Last month the Federal Reserve released its July jobs report, and with somewhat tepid news. For job seekers, this means the struggle to find job openings will continue to be only the first of many hurdles. Once a suitable job is identified, differentiating oneself against a pool of competition is the next big challenge. So, how does one attract a hiring manager’s attention when he appears to have an endless selection of viable candidates?
Simple: stop thinking like a job seeker and start thinking like a brand.
Brands are faced with many of the same challenges as job seekers:
- A saturated market: Job seekers must fight for the consideration of companies rendered increasingly picky thanks to a wealth of candidates. Brands must similarly contend with consumers who have a seemingly endless array of choices, resulting in a steeper climb to earn consumer dollars and generating less loyalty to any one brand.
- Short attention spans: Job seekers have less time than ever before to make a good impression, often at the mercy of hiring managers who, according to recent research by TheLadders.com, only spend 6 seconds on average assessing a candidate’s resume. So, too, with brands, which increasingly find themselves at the mercy of demanding, fickle consumers whose attention is divided among platforms and tasks.
- New methodologies: Employee turnover rates are accelerating and many jobs lost in the Great Recession represent skill sets that have been replaced, for better or for worse, with outsourcing and technology. Brands have faced the same seismic shifts amid new technologies and constantly changing consumer behavior. Marketers find themselves under pressure to change their approach and develop new skill sets. This atmosphere calls for flexibility and creativity over slavish loyalty to formerly tried-and-true tactics.
Push vs. Pull – how job seekers must become marketers
Marketers used to rely on traditional ‘push’ tactics (you contact your audience directly). These include direct mail, email marting and advertising. But in a social media, search-driven world, where ‘shares’ ‘likes’ and ‘retweets’ impact how easily your audience will find your message, a new approach has been adopted: ‘pull’ tactics (your audience finds you).
From a job seeker perspective, broad dissemination of your resume, cold calling companies, and proactive job applications are ‘push’ tactics. They are still fundamental. But, like marketers, adopting ‘pull’ strategies will greatly increase your chances of being found and will help to establish your creativity and credibility long before that first interview.
Plan your personal marketing campaign
Step 1: Differentiate
Define your brand story
Instead of thinking of yourself as a candidate, think of yourself as a marketer of your own personal brand. Your brand encompasses your skill set, personality and experience. How do these three elements combine to make you truly unique? If you cannot articulate your personal value proposition in 140 characters or less (the length of a tweet), then you haven’t yet identified your core story.
Show vs tell
Once you’ve identified what your brand story is and what makes you unique, it is critically important to bring these attributes to life in your job search–beginning with your résumé. If you are a data whiz – how can you express your résumé through data? If you are a creative lead, consider your résumé an addition to your portfolio of work and design it accordingly. If you are a digital strategist, then you’d better have a clear digital strategy for your professional online presence.
Step 2: Capture attention
Content marketing
Showing versus telling also means sharing your perspective and your expertise so employers can see what you know and how you think. You must become a content creator. Here are a couple of simple ways to do this:
Create a simple Slideshare with 5-10 key tips to solve a common problem reflecting your industry expertise
Begin a professional blog where you share your thoughts in response to news and trends in your industry
Record podcasts via Soundcloud to share your perspectives or to hold dialogues with your peers.
Become an active participant in online discussions among your professional peers–starting with LinkedIn. By participating authentically in those discussions, you have an opportunity not only to demonstrate expertise, but also to connect with likeminded professionals who may be able to help you identify your next job opportunity.
Create modular résumé content to adapt to platforms and enable sharing
With only 6 seconds to capture a hiring manager’s attention, make sure you make the most of it by tailoring your résumé to a variety of popular platforms for easy discovery and consumption. For example:
Tweet a series of key attributes from your résumé with a link to download the full CV/LinkedIn profile
Create a Pinterest Résumé that uses images and captions to illustrate your professional experience, personality, skillsets, and LinkedIn recommendations.
Create an infographic of your résumé by using the free Visualize.me application
Consider a Vine or YouTube video version of your résumé.
Use Instagram to tell a story about your résumé and the person behind it.
Step 3: Get found
Make it easier to be found by integrating your owned properties
Ensure your résumé contains links to your professional social presence online–include hyperlinks to your blog, website, LinkedIn profile, and any notable publications, portfolios, interviews, etc. Likewise, any content you create–whether a blog post, an article, a slideshare or more should include a “call to action” to view your professional credentials with appropriate links. Ensuring all touchpoints include prominent links back to your LinkedIn profile or online résumé is critical to ‘pulling’ employers to you.
Connect with influencers (real influencers as well as personal network of influencers)
Start talking and connecting. Read blogs, Twitter, publications and LinkedIn thought leadership to identify the influential voices in your industry. Engage them in a dialogue by responding to and sharing their content, and asking for their expert opinions on your own content. From your own network of professional contacts, begin asking for job advice, feedback on your content, and opportunities to learn one-on-one from peers’ expertise. These interactions will increase your visibility among those with influence, expand your job search net, and hone your own skills all at once.
Use search insights to improve your résumé and your content
Applying search best practices when submitting a résumé online is crucial. But beyond optimizing your résumé, search can play a helpful role in identifying the trending topics and keywords to weave into your blog, Slideshare, podcast and discussion content. Google’s suite of free tools– Google Trends, Google Alerts and Google News –are extremely useful for listening to the marketplace. These tools will help you identify what topics are trending in search and in the news. Trends also allows you to compare and contrast terms by search volume so you can plan the most relevant content for your key audiences.
Some inspiration
Finally, here’s a great example of Résumé 2.0 that brings all the above attributes together into a single experience.
What can you do today to start planning your personal brand marketing campaign? Let me know on Twitter, @TheRealCherylM
From: http://creativestratcomm.blogspot.com