Ready to get noticed?
Ready for your phone to start ringing with invitations for interviews?
Here are the top 3 things you need to do to make that happen:
#1: Identify the company's needs
#2: Identify the company's deeper needs
#3: ONLY focus on those needs
Let's look a little deeper at each one of these.
#1: Identify the company’s needs.
The best way to identify the company’s needs is to look at the job posting. Job postings provide a wealth of information IF you know how to read them…and then IF you use that information to your advantage.
The information you are looking for comes from the “About the Position”, “Duties” and “Requirements” sections of the posting. Please be aware that the titles of these sections may vary but they will be something along these lines.
These sections are a wealth of information that will spell out for you exactly what the company needs…or at least what they believe they need.
Your job in reading the description is to identify what is most important to the company and then identify where your background or experience matches up with what they need.
Now, when I say that it’s important to identify where you match up with what they are looking for it is almost equally as important to also identify where your background and experience doesn’t match up.
The reason this part is so important is you want to be sure that you can address any gaps in your experience by either showing how you are filling those gaps or how your background experience actually DOES fills those gaps.
Sometimes you know there isn’t actually a gap because your experience can fill it in but unless you can show that to an employer and connect the dots for them, they will just see the gap and throw your application out.
#2: Dig a little deeper and go beyond what the company says they need and identify the deeper need.
You might be asking…what the heck is a “deeper need”. Let me explain.
You wouldn’t hire me to write your resume for you. You’d hire me because you want a new job opportunity.
You wouldn’t decide to work with me because you want a plan for landing your dream job…you’d hire me because you want the dream job.
In other words, you want the result the resume will help you achieve or the result the plan will help you get to.
Do you see the difference?
So the same goes for employers. They want the RESULTS a Chief Marketing Officer will be able to deliver. Maybe for one company that is new leads. Maybe for another company it is customer retention. Maybe for another company it is expansion into a new market. Whatever it is they are not simply looking for a CMO…they are looking for what the CMO can help them achieve. The result the CMO can deliver.
So, your job is to figure out the reason a company is hiring for this position.
What problems or challenges is the person filling this role going to be charged with achieving?
Now, once you’ve done these first two pieces you can move on to the third one.
#3: ONLY speak to those needs and results and to speak directly to the needs and results an employer is looking for.
Remember in the last post how I talked about how employers don’t want you to be a Jane of All Trades but rather they want you to be a master of what THEY need help with? Well, here it is all coming together.
The key here is you want to speak to the employers needs and only those needs.
That means you need to review your application materials with a fine-toothed comb and make sure that anything that you are including has a purpose (and not a purpose to make you feel good about yourself).
Rather the purpose you need to focus on is connecting the dots for employers so they see precisely why you are perfect for this role. How what you have to offer fits their needs.
So, if you’re good at writing grant proposals, running employee trainings and developing strategic sales plans but what the company needs is someone with strategic planning skills then leave the other stuff off and only highlight your background, education, experience as it relates to strategic planning skills.
I always say a good tactic is to ask yourself:
“So what?”
Why would they care about this piece of my background?
Does it position me more strongly for the opportunity I want?
If the answer to any of those questions is no then LEAVE IT OFF!!!
Remember, this is not about you feeling good about yourself. This is about you showing employers why your background, education, experience and expertise is a perfect fit for what they are looking to achieve - the results they want from the person filling the position.
Got it?
I know that if you start putting all 3 of these pieces together you will find that the crickets you were hearing before have now turned into your cell phone ringing with invitations to bring you in for interviews.
Yeah!!!