Marketing applied to Job Market (4): Packaging

What you see outside is what you'll find inside.

Make sense for a condiment jar, but what about yourself ?

How attractive do you make yourself on the market?
Presentation is another key item that you need to consider while seeking for a job. 

I noticed several times in the past that although I was one of the best in my branch, I always have been rejected even before being given the opportunity to demonstrate that, a "better candidate" having been chosen they said. What did he had more than me??? 

The bad side effect is that you'd be then tempted to accumulate even more skills, trainings, get a PhD, learn another language, and so forth. However, with experience I discovered that's just pointless.

How does it comes that people with sometimes poor skills get chosen instead of a highly skilled candidate so that the hiring manager is convinced having done the best choice?

Because with experience I found out that the so called best candidate was always a poor performer. His best skill however was that he managed to persuade the recruiters he was the best.

Yep, it's All about making believe.
It's all about your self propaganda, your personal marketing. What's the point to have the best product if it's not to market it as the best available ?

There are my advice for high skilled candidates that never managed to get a position at par with their skills. 

When submitting your application:

1. Wrap it with self confidence. The recruiters don't want someone who is doubting all the way long. Having accumulated trainings, diplomas, degrees, languages with no clear goal is a bright sign that beam over you head saying: "Warning: unconfident candidate - Don't know what he want or where he goes"
Instead, states clearly form the beginning that you've accumulated all those skils because your only target is to become the best in class/in your branch and that you'd be glad to put all those skills at your prospective employer full disposal. Present this as an opportunity for them too. Don't beg for this job but let them know that for them it's a one in a lifetime opportunity.
If self confidence is the only skill you're poor at, then consider getting a self confidence class, get a coach or at least read a good book like Building Self Confidence For Dummies or its audiobook version.

2. Show off. Don't be afraid to do so. Don't remove a skill or a qualification from your résumé just because it would look like you're boasting. If you have folloved adice #1, it shouldn't cause an issue. Just think that those poorly skilled people will do the same, ending up lying about their true set of skills and past achievements. Lying by not showing something that is true on your Résumé is even worse that lying by showing a degree you never get. If you can prove it, tell it. You'll never been penalized for telling the truth.

3. Make Irrelevant Things Relevant. Sometimes people strip off entire range of qualifications out of their CV because they believe it's irrelevant for the job they're applying for. Why? How on earth would you miss an opportunity to show you're a well rounded personality with versatile skills that can suit more situations than the average? Show it at your advantage: you can think out of the box. Having taking the time to learn something extra that has nothing to do with this field mean that you are not a narrow thinker just focussed on one point in life and that actually you'll always know what to do with your life, because you've got one. 

4. Get two arguments for each point of your Résumé that will demonstrates how it would serve you in the next position. If they are not obvious, just be creative. I say 2 arguments because one will be the obvious one and the other will be the unexpected one, the one that is the most creative. Think twice and ask advice to your friends. All human activities can be related to each other in one way or another. I love knitting, how does it help in a sales position: I've got patience to knit a web, getting the ability to figure out the final figure and work little steps at a time to get in there. How being a former bar tender will help you being a good manager of the technical department. Well if your PhD in electrical engineering is an obvious reason, being a bar attendant was a way to improve your humble skills, listening to other and make great cocktail combinations to always reach the customer expectations. Name 2 unrelated jobs/hobbies/human activities and you can nearly always find reasons why being good at one can help being good at the other.

There is still a great risk that the recruiter don't decide to hire you just because you're too brilliant, more than he is. In that case, rejoice of not working for him. If the interviewer says you're over qualified, that's his problem, not yours. 

One I had an interview where one of the interviewer asked me if I wouldn't feel a little bit overqualified for the position. I answered asking how he could see it as a problem. If I would have seen it as a problem, I wouldn't have come at the interview and wasted my time and theirs at first instance. If he got a problem of working with someone more qualified than him he'd rather to let me know now because that's not the kind f person I'd like to work with. At the end of the meeting he insisted that he was not interested in going any further with me but we both know that I did gently declined to work for them.

So next time you're rejected of an application because you are overqualified, just be thankful because otherwise your life would have been an nightmare of working for people who cannot recognise the great opportunity to get someone with such amazing skills working for them.

Packaging your skills is just showing people how amazing you are and convincing how better their life would be if they pick you.


To end this note, let me tell you this recruitment joke - you probably know it but I find it appropriate in here:

At a job interview:
- Tell me your greatest weakness.
- That's Honesty.
- I don't think that honesty is a weakness.
- You can't imagine how I don't care of what you think...