Resumes are stories you tell about yourself. Where you have been, what you have done and why you can help a prospective employer. They require customization to make them fit a new culture, business, and opportunity. Marketing yourself requires treating a prospective employer like a target audience of one. The more information you can gather, the better your resume can be tailored to target the company you want to sell.
A resume isn’t a single package you wrap around yourself and give to everyone. Some employers want to hear a different story. A new employer wants to know what you can do to help solve their problems.
How much do you know about the company you are trying to reach?
Since you are marketing yourself to fit their culture, job needs, and industry, information is invaluable. You might be wasting your time trying to get a job at a company in financial trouble, poorly managed or one that is like a revolving door. Conversely, an employer of choice wants to encourage great prospects to apply. You want to tell them how you will fit with their culture and work environment. And most importantly, you want them to hear what you can do for them.
When I coach people, who are trying to market themselves to get a job, here are a few of my top suggestions. The more information you have, the more you can target your resume and message.
Ways To Market Yourself for a Job
The obvious starting point is to read their website thoroughly to understand what they do, who they are and what they say. What do they state as their core values and goals? You might like the industry but find clues that are inconsistent about what they are saying. Do they talk about innovation but have an outdated way they present themselves online? Are certain words frequently used that you can play back in your resume? If they are disruptors in their market, does your resume demonstrate examples of how you played a role in being disruptive?
Read their press releases and any recent online stories you can find. Is there public news that could help you see a challenge they face where your skills might be unusually helpful. If you have years of experience with managing distributors, and they are trying to grow through new distribution, maybe that should be a headline in your resume, not something buried deep in the document. Or maybe put your knowledge of distribution in bold.
Go on LinkedIn and see if you know anyone who works there. Or if you know someone who has a friend who works at the company. That conversation could be priceless. I recently connected someone who connected with me on LinkedIn to a friend who works at a large food company. The discussion helped shaped how she put her resume together for this particular opportunity based on some fundamental insights learned from that discussion.
If you can’t find a ‘friend of a friend’ who works there, try calling the company and see if you can get to a few human beings to talk with you. Tell them you are applying for a job and trying to get some first-hand insight into the business. Point blank asks them if they had it to do all over again, would they want to work for this company? You’ll be surprised how much information people will share. Employees at great companies shouldn’t be saying – call HR, this isn’t my job. Great employers encourage people to help market the company to prospective employees.
In the calls with current employees, be careful not to over-interpret the information if someone is complaining about their boss. If they are open to sharing, is this the way the culture works or is it something peculiar about their boss? One well-placed insider can make a huge difference between finding a good fit or learning about an underlying problem.
Can you find vendors or suppliers who work with the company? They too might be helpful and giving you some perspective on the type of experiences they have with the business. Remember, information is invaluable. Several years ago, I learned from a vendor that a company I wanted to work for was having severe financial issues. I stopped chasing that opportunity because I didn’t want to get on a sinking ship.
Call references or people who give testimonials. One client called someone who had given a testimonial on the company website and they learned that the company wasn’t living up to their commitments. She didn’t even realize that the two-year-old testimonial was still live. The testimonial was an invitation to talk to a reference.
How are you treated as an applicant? Is there any reason to think this is how they treat their employees? Glassdoor and some other online sites can be helpful but not if the business is small. One client I coach was impressed when she received an email from the owner to explain the process. It was a company with fewer than 100 people, and it demonstrated a strong signal that this owner cared about the people he hired.
Marketing yourself requires market research about a prospective employer and an industry. You can just hit send and mail it in.
Photo by Ben White on Unsplash
You can set up a time to chat using my calendar. Email me jeffslater@themarketingsage.com Call me. 919 720 0995. The conversation is free and we can explore if working together makes sense. Try my new chat feature on my site if you have a quick question.
