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Think Like a Marketer to Get an Employer's Attention

Jun 8, 2015 7:47:15 PM

I review a lot of resumes and LinkedIn profiles every week from people who want to work with us, and today I’d like to boil down the three core elements that most all resumes and online profiles are missing; these three things are essential to getting an employer’s attention and helping job seekers become happily employed with their perfect company.

Whether you are marketing yourself to be an IT professional, an Accounting Manager, a VP of Operations, or a Director of Sales, the marketing of yourself as a product should be structured around these three elements:

1. Problem

This is what your potential employers are thinking about and what prompts them to go looking for someone like you. It involves the same questions that recruiters ask themselves when they’re looking through LinkedIn (as 70% of them do every day) to identify the problems their corporate clients have, like:

How can we get more business? How can we increase our margins? How can we cut costs? How can we increase our customer service satisfaction and loyalty? How can we keep up with the latest technology, so our company is not behind our competitors? Ultimately, how do we keep our business running smoothly and position ourselves to grow? (And if they’re growing, how to they handle their growing pains?)

When you know what your target company wants, you have the first key to getting their attention. Lead your summary paragraph on paper and online with a sentence that shows either your biggest achievement relevant to their problem or primary concerns; what it is that they want to Get, Keep, Avoid or Eliminate.

2. Solutions

Once companies have learned that you understand their concerns, they want to know you can help them Get, Keep, Avoid or Eliminate what they want. Your summary paragraph is the perfect opportunity to tell them about the solution you provide to their problems – think of this as your “benefits statement.” Using their list of probable concerns and wants, explain how you can uniquely help them.

Credentials and technical training may matter to some, but from what I’ve seen in my clients’ successes, it’s really the quantifiable results of your unique experience that will convince a decision maker to call you. Make a list of 15-20 results you have provided your employers in your career, and put about half of those in your resume and save the other half for additional stories to tell in your interviews.

3. Call to Action

A “Call to Action” is a marketing phrase that simply means telling someone what to do next. We’ve all seen the infomercials that tell us to call in the next 30 minutes and they’ll double our order, right? Well, a Call to Action has been shown in studies to significantly increase the likelihood of the reader/listener (audience) taking the action you want.

Does your resume contain a call to action? What about your LinkedIn profile?

This can be as simple as, “Let’s have a conversation this week about what my abilities can do for your bottom line.”

If you’re employed and in a confidential search, it’s not a good idea to add a blatant Call to Action at the end of your summary paragraph in your LinkedIn profile, but if you send a hard copy of your resume to a decision maker – and you’re in control of who reads it – then it is absolutely appropriate, and may garner you more responses.

These three components are straight out of Marketing 101 for businessesselling to consumers or other businesses. Show the potential customer you understand their problem, show them how you have the solution, and then tell them what to do next.

Something else to remember – most transactions happen because you build a relationship with your customer – in this case, with an employer or recruiter.There may be times that they receive your resume or see your online profile, but they’re not ready to “buy” your services yet. (Writing your resume and LinkedIn profile using persuasive sales language can help significantly with that.)

However, the more conversations you have with the decision makers in the types of companies you’d like to work for, the faster you will find yourself working for a new employer, AND if you can position yourself as an expert in something, you will be more likely to be paid what you’re worth!

Tammy Kabell

Written by Tammy Kabell

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