How to sell yourself.

It seems the only way to get close to getting a job these days is if you have the ability to sell yourself. Professionals and graduates alike have to make themselves marketable and desirable. This idea of making yourself salable is a task that can be rather daunting for young graduates that have little experience of talking about themselves in such a ‘showy-offy’ sort of way. I have some tips, targetting those young and inexperienced undergrads, on how to sell yourself.

STEP 1 - Sales techniques

First thing’s first, you need to get to grips with some basic sales techniques. If you can sell products, then you should be able to make yourself the product and sell yourself!

Sales technique 1: Make yourself sound GREAT to the interviewer/manager. The only way of doing this well is by understanding what the organisation/role requires and what it wants. If you can understand what your customers need, then you can more successfully market yourself towards filling that need.

Sales technique 2: Sales is just as much about asking questions as it is providing solutions. This is your way of finding out what impression you are giving to the interviewer, and what their thoughts are.

“How do you see me fitting in with your organisation in 5 years time?”
“What are you looking for in the candidates and how do I compare?”

Sales technique 3: Use a lot of positive describing words that demonstrate passion and enthusiasm.

I can communicate well > I am a strong communicator

I am interested in this industry > I have a passion for this industry

I am a good team player > I love working in teams and with people

Sales technique 4: Build rapport. Generate a relationship with the interviewer, especially if you are interviewing with the manager. This person has to see that they are going to get along with you in the day to day working environment.

Sales technique 5: Close the sale. Make sure that you don’t leave the interview without asking the employer some questions about the next stages in the process. It shows that you are keen and looking forward.

“Do you have any reservations about me that would stop you from selecting me?”
“What are the next stages in the process?”
(And only if you are brave & have built up enough rapport) “When do I start?”

Step 2 - Practice selling

This step is for those that may feel uncomfortable talking about themselves. Start off with any item you can find in your room and sell it. Practice selling one item in your room every day and you will find that you will start to get better at it. Certain words and phrases can sometimes be recycled and used on other products. The flow of words will become smoother with less hesitation. Once you have done some practice on this, you should try and apply it to yourself. Look at yourself as one of the items in your room and just sell.

Step 3 - Research the company

Preparation is key for any assessment day or interview. If you have done your research, about the role especially, it will be easier for you to target the employer’s needs. The most important thing to look at, if you can find it, is the list of Core Competencies that the employer is looking for in prospective employees. Make sure you look at these very closely. An example of some core competencies: leadership ability, teamwork, relationship building etc. Once you have looked over these you can keep these fresh in the back of your mind during an assessment day. These core competencies are what the employers are looking for on the assessment day. Are you demonstrating team working ability? Leadership? Ambition? etc.

So, if you are handed a group task to complete you will know how to target it. If leadership is a core competency you should try to exert your influence on the other team members and direct the project. If team work is what they are looking for then you should show how great you are at working with people.

Conclusion

Think of it this way. Most of the greatest and most popular products out there are the result of a top-quality marketing campaign. Marketing works. Marketing makes you think that you need that product, and you think about how you’re going to use that product once you get it and how great it would fit in with your life. So make the employer think that you would fit in great with them.

Ok, so maybe its not as easy as it sounds. But if you have ever wondered how that lazy student that always comes to lectures late and never seems to stop partying got the job at (highly desirable firm) then this should provide you with the answer. Either they know someone on the inside, or they market themselves well.

Do you agree? If you have any thoughts on this leave a comment.

The recruitment process- there to scare you?

As I start to fill out yet another ridiculously long application form, part of me thinks that the whole recruitment process of some employers is just there to scare! Seriously, just looking at the thing - all the hurdles I would have to overcome, all the hoops I have to jump through - makes me feel nervous. Some of the application forms actually ask the same question about three times, making it much harder for those applicants with less experience. “Explain a time when you lead a team to a common goal” and then “Explain a time when you convinced a team to work towards a goal?”. 

We all know why employers have such a long and hard recruitment process, it’s to make sure that they can get rid of as many numbers as they can along the way. The point I’m trying to make here is that some people are scared out of the process. It just takes too much precious time and effort during the final year of university, when frankly, there are so many more productive ways to spend time. There is just no possible way to have the time to complete all of the graduate schemes on offer as well as juggling university work, lectures and a dissertation.

Anyway, this would be a terrible blog post if it didn’t suggest some ways to overcome this issue with time management. So here we go with top tips to handle the fright of the recruitment process:

Tip 1: Save every single answer you create in a word document of “answers”. Sort them by the core competencies they are demonstrating; being either teamwork, leadership skills or communication etc. This will help you to start building a bank of useful answers that you can then use in future application forms and adapt them to the particular question.

Tip 2: You can print out a version of your “answer” bank to use during a telephone interview. It will help you demonstrate those core competencies and remember the main points about them. That is one of the main advantages of the telephone interview right?! No one can see what you’re doing!

Tip 3: Allocate time. Do not let yourself have open-ended deadlines to complete applications. Just set yourself one to two evenings or a day to complete x number of applications. Re-use your answers and work efficiently.

Tip 4: Research the company and add this to your self-constructed documents so you have something to refer to in a telephone interview or surprise phone-call.

Tip 5: Do not complete applications half-heartedly or the ‘I can’t really be bothered’ attitude. It will end up being a much bigger waste of your time at the end of the day when you are not selected to move to the second round. Take care with each question you answer, try and tailor it to the organisation, and absolutely no spelling mistakes!

One final word of advice, If you have an Internet presence make sure you remove any inappropriate or unappealing content (remove all of it completely in my opinion!) as I have heard that employers will research you. We do the same to them after all don’t we?

The Guardian London Graduate Fair

I decided, for want of better things to do, to attend the Guardian London Graduate fair last Tuesday (19th October). I really shouldn’t have bothered. Ok so although I sort of already knew that this fair was really targetted towards final year undergraduates I thought I might learn something by attending. But let me tell you I was horrified.

I arrived at the Business Design Centre with my printed email confirmation so I could get fast-track entry from 12pm. Get ahead of the crowd right? Wrong! I arrived to find a queue, one of those that gets so long it has to double back on itself. Young, aspiring and enthusiastic the hopeful undergraduates, professionally dressed, waited patiently in line (and in the freezing cold might I add). Well I wasn’t having it, I was already starving so decided to grab some lunch first.

1.15pm and there is still a queue. Shorter this time and manageable. So my boyfriend and I get in line and eventually through the doors. We are welcomed with the sight of hoards of students, scrambling to get to the front of each employer’s stall. Desperate to impress would be the best description. I actually got stuck in a crowd of people, the type of stuck where you are utterly squashed on all sides with no means of escaping.

The employers stalls were tiny and the representatives simply drummed out the same old information, more easily found using a little thing called the Internet! My boyfriend asked a white-faced representative from GCHQ ‘What if I wanted to do a graduate programme that crossed the boundaries between Management and Linguistics’. The answer was basically no, said in a few more words.

So we come to my conclusion. Some of the grad schemes out there are just too inflexible. They create ready-made schemes with a development plan, career path, progression etc. They do all this before they have even met you. ‘We don’t care if you want to do Management with Linguistics you can only do EITHER Management OR Linguistics, don’t confuse us!’. I urge all you undergraduates out there to make sure that you are accepting a grad scheme that is right for you, not right for them! Overall, as I stood at the Guardian Graduate Fair I realised I was staring my competition in the face. When you’re submitting that application, you know they’re there submitting one too. But I actually saw them, in their thousands... How can anyone possibly stand out?