When it comes to selling yourself on the job market, the idea of doing what everybody else is doing no longer makes sense. It’s the Lemming Approach: “I’m following everyone else, just in case they’re on to something.” They’re not. They’re heading off a cliff. But even if they were on the right track, you would never stand out in the crowd.

How do you get on the right track? Change your thinking.

To really improve your odds of landing the right job requires a fundamental shift in the way you think about your job search.

1. You are managing a career, not just looking for a job. It’s about a long-term perspective and realizing what you need in a job to be successful. You have to be focused on the experiences you need to gain and the personal & professional development opportunities you require to achieve your long-term goals.
2. You are looking for the “right” job. Merely landing a job is no longer a sign of success, it’s landing the “right” job that is emblematic of true success. Here is what you must ask in order to find the “right” job:

• Does it leverage your strengths?
• Does it provide necessary developmental opportunities?
• Does it stimulate you and provide happiness?
• Is it an environment and situation where you can succeed?
• Is it an environment that is compatible with your interests, values, motivations, and style of operating?

There is a better way to sell yourself than creating a facade. The more you realize how the standard job search approach uses a facade to sell a candidate it should become clear that this approach has no future and is counter-productive.

5 Steps to landing the perfect job:

1.) Develop self-awareness. Take the time to reflect and understand who you really are, in terms of your:

· Strengths and weaknesses.
· Values, motivations, and interests.
· The environments you thrive in.
· The personality styles you work with best.
· The operational dynamics that suit you best.

What you learn about yourself will give you greater clarity, confidence, and a strong sense of the kind of job that will suit you best. It’s amazing how clear your path appears when you develop self-awareness. Indecisiveness is often due to not having clear idea of who you really are and only a fuzzy idea of where you are headed in life.

2.) Be an equal. Parity creates clarity. Your ability to accurately evaluate a job is dependent on seeing yourself as an equal. You and the company are a partnership, representing two sides trying to determine if a particular situation is right for one another. Allow them to evaluate you and you evaluate them. The reason it’s so important to consider yourself an equal is that it allows you to remain objective and better able to critically evaluate a situation. When you feel inferior, it’s natural to defend yourself and try and prove yourself worthy. Instead of evaluating a position you’re focused on proving yourself worthy of a position that may not even be right.

3.) Be genuine. Being genuine is like a beacon. It draws the right jobs to you and repels the wrong ones. It’s much more effective than building a facade and trying to sell someone something you’re not. It will connect with the right job on many levels. The right job fits your personality, your style, your interests, and your values. Being genuine is also an effective way to create trust with other people. In our critical world, this ability to instill trust and confidence provides a very real competitive advantage over the many other candidates who are doing their best to act the part.

4.) Communicate who you are, what you believe, and what you know. If you ever suffer regret it should be that you didn’t effectively communicate who you really are and therefore the company was not able to evaluate the real you. Other than that, let the chips fall where they may. It’s about fit – and a fit happens naturally, not by putting on an act.

5.) No regrets. It’s about making sure the position you accept is right for you. It’s not about landing a job every time out. If the company decides it’s not right or you decide it’s not right is immaterial. Two perspectives are better than one. Use the company’s insight about its environment, challenges, and limitations and how they see you fitting in their organization as an added means of evaluating a job. You may think the job’s right for you, but if the company, knowing what it knows about their internal operation, doesn’t think it’s a fit…be grateful. Because they’re your partner in helping you determine if it’s a good fit or not. That’s exactly how a good search works.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 26th, 2007 at 22:45 and is filed under Candidates, Job Search. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.