Employment Tips
You are a business. You are the president of your own personal services corporation. If a business is going to grow and prosper it must market itself, and you are no different. We are living today in an indifferent global market that is more competitive than at any time in history.
The world doesn’t care who succeeds and who fails. It plays no favorites. To be successful today you must be able to identify and then market all of your unique talents and abilities to the world. You must have clear and concise message and a way to deliver that message to the right market.
The first place to start in marketing yourself is to set a goal, a field of interest, a career path, or a company that you want to join. Nothing will happen until and unless you take the first step and start something.
When you begin taking action, you begin to attract ideas and get hunches that eventually lead to new feelings and experiences. These will prepare you for the upcoming events in your life. By learning how to market yourself with more direction, you’ll be in the right place at the right time more often and, therefore get more interviews, job offers and opportunities than ever before.
There are four key points to successfully marketing yourself:
1. You must have a goal. You must believe in yourself and have the courage to develop and use your talents and follow your dreams.
2. You must work at it. Overnight success is rarely overnight. It takes months and years of preparation, with the time invested in direct proportion to the benefit received. Having it all doesn’t mean having it all now. Patience, persistence and planning are essential to success.
3. Your goals must make a difference in people’s lives. Your goals need to have an impact on others. If your goal is so personal that only you benefit, you won’t be able to attract and use the energies of the universal powers to create change.
4. Start with the talents you already have. You have tremendous talents and potentials within your that you have not yet developed. The most exciting opportunities lie within reach and within sight of your right now. Look closely, and identify them.
You must market yourself to become “user friendly,” by highlighting your experiences, talents and employment history colorfully and in detail. You have to do this with all the feelings that you posses so that you’ll be seen in a favorable light. Your job is to make prospective employers visualize you in the role you desire.
We were all raised to play it safe and reduce risks in our life. While playing it safe is important to your personal and financial well-being, it’s not the mindset you should have when you’re looking for a challenging career track.
For example, when your interviewing for a job, you must understand that even though you’re willing to take the risk, the person who you’re interviewing with, or whoever has the power to offer you the job, is remembering the same risk aversion mind-set he or she was taught, and he or she sees you as a risk to him or her if you don’t work out in the job.
So, you must show the interviewer that you are not a risk, but rather an opportunity or a fresh source of ideas in a stale industry. Show him or her that you’ve worked with similar products or services in the past and the transition will be easier than he or she thinks. Help him or her to see your abilities, just as someone else saw his or hers at one time.
Having spent the last 25 years in marketing for both businesses and individuals, I’ve seen thousands of individuals go on to excel in industries far removed for their previous line of work.
Here are six tips for marketing yourself in the best light possible. I’ve seen them work time and time again to help people land their desired position or pursue their calling in life.
1. Look closely at your current position in life or business. There are probably tremendous veins of gold right under your feet, and yet you’re not looking down. The temptation is always to look to other areas for riches or better conditions. Take the time to look at past experiences in both your personal and business life and you’ll be amazed at the expertise you already have in many areas.
2. Do your research it is the crucial element when setting sail into uncharted waters. Talk with successful people currently in the business. Ask them why they stay and why they got into the business. Look carefully at the types of personalities in that market. Do you fit in, and would you want to?
3. Prepare for the interview or meeting. Everything you do and say will be graded by the people you meet. Have a game plan. Anticipate concerns, they’ll have with your background, and have solid well-thought-out answers ready. Lean as much as possible about the people you’ll be meeting prior to the actual meeting.
4. Look the part. When a person is trying to make a transition into a new field, the number-one knockout factor early on in the interview is inappropriate appearance. This means you must wear a style of clothing and hair suitable for the industry. It means clean fingernails, polished shoes, a nice pen in your pocket, a neat-error-free resume, solid documentation of past successes in previous jobs and a current reference list.
5. Be honest with yourself and look for employment that matches your abilities. Work with the talents you already have, and be best in those areas first. Then develop more talents in other areas. God gives us all equal talents, just in many different areas.
6. Have courage, because you’ll encounter some strong criticism along the way to your dreams. Human beings often act in accordance with their fear of loss, which is often stronger than their desire for gain. So, if you feel a strong and unshakable desire about what you want to gain, then work toward it with all the tenacity and enthusiasm you can muster.
Since the beginning of the Information Age in 1989 the world has seen more changes than at any time in history and there are many more unprecedented changes ahead of us as we move farther ahead in the 21st century. These changes are going to bring challenges for us all, but also they will bring many wonderful opportunities as well.
Keep your dreams firmly in mind, and get started today on marketing yourself to an indifferent world. It’s waiting for you to take the ball and run with it.
