The Job Search Handbook

Job Search Handbook Part III: Defining your USP

in How-to,The Job Search Handbook,Tools

Unique
USP, according to Wikipedia entry is “The Unique Selling Proposition (also Unique Selling Point) is a marketing concept that was first proposed as a theory to explain a pattern among successful advertising campaigns of the early 1940s. It states that such campaigns made unique propositions to the customer and that this convinced them to switch brands. The term was invented by Rosser Reeves of Ted Bates & Company. Today the term is used in other fields or just casually to refer to any aspect of an object that differentiates it from similar objects.”

Companies have been involved in a continuous process of (re) defining their Unique Selling Proposition for their products and services. This applies to not just in the business world but also during job search.

Why have a USP

Competition in today’s job market is fierce and you really need a tool that puts you at an advantage over others much before the interview process actually starts.

A great job search strategy a great way to have a competitive edge when it comes to finding your next job. During this process, the real kicker would be to have that competitive edge, a unique set of skills that sets you apart from the competition.

To the external world, a job seeker’s USP is manifested in a elevator speech, a cover letter, a resume or just simply any form of communication with potential employers.

Internally, it’s about how you can take the entire collection of skills and experience you have and jujitsu style, turn it into a clear, sharp and attractive USP.

So how can you identify and define you USP?

There are two elements to your USP:

  1. Role: the role is the specific type of position(s) that you are aiming as your next job. It could Sales Manager, Director of Operations, Business Analyst, Database Architect etc
  2. The unique set of results or experience that you would like to highlight; it could be any combination of the following:
    • specific results that you have already accomplished
    • unique experiences that you might have that nobody has
    • touch problems that you might be known for solving

      • . For example, you might be a Sales Manager that is known for increasing revenues in challenging markets, plus you know Japanese, or you are Director of Operations that reduced vendor costs by 20% last quarter plus you have great communication skills, or you are a Business Analyst that developed specifications for a killer products and knows how to turn ideas / concepts into new products / services.

Once you have created a basic framework for this USP, you are ready to go onto the next level which is developing your communication based on this USP:
1) Create an elevator speech
2) You resume’s summary section
3) Your LinkedIn profile
4) Your blog profile

And here’s the best part – you can have multiple versions of your elevator speech depending on the type of setting you are in and who your audience is.

What would you like to include in your USP?

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Job Search Handbook Part II: Job Search Strategy

in How-to,Job search,The Job Search Handbook,Tools

symphony
Imagine a symphony orchestra trying to make music with no notes and no conductor. Though the players might be very skilled, but they would lack focus and coordination. And the result would be…well, not much to write home about.

That’s exactly what your Job Search Strategy needs to provide – focus on specific employers and coordinated job hunting efforts to get you in front of your target employers and most importantly, get you the job!

Components of a successful Job Search Strategy

The main components of a successful strategy are:

a) Market definition and focus: which industry will you be targeting, which specific employers will be your focus and what will be your target geography. The geography piece is getting interesting these days as more and more companies are open to work getting done virtually.

b) Unique value proposition – what do you bring to the table, brother?! As mentioned earlier, companies are all about defending and increasing revenues or drastically reducing costs. How can the combination of your skills, experience and working help your future employer to increase their revenue or lower costs? Clearly articulating your value prop can open more doors than you can imagine.

Also, you’ll need to bring in something that is absolutely unique about you, your skills and experience that will make you stand out from everyone else. You need to have purple cow effect (hat tip: Seth Godin) and it will immediately make the recruiters sit up and take notice.

c) Research and communication – researching your target market will provide you invaluable clues and a leg up over your competition in terms of intelligence. And then you can use your unique value proposition to communicate it to to your target market and add the specific intelligence you picked up during research. 

Communicating your value proposition has never been this good…and cheap! You can use a combination of websites, videos, slides, blogs, tweets and social networks to communicate to the right people.

Those are the elements of your strategy! 

In the next post, we’ll go over how do we bring your job strategy to life and get ready to execute!

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Job Search Handbook Part I: Allies for your job search

in How-to,The Job Search Handbook

Starting today, we are publishing Job Search Handbook – a guide to finding your next job.

Here’s Part I in this series.
Allies

Allies for your job search

One of the first steps towards finding your next job is to make a list of the people that will be your allies in this process:

Current and Past Employers

This one’s a no-brainer. Your current employer and past employers are excellent sources of reference for you work and also they can point you to people in their professional network that might be hiring.

Friends and relatives

Your personal network can be a powerful ally in your quest since their level of commitment to your success is very high. One more tip to boost this network – get them to introduce you to their current and past employers. There. You just tripled your connections :)

Headhunters, recruiters and executive search firms

These are the people that can exponentially increase your chances of getting a job. Here’s how to work with them:

    Identify the headhunters and exec search folks that are relevant to your target market (more on target market in a later chapter)     

  • Introduce yourself to them and ask for a time with them either in person or over the phone
  • Spend at least 20 minutes providing them a walkthrough of who you are, what is your target market, and what do you bring to the table. This will ensure that the other person has a very clear understanding of what you are looking for
  • Create an agreement that no resume will be sent out without your prior consent
  • Develop a summary or a tombstone that is specific for this headhunter / exec search firm
  • Keep in touch with them regularly over email and develop a warm relationship. Go beyond just a dry email. Get them a cup of coffee before your next meeting or even better, buy lunch.
  • Ask for frequent feedback and check in weekly with them to see which companies have they been talking to about you.

Google is your friend

As you might know, every blog posting you create, every word in your LinkedIn profile, every comment that you write on online forums – all that is slurped up by Google only to show up in search results when people Google. We’ll cover ‘Job Search Setup’ in a later chapter that will help you to develop content that enables recruiters to find you when they use Google.

Social Networks

We continue to be raving fans of LinkedIn and Facebook – leverage their capabilities to network with the right people and communities. LinkedIn Groups is a great tool to find network within a set of communities, you can use LinkedIn Answers to establish your eminence and your can display recommendations to enhance your credibility.
My friend Jason Alba has created a great resource to use this effectively.

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