November 24th, 2008
Why Your Job Search Needs a Marketing Campaign
You’ve branded yourself and your resume. You’ve honed your interview skills. You know exactly what your value is to potential employers. So why do so many people, looking for a job or a way to transition into a new career, throw all that hard work away?
That’s exactly what you’re doing by sitting back and thinking that monster.com, careerbuilder.com and all the other internet job boards the abound these days can do all the hard work of marketing for you.
According to recent statistics compiled by Richard Bolles in his most recent edition of What Color is Your Parachute?, only 4%-10% find a job this way. Slim odds, by any standards.
I’m not saying don’t use all the tools available. By all means, comb through what’s out there. But do it with a plan. Craft a strategy as if you were the marketing manager of your own product launch–with yourself as the product.
What shelf do you belong on? Are you Coke or Pepsi? What attributes ( read: skills, experience, expertise) do you have that others don’t? And just exactly how will you make those attributes known? And to whom?
Most people that I advise in this process come to me with the firm conviction that “if I am good they will find me.” On some level, we all believe that. But if you are going to find a job or change careers these days, I’m here to disabuse you of that notion.
Sketch it out:
1. What industry do you want to work in and why?
2. What kind of companies within that industry are you targetting?
3. What specific job title are you seeking?
4. How are you going make sure that you are visible to the influencers and opinion-makers within those companies and/or sectors?
5. What problem do they have that you are the answer to?
These are not all the questions you need to ask to launch a successful personal marketing campaign, but they’re a very good beginning. If nothing else, it will rule out all kinds of jobs that look interesting but for which you really aren’t qualified –saving time, effort and most importantly, angst.
Because, as I tell clients every day, eliminating what you don’t want, what you won’t pursue, and what you aren’t going to spend time on can often be 90% of the battle.
