Today I want to offer a simple reminder about your brand.
At the end of every email you send, every phone call you make, every tweet you read is a fellow human being.
And, as a fellow human being, they have a life. And stress. And an overwhelming to-do list… just like you do.
Except one thing makes them different: they have something you want. And, you are asking for it.
A key aspect of your personal brand should be to make life as easy for them as possible!
Its simple, but powerful.
Making things easy for your audience is, above all, a mindset
When you start thinking about every interaction you have from perspective of your audience, rather than from your own, making things easy for them will come naturally.
This includes anything you can do that will save them time, anything that will make their decision easier and, best of all, anything that make it easy for them to say yes is a win for you.
Every audience is different — so making their lives easier can include lots of different things. Perhaps it is being really transparent about how to sign up to work with you. Or, maybe, its being on facebook because they don’t open their email. Maybe it is following up with them a third time because their life got crazy.
The options are endless.
Now, personally, I help job seekers get hired. So, here are some ideas specifically tailored for them.
Ten Ways Job Seekers Improve Their Chances By Making Life Easy for Hiring Managers
- Always attach your resume to an email, especially when you are following up: don’t make them go looking for it!
- Bring copies of your resume (3 of them!) to each interview
- Also bring a pad of paper for yourself and pens enough to share
- Make sure that your contact information is easy to find and legible in ALL communication
- Submit your resume in a universal format (PDF is my personal favorite, Word also works)
- If you have a website link in your resume, or would like them to look at it, link to it in your email signature
- Tell your contacts EXACTLY what you would like them to do (ie – I’d love for you to forward this along to Cathy in Marketing with a couple of lines saying how awesome I am!)
- If you are asking for a reference, let them know what the job is and what you want them to say (ie – The job is at Company X where I would be a project manager of a 10 person development team. I’d love it if you would highlight our work on the Gremlin Project and talk about my experience with C++.) The more specific you can be, the better the reference, usually!
- Follow directions IN ADDITION to your plans (ie – apply to the careers@email.com as well as sending it to your personal contacts)
- Make your application SO outstanding that they don’t even have to interview anyone else. GRIN!
So, that is a list of 10 things for job seekers.
