Sometimes you’ll get a homework assignment in association with your interview. Typically if this happens, they’ll say something like, “please be prepared to present for 3-5 minutes on your findings.” Present is your keyword to whip out your Prezi skills. If they don’t mention anything about a projector, you might consider asking them if there will be one in the conference room that you an use.

If they don’t give you a homework assignment, don’t prepare a digital presentation. Just come with a print-based portfolio. Don’t try to use the projector. It’s a big risk. You might prepare something and they might not have one in the room.

Don’t use PowerPoint. Just don’t do it. As soon as your interviewer sees the bullets his or her brain will turn off. Hiring managers usually have to give a lot of presentations as part of their job and they probably know PowerPoint very well. You have to work really hard to impress them with PowerPoint.

The bar is much lower for alternative presentation technologies. Prezi is a great solution. It’s simple to learn, it’s free, and it has the wow factor that PowerPoint lacks.

If this is your first time around the Prezi block, don’t worry. There are a lot of classy built in templates that you can use. Just focus on minimizing your text, using some good images, and keeping it short. Don’t go over the time they gave you. When you have your presentation ready, download it to your laptop. You don’t want to risk getting into the interview and having wireless problems.

If you really want to blow their minds, check out impress.js or reveal.js. These are JavaScript libraries that let you animate an HTML file. You can run it in your browser from your laptop without wireless, but you’ll probably need a decent foundation in HTML to figure these technologies out.

What about Keynote? This is the Mac equivalent of PowerPoint. I would still recommend Prezi over keynote. If you are adamant about Keynote though, make sure to include some magic transtions. Many people haven’t seen these before and they are easy to put together.

Bottom line. Fancy tech increases your credibility with your interviewer and the standard for success is much lower for Prezi. If you want to talk about Prezi design best practices or how to knock you interview out of the park, let’s talk.