Great Occupations

1st: Research yourself. If you’re preparing for an interview, you spend time researching the company. You will look at LinkedIn and Google to find info on the person who’s interviewing you, you will look at Yahoo Finance to find out the company’s financials, etc. This is great to do, and, of course, you should do this, but before you even put yourself out there for the interview process, you need to know a few very important things about yourself first:

• What is the main problem (or 3) that you are good at solving and why?
• What have you learned intrinsically throughout your career that has helped you to grow?
• What do you want to gain from your employment situation besides a paycheck?

Basically, you need to know why they should hire you besides the fact that you’re charming or that you’re a good person or that you have a mortgage and two kids in college.

2nd: Figure out how to say the message of brand YOU. Prepare your introduction statement (elevator speech) so you can say give your unique promise of value in a way that people get it. (Shameless plug: If you need help, Jay and I teach this in the AIM module of The Job Search Boot Camp pajama learning program.) Jason Alba, founder of jibberjobber.com, shared this story about an a-ha moment he had once when he realized that he was NOT relating his value very well. Jason informed his friends and family that he was job searching. He spread the word, telling everyone what kind of job he was looking for. As his search dragged on unsuccessfully, he decided to put his web development skills to good use and built jibberjobber.com to help keep him better organized. His a-ha moment came when one day he told a member of his church that he was launching jibberjobber.com and what it does. The person looked at him and exclaimed, “Oh, is that what you do? You build websites?” It suddenly dawned on him that what he’d been saying about himself was too complicated for people to understand about his technical web development expertise. They were not getting the message of his unique promise of value.

3rd: Get out there and have conversations. Talk to other people about what you do using your “new” succinct way of describing your unique promise of value. Of course, we call this networking, but let’s call it something that better describes its purpose: “connecting.” You have to get out there and connect. When you connect you should keep in mind that you are developing relationships. It’s about give and get. It’s not about swarming down on someone and seeing if you can vampire everything out of them before moving on to the next victim. Enter the conversation with curiosity about what you can give – the get will usually take care of itself. Oh, and develop the relationship in such a way that you find out the other person’s unique promise of value. Then you’ll be able to connect that someone with someone else when the time arises.

Recapping the 3 essential ingredients for job search success:

• Know thyself
• Message thy value
• Spread the word by making connections with others

The recipe isn’t difficult, but it does take work and lots of hand-stirring!

Angela Loëb is an author, speaker and co-owner of Great Occupations. She and her partner, Jay Markunas, help people make successful career transitions through workshops, webclasses, personalized coaching sessions, as well as through The Job Search Boot Camp Show. Find out more at www.greatoccupations.com.

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