When selling yourself, know your product and how that product can benefit your customer… er, employer
The conventional wisdom goes something like this: all the preparation elements (i.e. updating your resume, networking, etc.) are the marketing phase of your job search and the interview is where you do your actual selling. There’s a lot of truth to that.
Let’s consider the sales portion of that process. If you look at successful sales people, what do they all have in common? Different people have different ideas. In general, they say that successful sales people:
Are great talkers.
Are great listeners.
Know how to get around the gatekeepers.
Know who the decision makers are.
Know how to overcome objections.
That list is difficult to argue with, and the list goes on and on, but you get the idea. What’s really interesting about that list is that all of those characteristics are crucial to a successful job search.
Circling back to our conventional wisdom and you selling yourself in your job search, there is one trait of successful sales people that is almost universally accepted. Good sales people know their products and how those products can benefit their customers. They know their products up one side and down the other; they know them from top to bottom; they know them inside and out.
Why should you be any different? Do you know who you are? Do you know your personal product? Do you know what are you good at? Do you know what value you bring to the table?
The day you know these things, you’re one day closer to landing that job.