These days, I meet many people who have recently lost their jobs or who fear they soon may. Just Friday I met with someone “between opportunities” who sought my help in connecting him with his next one. I am happy to do what I can to match people up with open positions I know of. I get a jolt by helping friends who have needs for great people find other friends who are able to meet those needs.
Friday wasn’t one of those times.
The person I met with was amiable, likable, earnest, and technically gifted. He had a reasonably solid record of contributions on his resume. So, what could I do for him to connect him to his next job?
Nothing.
Zilch. Zippo.
Nada.
Why? Because he had no idea who he was. Therefore he had no idea of what he really wanted to do next. And he had little passion for anything. He was looking for his next paycheck to help feed his family, and there’s certainly nothing wrong with that. In good conscience, though, I just couldn’t recommend him to anyone I know. These days, with so few openings anywhere, employers are looking for more than technical workers with solid functional skills. More than ever before, those are table stakes, the ante to get in the game.
Winning the game requires so much more. With so many candidates vying for so few openings, it pays to think like a brand marketer when approaching the job search. Here’s what I mean:
Your brand represents a product called YOU. You compete in a crowded category filled with lots of other product brands that have terrific features and benefits to meet the needs of a few highly discriminating customers. To be the preferred brand in this category, you must possess and communicate ONE overt benefit with demonstrable superiority as a major point of difference over competition.
What is that ONE benefit? It’s not what you may think because it’s NOT the obvious answer.
It’s obvious that your brand must be the best choice that meets the stated needs of the opening. That’s what most candidates think, and they’re right, up to a point. Brand marketers call that the FUNCTIONAL benefit of a product. As an example, my car gets me from point A to point B reliably at about 20 miles per gallon. That’s a very important benefit. It appeals logically to my intellect. My HEAD. And I wouldn’t have bought the car if I wasn’t convinced it could deliver that benefit.
However, it wasn’t the reason I bought the car.
Lots of vehicles deliver that benefit but only one delivers what I was looking for, and that’s the vehicle I’m driving–the one that makes me feel like I’m DUI without alcohol. That’s what brand marketers call the EMOTIONAL benefit. The appeal to the HEART.
The functional benefit is the ante. The emotional benefit takes all the chips.
Call it the “and” in “brand.”
In searching for the right candidates to fill openings, there is always one unspoken, unstated need that most companies never advertise and that most interview candidates never understand. That need always boils down to ONE thing, and it is the ONE benefit companies buy. Here it is. DON’T miss this. This is HUGE. It’s…
BELIEF.
Anybody can sell anything. But people only buy BELIEF. In order to be the preferred brand for any job opening, you must BELIEVE you’re the only person for the job.
You’ll begin by demonstrating logically that you understand the stated needs of that opening and showing how those leverage your strengths while providing lots of evidence from your resume that your functional benefits are real.
But you won’t stop there.
You’ll then convince them with your total belief that you are ALIGNED with their mission and ENGAGED to build up the CORE of that company’s culture over the long term. You’re “their type of person” who has done the research and spoken to their associates, suppliers and customers. You’ll have “shoot in your eye” and a HEART for the company and its work. This is your point of difference versus competition.
Of course, this requires lots more work than just sending resumes to Monster.com. It requires a deep awareness of your personal culture and your CORE purpose, along with a similarly deep understanding of your target company and its culture and mission. Perhaps most important, it requires the discipline to pass over openings that would leverage EITHER your functional OR emotional benefits, but not BOTH.
Without “and” in your brand, you will remain on the shelf while other brands get purchased around you.
Or worse, you’ll get the job somehow and end up risking more of your life doing mule-like LABOR rather than mustang-like OPUS.
Is it time to go deep into the brand that is you?
Do you understand your unique talents, gifts, and preferences that form your functional benefits?
Are you aware of your passions, the vision for your life, and your CORE purpose that comprise your emotional benefits?
When should we start?
BUILT TO LEAD 