Marketing Rules that Apply to Job Search

I really like the CBC radio show “The Age of Persuasion” with Terry O’Reilly. It’s a 30 minute show about marketing... everything you might ever have wondered about marketing. This week’s show was about some rules or axioms of marketing titled “According to Hoyle”. I would like to cover a couple of points that was made that should help a job seeker present--AKA market--themselves.
A 30 second response is about 85 words. When answering a question, holding to people’s attention span will work in your favor. Our attention span is about 30 seconds. The average length of a TV ad is 30 seconds and I would argue that is this not a coincidence. When answering interview questions and taking two, three or even four minutes you’ll probably loose your audience and not make the point you were aiming to.

Make the product the hero of the ad. When telling a success story, make yourself the center of the story. Talk about what you did, the problem you solved. If you led the team, talk as if you were the team. They are going to hire you, not the team.

Advertising shouldn’t sell the product, it should sell the benefit. A benefit is something that people want, hiring managers want what you can do for them. Highlight and promote what is unique about you. What you do better than anyone else and then find the company, department or manager that can utilize that benefit. Stay away from job titles, talk about the work you perform better than anyone else.
Job search is sales, and marketing helps the sale. The interview is were the sale is made and communicating the power of the benefits you bring to the table is paramount. Go out there and sell yourself in 85 word responses, showing yourself as the hero and all the benefit of hiring you.