We asked Katie Rippel to share some of her insight from her career at Anheuser-Busch, where she started work as an intern in 2001. Rippel started as brewing front-line supervisor, steadily working her way up the ranks in a heavily male-dominated profession.

Rippel has incredible insight from her career. We asked her to share thoughts for people starting out in the workforce who are relatively early in their career.

This is part 2 in a three-part series. To be notified when part 3 is posted, follow the Purdue Women Facebook group! You can check out part 1.

Know your audience. Be surgical.

As we think about different stages of career development, what are some of the things you’ve been working on at this point in your career at Anheuser-Busch?

A big thing I’ve been working on for the past two years is impact and influence. It all centers around how to effectively present and pursue discussions with high-level people. When you present or meet with people in high positions, you have to be more surgical and thoughtful about your message, what you’re trying to get across and how you’re trying to do it. These are really busy people with a lot on their minds and you’re one small piece of that giant mountain. Sometimes you only have 30 seconds.

By the way, that goes every direction — not just upward. I started as a shift supervisor with 15–30 people under me and, at that point, it was a lot more important for me to be downward-focused on my team. As you’re working through the early stages of your career, you have to be focused outward as you establish your peer network.

So can you tell us a little about how you prepare for those opportunities, and how to get the most out of them?

When it comes to presentations, there are two types of people. There are slide readers and those who are listening to what you’re saying and not paying attention to your slide. You almost always have a mix when you’re presenting. You have to focus what you’re saying on the people not looking at the screen, but capture it in a visual, clear way for the slide readers. Know your audience is the general rule. Be surgical.

The other thing that’s important is to make sure you do the work before the meeting to get everyone aligned. There’s legwork that has to go into making everyone understand and get their buy-in and so that they’ll be willing to give their support during the actual meeting and then own it afterward.

Can you tell us a little bit more about what the legwork looks like?

My current manager is a master of this. I’ve learned a lot from watching him work his magic in the pre-alignment phase so that he can maximize his impact. He makes sure each stakeholder has been involved and able to provide their input. It doesn’t always get implemented, but it’s important that people feel included. Sometimes we have disagreements, but it’s important to have those discussions ahead of time so that when we walk into the actual meeting, we’ve worked through that and minimized the chance for things to get derailed during the presentation.

People think they have to have the fancy slide deck or perfect speech. But if you haven’t done the legwork before, you’re going to get hammered once you walk in the room.