Are you looking for a credible, entertaining speaker who can discuss the job search, recruiting, or product management?
I’d be honored to be your choice. If you’d like to discuss hosting me for an event or podcast, please fill out this form and I’ll get back to you!
Here are a few examples of my speaking:
- A funny speech with a straight face that won a 100+ applicant speaking competition in front of 1,400 people at a sold-out Castro Theater
- Teaching how to get first-round interviews in product management at Product School, which spoke to the audience of 100+ product managers well enough that 40%+ signed up for an email list
- Discussing why informational interviews matter and how to do them well on the Marlow podcast
- A startup pitch for 100+ investors that helped raise over $600,000
There are 3 reasons I might be a great fit for your event or podcast:
Expertise
I’ve spent years developing effective strategies for how to job search and translating them into accessible, actionable steps that anyone can do. A significant portion of my post-event or -podcast feedback has been delight at how I’ve structured things in a way that the audience clearly knows what they can do next. You can check out the rest of this site to see some of how I structure things, and here are a few comments from audience members at previous talks:
“Thank you for giving such concrete advice on how to approach the job search (it was by far the best Product school talk that I’ve heard and I have heard quite a few)!” – Renate P
“Matthew, I loved your talk at Product School. Seriously, it blew my mind.” – Vivek A
“I also wanted to share with you that the amazing jewels of advice you shared with us at Hack Reactor a couple of months ago have been invaluable during my job search. I constantly refer to the notes I took as I take on informational interviews with contacts and friends I have at organizations.” – Abel R
Interested in having me speak? Fill out a few details here and I’ll get back to you!
Speaking skills
I started speaking competitively in 2002, and have collected a lot of valuable experience along the way that will help me wow your audience.
- In high school, I overcame my natural shyness, learned to speak, and made it to National Finals in Student Congress. Because speaking didn’t come naturally to me, I can speak from the heart to encourage audiences that are nervous or reluctant about interview skills or cold email reachout.
- In college, I competed with the Yale Debate Association, the #1 ranked team in North America, and won a Yale-wide cash prize for speaking. The debate event we competed in is all about adaptation, since you don’t know the topic of the debate round until the opponent starts speaking, so I’m world-class at adapting to audience questions and reactions to deliver the exact content that resonates most in the moment.
- As a professional, I’ve worked for years at Poll Everywhere, an audience engagement software company. I’ve personally worked with some of the best speakers in the world to make events more participatory than “speaker talks at audience for 40 minutes as they gradually zone out”, so I know tons of tricks to get the audience involved and creating something together, not just listening.
Interested in having me speak? Fill out a few details here and I’ll get back to you!
Adaptability
Have you ever had the difficult experience of bringing on a great guest speaker, who fell a little flat because they didn’t take the time to understand what your goals were as a host, or what your audience would respond to best?
That won’t happen with me.
I care a lot about events being a great experience, and will take the time to learn about you, your audience, and your AV setup. This lets me tailor my content to be as effective as possible, and lets you rest easy knowing that your audience will feel understood and the event will reflect well on you.
Interested in having me speak? Fill out a few details here and I’ll get back to you!
Speaking bio
Blurb
After a disastrously failed job search in 2008, Matt Du Pont started overthinking job searching. By putting tons of effort into the process, he enjoyed a 70%+ success rate in turning first-round interviews into offers from 2009-2018, including offers from Google and OkCupid for product management and from BCG for management consulting. In 2018, he released his first book on job searching, “How to Get First-Round Interviews at Tech Companies”.
He has worked as a founder, PM, and salesperson at tech companies since 2010, and coaches job seekers in tech on how to be successful in getting the jobs they want. To learn more about Matt’s coaching, head to unusuallydifficult.com.
Matt has also been a competitive public speaker for 15+ years, and speaks on both funny and serious topics.