiar with before (I was not expected to be). The document I received from
hr about the presentation said “you will have access to a computer and screen in the classroom to project your presentation”. After reading this, I assumed I would be provided with a laptop or desktop computer as well as a way to project it onto a big screen - so two screens total. I have done several interview presentations in the past and that was always the set up and I have been asked to bring my own laptop at times which I have happily obliged.
I walked into the room on the morning of my presentation and it is a board room with one big projected screen to my right and a keyboard and mouse on a table in front of me. There is no other screen in the room or a laptop or monitor. I
immediately start to panic because I know I
won’t have access to my notes, and I had to turn my head at a 90 degree angle to see what I was typing and clicking during the live search demo. I also found it hard to see what I was typing and clicking because the screen was at least 3 feet to my right. I was completely disoriented and forgot my cues and some really important things I wanted to mention.
I swear, every other interview presentation I have ever given, there was two screens (one for the presenter where they can use presenter view if needed and one for the audience). I also always thought you weren’t supposed to put too much text on a slide to not overwhelm the audience? When they said a computer would be provided, was it presumptuous for me to think I would have more than one giant projector screen and a keyboard and mouse and I would have to turn away from the audience to look at what was on the screen? I feel crazy
Posted Jun 11, 2026, 10:40 PM UTC