The Job Search is Not Lotto

If you have ever applied for a position with the expectation that your years of experience and training will generate that phone call, interview, and offer, you’ve likely felt the frustrations of the hiring process. It is almost like playing the job-search lottery: someone wins, but the odds are generally stacked against you.

Why Jobs Are Created

The highest expenses of a company are generally people and real estate. As an organization grows, it outgrows the current skill sets of the existing staff, creating the need for new roles. Before hiring can happen, company leaders must decide on the roles, skills, traits, educational requirements, duties, wages, and potential outcomes the positions must generate. In other words, they assess the new needs of the company and weigh the costs versus benefits of resolving those needs through hiring.

Job descriptions often remain unchanged longer than they should, sometimes created with hypothetical needs that haven’t been tested. As the company evolves, the descriptions stay static. Some are written so obscurely that even highly qualified candidates may not meet the criteria. Automated scanners and algorithms interpret words literally, lacking the human ability to see beyond paper credentials, which adds to the challenges of the selection process.

Connecting Your Sweet Spot to Your Target Audience

In your job search, your “sweet spot” is where your expertise and potential impact meet your target audience’s pain points. This is where you become the authority through your accomplishment and impact stories. To succeed, identify the industries and companies that have problems you can solve today—not yesterday. The job search is increasingly an entrepreneurial venture, so you must think and market yourself like an entrepreneur.

When applying to job postings, consider yourself a door-to-door salesperson knocking on doors, hoping to connect with at least one customer. While sales is a numbers game, randomized approaches stack the odds against you.

Steps to Creating Your Sweet Spot and Job-Search Collateral

• Identify the companies you are targeting and uncover the parts of your background that will resonate with them.
• Uncover the problems you will solve for them, remembering that you are an expense until you demonstrate your value and potential return.
• Think about how you are different from other professionals who claim the same title and expertise—you are as individual as your fingerprints.
• Identify companies that are a cultural fit for you and add that information to your marketing collateral as keywords.
• Speak more about your potential audience than about yourself. Ask questions, listen more, and address the company’s needs in a way that resonates.
• Include search engine optimization (SEO) terminology in all your collateral.
• Stay updated on changes affecting your profession and industry so you can adjust your sweet spot and remain relevant with your solutions and language.

Your goal is to become a respected thought leader and expert in your profession.

Become the Brand Your Audience Will Want to Hire

Reflect on your skills, interests, and the impact you want to generate. Sometimes, you must redefine your job description and brand yourself around your “why”—the driving force behind what you do. People are motivated more by why they do something than by what they do.

If you let job ads dictate your journey, you may take longer to reach your goals and end up marketing yourself to match outdated job descriptions. You may also look like everyone else applying for the same roles. Instead, identify your sweet spot, reinvent yourself, and avoid playing the job-ad lottery to find your next opportunity.