candidate for the position. But in the first couple of rounds of evaluation, it is
not about finding the best candidate – it is about getting rid of the garbage
and narrowing the field down to the 10 who are potential interview material.
The trick to getting to the interview round is to stand out and be memorable.
If you think everyone has put in the time to properly brand themselves, this is
not true. Most don’t spend the time, or have the knowledge, to create a
statement and therefore just skip it and put something at the top of their
resumé that is the desperate equivalent of “hire me, I need a job.”
How do you stand out? What makes you better than 50 other people with the
same education and experience as you have? The only way to set yourself
apart from the competition is through personal branding. This includes the
“elevator pitch of you” that, in less than 60 seconds, convinces others you are
worth their time and attention.
Let me tell a short story from my experience of how tough it is in the job
market to get noticed. My wife used to work for a company that needed to fill
a position within the organization. They placed an ad in the local newspaper,
a paper with a readership of about 100 000. Within a matter of days, they had
applications from hundreds of job seekers. The number was so overwhelming
that those responsible complained; “How can we possibly read through all the
applications?” The boss of the department just smiled, took a handful of job
applications, and threw them in the trashcan as everyone looked on. Shocked,
one person spoke up and said, “What are you doing?”
His reply? “Those people had bad luck. We don’t want anyone in our
company with bad luck, do we?”
This is, of course, an extreme example and one that is impossible to fight
against. But what you can fight against is the rapid assessment and dismissal
of your application from the pool by clearly standing out.