Site icon Dr. Dawn Graham on Careers

It’s Not Your Most Impressive Accomplishments That Get You Hired — It’s This

Photo by LinkedIn Sales Navigator on Unsplash

You have 15 seconds to share your top three accomplishments that are relevant to your target job – go!

While 15 seconds can feel like a lifetime when holding a plank in Pilates, it’s a relatively short period of time. But if you were in the market for a new vehicle and asked the Sales Person to name three features that would make you sign on the dotted line, and she hesitated, would you feel very confident making that purchase?

Perhaps worse, what if your primary interest was finding a safe and reliable car to transport your young family, and the Sales Person enthusiastically launched into features like speed, leather seats and the killer sound system? You may determine this isn’t the right vehicle for you and move on to another dealership, even if the car also came with eight airbags, child safety locks and an extensive roadside assistance package.

Clearly the Sales Person missed the opportunity to understand her product’s strengths in relation to her audience’s needs, and lost a customer.

Job seekers do this every day when choosing to focus on the accomplishments that are most meaningful to themselves, while neglecting to highlight strengths that align mostly closely with the needs of their target audience.

I coached a corporate attorney named Lauren who was interested in making a functional career switch into a human resources role. Although she had some valuable transferable skills, when seeking her new target role, she tended to introduce herself as a lawyer and launch into a recent lawsuit she had handled that saved the organization a lot of money. Lauren was understandably proud of this, and rationalized that interviewers would be able to extract the relevant information to see how she could be an asset, but unfortunately, hiring managers saw an apple when they were searching for an orange.

When it comes to landing the offer, there’s something even more important than stellar achievements. Hiring Managers are looking for relevance.

In your résumé, online presence and the interview, hirers expect you (the candidate) to do the heavy lifting of selecting those features of your background that are aligned with the problems you’re being hired to solve. Sometimes these are your greatest achievements, but if you’re a career switcher, they may be accomplishments from three jobs ago, or something you acquired through a volunteer role.

Don’t run the risk of losing their attention. Here’s how to make sure you present your value in a way that is relevant to a hiring manager:

After partnering with clients to help them mitigate risk, remain compliant and develop retention strategies for 10 years, I was ready to broaden my client base. I decided to return to school to earn a Masters in Human Resources Management, while simultaneously accepting the role of overseeing employment policy and compliance in my company. 

Over the last two years, I’ve successfully implemented two new organization-wide programs – a performance review plan that contributed to decreased attrition rates by 22%, as well as the creation of contracts and related policies that allow eligible employees the flexibility to work from home while protecting digital property. In addition, as a licensed attorney, I’m able to advise on legal matters related to a variety of employee relations questions. I’m excited to bring these skills to an emerging tech company like yours where mitigating risks to save costs and creating a worker-friendly employment model are core values.”

Whether in writing or the interview, when you take responsibility for building a case for your candidacy and communicating it effectively, you’re going to see many more opportunities come your way.

Happy hunting!

Reposted from: Forbes.com

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