There are probably at least one hundred people with the same experience, education and skills that you have right now, looking for a job. Sharing the world with 7 billion others, it’s always going to be hard to differentiate and make yourself noted by your employers, clients and others. That’s why we’ve written this post up, to help YOU become the candidate recruiters call, hiring managers interview and companies remember and want to hire.
Follow these five steps and you will be ahead of 99% of your competition, no matter whether you are new or experienced, fast or slow, skilled or just very willing. Through a bit of work and some soul-searching, you can make yourself known to others, thanks to the internet and social media. So read on and take advantage of these tools, they’re here to make it easier for you to make a splash!
Get excited about something.
People can see through lies and lack of enthusiasm. So do something that you’re passionate about! Most of you will still be young and have a lot of time to mould yourselves into whoever you wish to be… try to ensure you’ll like that future you and what they do. It can be as simple as asking your manager for slightly different responsibilities, doing some research and growing towards a slightly different role, or that life-change you’ve been thinking about because things haven’t been going as planned.
Note: this doesn’t mean that you will love everything that you do, or you should only try to work doing what you love. But it does mean that you should try to grow towards something you’re interested in, rather than just go with the flow. Your career is yours, even if you don’t like what you do now, make sure you will be doing something that you do enjoy in a few years time.
In order for you to influence people and develop your career, you have to be sure of yourself, or else you’ll come off as false and phoney. There are no LinkedIn tips that will trick a hiring manager or a recruiter into thinking you know what you’re doing, if you don’t think you’re doing the right thing. If this means making changes in your life, then do them! You’ll be happier, and other people will notice.
Find the right conversations.
But it’s not only about that! By speaking the language, you are more likely to impress others when you discuss issues at interviews. You will feel more confident (and looking confident gets you jobs) and this will be clear to whoever you are speaking to.
- Get an RSS reader (like Feedly, or Newsblur) and add industry blogs. Read it every day!
- Search for the top bloggers in your field. Important resources are only a Google search away
- Don’t forget industry magazines!
- Find channels on YouTube by people who work in your field, or can coach you in a subject.
Talk, write, draw, shout!
Once you find out what you think you can do best, either from interest or skill (hopefully both)… start talking to those around you about it. There’s no better way of refining and improving what you represent than through interactions with people.
How are people going to talk about you if you’re not giving them anything to think about? You need to start making things, showing others you have value by creating value… you might even learn a thing or two. making things for other people to experience, read and talk about, you are able to create conversations about yourself, about the things that you’re bringing in.
Ask Gary (literally). He built an amazing wine business by putting himself out there, even when it’s hard. To help his customers he built an app called Ask Gary, where his customers could ask him a question about wine and he’d answer himself. How many CEOs would do that for their customers? So you already have an advantage over most people, if only you work hard and producing content and offering other people something that you can provide, even if it is only your time. Though the internet is very wide and deep, the world is still missing so much information about things, because humans just don’t have the time or willpower to research and write.
Can you give an interesting insight into the world in any way? My guess is yes. It may be rough but as you share your perspective other people will start to take notice. This can be as simple as making a youtube videos from your webcam, to creating an entire video game to show you can. Start a blog and put pictures of whichever community you belong to, and you can start making a splash.
Connect, connect, connect.
In the end, social media boils down to one thing: people. It’s important to make sure you have important details about yourself dispersed across your social media profiles, so whoever is interested in knowing more about you has the chance to learn… it never hurts to make it easy for someone who searches for you online to learn about all the cool things you’ve done.
But don’t forget about who you’ve done these things with. It’s your friends, family and colleagues who are going to be the first ones to share your ideas, if they’re any good. So make sure you foster those connections with that which matters most the most in this world: people. Keep up personal and professional relationships by maintaining that link online, through passive social networks. If you want people to see you and find your profile, the content you’ll be sharing has to be spread somehow.
So make sure that you get all that low-hanging fruit, and take your existing relationships digital… you’ll be able to ‘stick around’ without having to actually do it, so long as you’re producing something interesting and you remain part of the overall conversations you need to be in.
Optimise yourself for search.
The time for SEO – search engine optimization – being only about optimising your website’s Google rankings is now over, as search engines spread into more areas of our lives. Make sure that you’re optimising your profiles, especially on LinkedIn or other professional networks. Hiring managers and recruiters are going to be searching for certain concepts and types, so refine your ideas and your words. You want your CV, your profiles and website to have a consistent pattern so that you are easily found. Doing so will mean that people will stumble upon your details more often, when making general searches, increasing the odds of you getting lucky.
Making sure the language that you use is consistent and appropriate for the position you are seeking will also ensure that when you apply for a job, it takes the hiring manager less time to see if you are good fit for the position. Recruiters spend, on average, only 6 seconds on the CV they read… Shaving off the time it takes for someone to read useful information out of yours will give you a better chance of success, the more energy someone has to spend to get information from your CV or your profile, the higher the chance that he will miss something or just skip you, even if you were actually good.
- Personalise the CV for different roles you may be applying for
- Look over at your social media profiles and other accounts that someone could find by googling you… are they consistent with each other?
- Ask someone in the field to read your documentation, they’ll pick up things that you might not be able to.
Getting a job isn’t just about getting a job. There is more than finding the right fit, applying at the right time and formatting your CV just right. It is about making YOU the person someone would want to hire. You can only do that if you put yourself out there and work hard at making a mark, by contributing value to the world. It may sound hard, but in this day and age there are so many tools and opportunities to let you build and showcase your value, that there just isn’t an excuse. And very soon, being just average won’t be enough to get you a job.
Now you know: find something you love and can do well, read about it, talk about it, find other people and make it easy for others to find you! Do these five things, and you will be way ahead of most jobseekers in your industry, experienced or not.