Advertising

You’re advertising yourself when job seeking

It’s nothing new to hear people compare job hunting with marketing or sales. No doubt there are a lot of similarities. You have your marketing materials – resume, cover letter. You go to market via informational interviews, networking, (and now) LinkedIn, etc. Then you get the big chance to “sell” yourself in the job interview.

When you make the sale, you get the job. Done deal.

Successful advertising

What constitutes effective, successful advertising? To be sure a lot goes into it. Most business people, however, will admit – and even many advertising agency professionals also will admit – that head and shoulders above all the rest, the most effective advertising is word of mouth. That is, as Facebook’s Mark Zuckenberg said, word of mouth, or a “trusted referral” is “the Holy Grail of advertising.”

That’s all well and good, but what does it have to do with your job search? The answer is plenty. You could even argue that LinkedIn is a 21st Century form of networking by connecting people and employers, etc. To employ an acadmenic perspective, one social scientist observed that “word of mouth is a form of social influence that is based on trust and personal relationships.” If you examine that statement more closely, what stands out is “personal relationships.”

And how does one insert personal relationships into a job search? The answer is really very simple: networking.

Now it comes full circle. How many times have you heard job-search professionals extol the benefits of networking when job seeking? When asked to name the number one path to landing your next position, overwhelmingly they say “networking.” What better way to learn of job openings, to gather information on markets, industries and employers? What better way to demonstrate to people in the know what a valued employee you could be?

Networking. Personal relationships. Word of mouth. Trusted referrals. They’re all intertwined. And, in the end, when added together, they say another old, tried-and-true job search hallmark. It’s not social media, or automatic tracking systems, or AI, or anything else. In the end, people hire people.

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