Q1: Discuss why it is important to market yourself?
Job hunting is filling your future employer needs.
Looking for a job is basically selling yourself to your potential employers. Like any customers your future employer has needs. It needs for hard skills (technical skills), soft skills (ability to present something, to lead a team...). But you also need to fit with the culture of the company.
To sell get a job, you have to consider yourself as a BtoB service individual entrepreneur, and like any entrepreneur, you have to do marketing in order to sell your service.
Knowing yourself is the key.
The marketing 101 is of course to know your strenghts and weaknesses. Like any good marketer, you have to perform a SWOT analysis on yourself. Knowing what's your strengths will help you target the right employers while finding out what are your weaknesses will help you improve yourself.
Know your future employers.
Study the companies you are dreaming to work with. What are the specific skills they need? Do your way of working fit with theirs? Also, study the activity sector. This will help you to find the skills you need emphasis.
How can you build your brand online?
Nowadays, HR people mostly hire using professional social media, like Linked In and Twitter. To build your brand online, you'll have to create your brand online.
Show and emphasize the right experience.
Your future employer has to find out your most valuable experiences in a snap. Constantly update them on Linked In. Upload your résumé on your personal Blog. Value your experience, tell your future employer what's the impactful things you did in your previous experiences.
SEO yourself.
If your future employer can't find yourself, you're unlikely to find a job. Use your sector trendy keywords in your Linked In profile description, show you are actually looking for a job. Publish interesting content to make people come to your profile.
Build a valuable network.
Connect and follow your sector influencers, try to find who will help you find this job.
Hey Tom, thank you very much for sharing! I love when you said "Value your experience, tell your future employer what's the impactful things you did in your previous experiences.".
ReplyDeleteI think online reputation is really important, because now every HR will look for information about you online.
Thanks, François
Hey tom thanks for sharing your knowledge. So i don't desagree with you point about the emphasizing of your most valuable experience. But may we not forget that some cultures value the experiences in several way when a failure can be as estimated as a gain?
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