I promised a little more guidance on how to navigate a job search — so here’s a bit more around resumes and presentation.
1) Context matters, details matter more. We may all emerge from Covid as crisis managers, but FEW will be able to translate that into a marketable skill.
It is imperative that you can articulate the role YOU played in response to the current situation at hand and what YOU did specifically to navigate the crisis for your company/ team.
This means you need to concisely describe the action you took, and the results from those actions. Do you have analytics or quantitative data to show a correlation?
Even better.
If it’s hard to discern how what you did was different from your peer; it may not make the cut, even though it felt sure felt difficult at the time. (Harsh, but true)
If someone is going to take a chance on you. The best way to show them their investment is going to pay off is the past ROI. Make it easy for them to make that call.
2) “professional manager” is NOT a job.
It’s always a little cringe-y to me when I ask someone what they want to do — and then they me they want to be a Manager. CAPITAL M.
Then it gets a little awkward when I ask, “of what”.
“Of people!” OH! 🤦🏻♀️
Here the thing—
A people manager is a role you play, not a job to aspire to. People need guidance, support and leadership from someone who has experience, credibility and domain expertise.
So please 🙏🏼 resist the urge to tell me or or any hiring manager that your aspiration is to be a manager of people. If you must, tell them you’d love an opportunity to manage a large scale project with multiple stakeholders and not afraid of complexity. Then tell them how you’ve done that.
If you have the goods, know your stuff, you will figure out how to make enormous impact- and those broader responsibilities will come along with it.
3) What are they trying to solve for?
At the end of the day, every open job represents problem they want to fix. They want to make their life better, their teams life better, they want to operate smarter.
When you go into an interview, which is very much focused on me, me, me (job seeker)— why not approach it as, “I could be the solution to your problem.” (Them)
Have you ever hear someone say, “nah, I’m not into problem solvers?”
Nope. Never.
Maybe they want dependability— a steady hand. Maybe they want to shake it up, new thoughts, new ideas.
So how do you figure out their greatest needs?
Get curious. Like REAL curious.
Ask why the job is open, what the history has been, how are they going to use this opportunity to change (or not) change things up. If the prior incumbent didn’t work out, ask how it affected the business or the team.
Then, figure out how you speak to their problems and how you can solve them. Be the solution to their problem!
If you think this is Captain Obvious stuff, please know I wouldn’t have a job if you was 😊
Be well, stay well.
Jean