Remember, You’re Not A Robot!

I have a fairly simple question for you – what is the experience of working with you? It is a fairly fundamental one for people who are looking for work.  Another way of phrasing it is, what would a potential company experience if they were to employ you?  As I say, it’s not something that people pay enough attention to.  It also cuts both ways – what would your experience be working at company x?

Quite often the major problem with people looking for work is that they don’t know how to market themselves. They are more than competent enough to do a role, but the way they present themselves to potential employers doesn’t make the most of their abilities.  One of the main reasons is that they talk about things which simply aren’t that relevant to the job they are going for now.  The “So What?” question should always be asked when talking about  something on your CV or when mentioning your capabilities to an employer.  Why should they care?  What has what you have achieved in previous roles got to do with what they are looking for?  That should be the first step in appraising how to contact a company to look for any opportunities.  See if what you have to offer is a good match for what they are looking for, and if it is, make sure you get that across to them.  But one way of making yourself stand out is to get them to see the person behind the achievements.

So it’s not just a case of what you have achieved.  It’s also about how you achieved it.  What is your personal style?  Your potential employers are going to be employing a person, not a robot.  So give them an indication of what your personal way of going about things.  Have you got a calm, understated style that brings out the best in people below you.  Are you more extravert and action orientated and like to be very much in control.  When you think about bosses you’ve worked for, whether you have got on with them or not has not just been down to the results they have got.  It has also been about their style in managing you.

A useful anacronym for describing the experience of working with you is STAR.  This stands for:

• Situation
• Task
• Action
• Result

What was the general situation at work, and the particular task in hand that needed sorting?  What action did you specifically take?  Not the action taken by the team as a whole, or other department members.  But what action did you personally take?  And  as mentioned above, this includes your personal way of doing things.   Then the final part is what results were achieved as a result of the actions you took.

So, remember, when  you are contacting firms to look for work….you’re a human being, not a robot!