You’ve been to interview after interview and still have no job. When
your inbox is empty and your phone’s not ringing, it’s easy to feel like
the air has been let out of your tires…well, it’s time to get pumped
up!
As exhausting as the job hunt can be, it’s your job to stay upbeat
and enthusiastic (in the interview chair, at least). After all, all it
takes is one fantastic interview to end your savage search. Read on to
discover the three steps of landing a job by taking a hiring manager’s
breath away:
1) Get Your Mind Right:
Interview after interview you go through the same routine: you shake hands, answer the most common questions known to mankind, you might even wear the same suit.
If the process has become routine for you, consider how vanilla it’s
become for a hiring manager. With that being said, it’s time to get your
mind right.
You’re not going on yet another interview, no way! You’re going on X
interview, at X company, which fosters X culture and has an X attitude
while holding up X ideals. The inputted variable here is to remind you
that while each interview may be the same, each job and work environment
is uniquely different. If you want to land a job (any job) then you’ve
got to match your attitude, outlook and interview answers to the X job
at hand.
Achieve this by taking one hour out of your life to research the job
and company for which you are applying. Thanks to the
sometimes-beautiful invention known as the Internet, you can find out a
lot. Display your learned knowledge during your interview by working
into the conversation tidbits about the evolution of the company, its
mission and how you fit into it’s future.
2) Customize Your Resume:
Yes, you’ve got a standard resume with a standard
objective. Do you know what your hiring manager has? A big ol’ stack of
others just like it! By making the extra effort and tiny tweaks to your
resume pre-interview, you can not only stand out from the crowd, but you
can get the hiring manager to picture you as the position holder.
Here’s how…
Before your next interview, open up your resume and get
ready to add one very important line to each job experience you have
listed. Each line should start:
This position taught me…
…and as you fill in the meat of those sentences apply them
specifically to the job for which you are applying. For example, I’m a
writer applying to a blogging job and my last job experience was as a
special event manager. Completely unrelated, right? Wrong!
My sentence under that job description would look like this:
This job taught me how to stick to timelines and the importance of client-vendor-owner communication.
Interesting – while in my last job I was party planning,
the tools I learned there (like sticking to a deadline and communicating
well as a middle man) can be really helpful for a blogging position.
Take the added extra step to highlight these lines and
provide a fresh copy for the hiring manager when you meet. Not only will
the added lines afford those “unrelated” jobs a second glance, they are
also a great jumping off point for you and your interviewer.
3) Provide a Plan of Action:
So, when you go on your next interview you’re going to pack
a positive attitude, enthusiastic smile and a fresh resume…after all,
that’s what most people bring. Hmm, see the problem here? The only way
you are going to take a hiring manager’s breath away is if you stand
out from the rest in an overwhelmingly positive way. How do you do
that? Provide a plan of action.
Between the job description and the research you’ve already
done on the company, chances are you can find some areas where you
could bring improvement. Continuing with that last example of applying
for a blogging position, I might research the current content that the
company has produced and come into the interview prepared with formal
suggestions of what I would bring to the position. I.e., “I love how
insightful and thorough your current blogs are, I might suggest posing a
question at the end of each though- as a way to increase audience
interaction and in turn, their loyalty to your brand.”
No matter what kind of job you are applying for, with some
creativity you can show where your value can and will be (once they hire
you) inserted. If I’m going for a social media manager job, you bet
your bottom dollar I’ve done my own research on their stats and
platforms where they are lacking. If I’m going for a customer service
job, you know I’ve already checked out customer reviews to find out the
most common and recent complaints. It’s all about being creative,
proactive and showing your initiative. No hiring manager is going to
hold your hand and try to convince you to take a job. You’re the one
who wants it, so get hungry and prove just how ready you are to dive in!
Despite how discouraging the job hunt can be (and trust us,
we’ve all cried in our pajamas in between jobs on a Tuesday afternoon)
you’ve got to pull it together for the 30-minute interview. Get excited
and make the extra effort that will get a hiring manager to remember
your face. At the end of his or her day the person who did their
research, showed their commitment and found a way to fit in is the
person who is going to get a call back. Put in the time and necessary
extra work now, and let that person be you.
