Job searching or job hunting are words that you dread uttering; it brings a negative connotation to your career and professional confidence. You should not feel as though you are hunting for a job, because that reinforces just how exhausting and excruciating this process can be. This mentality will only make the path to your new job a hopeless one.
Use your energy and efforts to develop a smart marketing campaign instead of a tiresome job search or job hunt.
Re-evaluate your career background, education, achievements, training, and awards. Dig deep into what you truly want and desire to do in your future career by answering these basic questions:
- For what job would you be excited to wake up in the morning?
- In which job would you like to spend at least 8 hours a day?
- To which job would you like to transition?
Once you have spent a couple of weeks analyzing your career, start developing the most important document of your marketing arsenal, your resume.
What Is Your Value Proposition?
Start your campaign by focusing on the issues you will solve.
After all, that is the reason you will get hired, to solve problems. As you brainstorm on the positive results and achievements you had in your past jobs, write notes about those accomplishments and the problems you solved. If you can, grab a pen and paper and do this now.
What do presidential candidates do to promote themselves and land the job? They develop a marketing campaign around issues they are expected to solve. How does Apple, Inc. achieve their goal of having their target audience purchase (the equivalent of getting hired) their product? By developing a strategic marketing campaign showing the value of their product. Of course, they have a group of talented marketing professionals that assist them in achieving their goals, and you can too.
How Will You Market Your Value?
Your resume must communicate the issues you will solve for the organizations you will target.
The content development aspect of your resume will be the most difficult; yet, the most crucial to getting you the interview. The information on your resume must have a thick layer of substance full of results presenting numerical data.
The techniques you will use to present the valuable results you have produced depends on factors including:
- length of time you have been unemployed;
- gaps between your past employment;
- years of work experience;
- full-time employment vs. self-employment/ contractor employment;
- whether you are changing industries; and
- workforce re-entry.
All of these scenarios play a vital role in the strategy you will apply, as you show your valuable asset to employers. This year, I was blessed to have worked with a well-qualified scientist with a PhD in chemistry. This particular person previously hired a lower-end resume writing service that produced less interviews than he was already receiving. After being unemployed for at least one year, I needed to develop a strategy that would make him a viable and imperative asset to his target organizations. This task is typically challenging, because employers tend to see unemployed candidates as less attractive, especially after being unemployed and out of practice for more than a year. Three months later, this person received multiple job offers and accepted the one of his choice. A good resume needs strategic content development to attract interviews, and finally, the job.
What Is Your Culture and Ideals?
A powerful and branding resume will also convey your professional culture.
Take a moment to ponder on your ideals and work ethics. Develop your professional culture and value. Then, search for organizations who truly align with your professional ideals. Direct your marketing campaign towards these organizations. This will focus your job search and reduce the time you would otherwise take by being scattered and hunting any and every company. Also, by directing your marketing campaign towards a more focused path, you will reduce the chances of becoming unemployed sooner, rather than later, as you will more than likely land a job with an organization you will like and respect.
After you begin working on your marketing campaign and have the most important document ready to send out, you must make sure your target employer receives, reads, and understands the value you would provide to their organization. This will be more feasible if you target the person with the power to hire you, as opposed to the human resources staff. If you are applying to a vacancy posted online, then follow their application instructions. Additionally, research key decision makers in the department you will target and be certain to send them your resume and value proposition letter.
Take Action
Developing a career marketing strategy takes time and skills in marketing, as well as technical and creative writing, to name a few. Use the career marketing advice presented in this article to begin scraping the information you will need.
Remove words with negative stigmas, like job searching or job hunting from your vocabulary, as much as you can. Instead, use job campaign or marketing campaign. Scavenge the depth of your career background and life journey. Write notes about your past achievements and be sure to include results. Present your value proposition through a marketing strategy targeting organizations that share your professional ideals and culture. This will give you an organized road-map that will get you closer to your new job.
