Marketing Yourself

Let's start with your résumé. For many people, this document is a have-to-do task, a check-off-the-box step to getting a job. Yet, from an employer's point of view, a résumé is, in essence, an advertisement of what someone has to offer the company. Identifying your most marketable skills will help you build the most powerful résumé you can. More than that, understanding your marketable skills will help you feel confident about what you have to offer a company; this can only help you sell yourself better.

A person's skill set is almost always transferable to a different job, perhaps even a new career goal. It is important to realize that you may have many transferable skills that will be marketable in a new position. Or you may have skills that you haven't used for some time that could be very useful in a new position. A set of marketable skills makes you dynamic, not fixed, in today's employment world.

To be sure, focusing on what's most marketable about you, or anyone else, is no easy task. After all, you have a lifetime of experience to think about, then distill. Yet, while this is not an easy task, it is one of the most important you can undertake because it helps you to plan your job campaign and to target the best potential employers. It also gives you a strong sense of confidence in what you have to offer.

What can hurt you the most is personal confusion about what you want to achieve in life. In order to identify the marketable skills that you have, you must know what kind of a position you are searching for. It's a lot like finding your dream job: You have to be able to target two things:

1. where, in terms of a career, you'd ultimately like to be, and
2. what you possess—or need to possess—to get you to that goal.

Perhaps the best place to start is by writing "the story of your life." That can sound overwhelming. It will help if you scale down the task by committing to write a 3–5 page history of your life that includes significant events when you were growing up, important educational experiences, and a summary of your work experiences. Think "highlights" as you assume this task; you want to profile only the most significant events. And don't fret over the quality of the writing; you can always edit it later, or find someone who can help you make the writing more polished. This writing exercise is mainly for your benefit right now.

As you write about each of these experiences, describe what you liked, what you didn't like, and what you accomplished. What were you most proud of? What is your highest professional achievement? What was your greatest career failure? How have you balanced your work and personal life? Are there non-professional achievements you should include, perhaps major goals you achieved in sports or hobbies? Make sure that there are at least seven key events in your biography.

When you're done, take at least 30 minutes to ponder this question: What, if anything, did writing your biography tell you about potentially marketable skills that you might have? Now, in one paragraph, write a summary of this writing session.

Now go over the lists that you have written and create a new master list of at least 10 major achievements in your life. These do not have to be work-related. When you have completed the master list, rank your achievements in order, with number one being your most important achievement, number two being your second most important achievement, and so on.

The ultimate goal of all this effort is to create a skills inventory, one that you can ultimately use as a self-marketing tool. To do that:

• Make a list of all your skills that are related to management in any way. Although your current job title may not classify you as a "manager," you may still perform some activities that are considered managerial. These can include policy formulation, policy implementation, conducting performance reviews, hiring, firing, project responsibilities, problem solving, budgetary responsibilities, planning, organizing, presenting, and so on. Even if you don't desire managerial work, this step is important as it can affect the level of responsibility a company can entrust you with.
• Make a list of all of your training skills, including any informal training you may have had. Training can be for individuals or for groups. Also list any certifications you may have received for teaching programs. Include any other professional training programs, seminars, and symposiums you have attended. Here, again, you may have no aspirations in this regard. But this will help you corral your communications skills, which are always important.
• Make a list of all of your documentation skills on those occasions when you have prepared reports, manuals, summarized research, conducted studies, and so on.
• Make a list of all your technical skills, which may include operating machines or computers, any specialized knowledge, any manufacturing, sales, engineering, human resources, or other skills that have not been mentioned in any of the categories above. So many jobs have a technology component to them that this step bears special importance.
• Make a list of all your interpersonal skills. Although they are harder to define, these skills can make or break an application for a new position. This list could include any of the following skills: communication, facilitation, coaching, conflict resolution, negotiation, team building, and many others.
• Create a category of "other skills" for skills that don't fit into the above categories. Often, these skills are something unique that you have to offer, making you more attractive than other candidates.

If you are like most people who have done this exercise, you now have a very lengthy—and perhaps slightly disorganized—list that ties to you, your work, your talents, and your likes and dislikes about work. Are you ready to "sell yourself" to an organization? Not yet.

Go back through this list and check or highlight the skills that most closely match your career goals. From this list, choose the five-to-ten skills that you think are most marketable. Ask yourself, "If I were trying to hire someone for this job, are these the skills I would be looking for?" If you are lacking any essential skills for the job you desire, you should develop a plan to acquire these skills.

Take each of the top skills you have listed and write a sentence describing how you have actively used this skill. For example: "Used conflict resolution skills to solve a major problem between production and sales"; or "Conducted quality training in the billing department, leading to a 15% decrease in billing errors."

The five-to-ten skills (and summary sentences) should be the most persuasive "advertisement" that you have ever drafted about your own work. Now, let's see how it strikes someone else. Through your networking, identify someone who is doing the job that you would like to have. Ask him or her to review your list: Are your skills a match for this kind of position? If not, ask what skills you need. Or ask what kind of a job would be a better match for someone with your skills. Another reality check is to ask those closest to you to review your skills and to see if you may have overlooked something salient about yourself that they have noted.

The best thing you can do now is to draft, or revise, your résumé (and a cover letter) so that the major skills you have to offer—and how these skills have benefited past employers or bosses—are emphasized.

This happens frequently, and it usually leads to companies politely declining the chance to employ you. Why this happens is no great secret. When a prospective employer sees a résumé that does not truly link critical skills to the job at hand, there's little reason to discuss possibilities with you.

Many often say, "It doesn't matter what I did in high school or in my first job. That was so long ago." This could be a major mistake. What's critical is to match skills you have—no matter when they were acquired—to what's needed to perform a job today.

The exercise recommended here hinges on how honest you are with yourself about what you have done and what you want to do in your working life. If you have not rigorously pinned down your true capabilities and matched them to a realistic career goal, you have no other choice but to start over. One fact is hard to deny, however: Those who get the jobs of their dreams never lose sight of what's realistically possible.

Bolles, Richard. What Color Is Your Parachute? A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers. Ten Speed Press, 2006.

McKay, Dawn Rosenberg. Everything Get a Job Book: The Tools and Strategies You Need to Land the Job of Your Dreams. 2nd edition. Adams Media, 2007.

Careers: www.careers.org

Goal Setting: www.topachievement.com/goalsetting.html

Résumé resources: www.careerjournal.com/jobhunting/resumes