How does a hiring manager sort through a hundred resumes, chose 10 to interview, then identify the finalist candidate who will be able to do the job better than everyone else? What makes you different, better and more effective than all of your competitors for a job that you want? If you don’t know the answer, you’re already behind your competitors. Here are some of the things you can do to make you the candidate of choice.
First, define the outstanding achievements in your current job. What are you most proud of that will “WOW” a hiring manager? Use metrics to quantify your results. Identify and measure your accomplishments from prior jobs. This is the preparation you need to launch the next step in your career. If you can’t demonstrate and measure your results, a hiring manager can’t differentiate you from everyone else who says they can do the job better than you. Make your documented facts overwhelm someone else’s smokescreen.
Think about what a hiring manager is really looking for in a candidate. A future boss wants someone who can achieve one or more of the following attributes: Increase performance, reduce cost, drive revenue, expand the business, improve productivity, install process improvement methods, reduce staff, improve quality, grow profit, or provide for a better return-on-investment if you get hired. You have to show a hiring manager that you can provide them with greater performance than others. Your competition may only talk about how good they are, but you have the opportunity to demonstrate and document how good you are. Make it easy for the hiring manager to choose you.
Nothing will sell a hiring manager better than your ability to monetize your results from past jobs. Show how you can achieve similar results applied to the open position. You need two pieces of information to do that. First, define the key skill, ability, knowledge or result that the hiring manager must have from the new hire? That information is usually found at the top of the position description. There are usually only 2 or 3 elements that are essential for success. Second, identify what you have done in your current and past jobs that will match or exceed the key result areas for which the hiring manager is looking? You’re the only one who can match your results with their need.
Make sure during the telephone and face-to-face interviews that you emphasize your experiences and results that match the hiring manager’s needs as defined in the position description. Even though you may want to toot your horn about a project you headed up, it may be totally irrelevant to the recruiter or hiring manager.
Hiring managers are looking for a candidate who can get the results that they must have in order to be successful. To be the candidate of choice you have to show that you have all the experiences and results that will translate into that success.
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