Marketing Tip: How Finding a Job and Finding a Customer Require Similar Skills

by  Victoria Ring---Bio

This past week I hired a new Personal Assistant (who is doing a great job by the way) named Carol Suzuki.  During the process of reading resumes, conducting pre-interviews over the phone and actually scheduling several on-site interviews I noticed the majority of people are actually bad marketers and they probably never realized it.

Now you are probably saying to yourself: "What does looking for a job have to do with marketing my business?"  A great deal!  Marketing is marketing regardless if you are running a business or looking for a job.  When you look for a job you read the want ads and select specific jobs that you want to apply for.  This is the same skill used when you target market customers for your business. You look for companies that will be interested in your services.  However, about 25% of the people who faxed their resume to me for the Personal Assistant position only had experience working for Pizza Hut as a delivery driver or other unrelated clerical experience.  That would be like me sending a clerical resume to a trucking firm who was looking for over-the-read drivers. The trucking company would wonder "why" I sent them a clerical resume, just like I wondered why a delivery driver would send a resume to me for a clerical position.

Another mistake people made was in not customizing the "Objective" on their resume to the position they were applying for. One lady said her objective was "to work for a medical supply company."  Yet, she was applying for a position working for an author.  How does this bad job hunting skill relate to marketing your business?  You may not be sending companies a resume with an "Objective" on it but you do send companies information about your services and the benefits your services will provide to their bottom line.  Do you adjust your information to fit the specific needs of the company you are sending your information to?  If not, you are making the same type of mistake the applicant did who faxed her resume to me and said she wanted to work for a medical supply company.

And here is a really funny one:  A lady faxed me a 1-page, handwritten sheet of paper that said "The movers dropped my computer and I no longer have a resume.  Please call me. It would be nice to only have 1 boss."  After spending several minutes laughing I couldn't understand how anyone would have the nerve to fax something like this to a company expecting to get a job.  My first thought was -- this person has no initiative to solve problems and present her best.  She could have went to a library or her friend's house and typed out a new resume.  But she was lazy and didn't care.  Why would any employer hire anyone like this?

Unfortunately, there are people who do the same thing when they own a business. They may not fax a handwritten resume to a company and tell them they don't have one -- but some people do not take the initiative to put forth that extra step to show a company their work ethics. The companies who pay you for your services are your customers.  You should always be conscious of their needs and work hard to meet them. Would you go to work for an employer and try and tell him or her how to run their business?  Of course not.  Do you like someone to come along and tell you how to run your business or try and change the way you do things?  Of course not.  But there are some business owners who don't think about the needs of their customers.  They are looking to make money and satisfy their own goals.  The lady who sent me the resume could have cared less about what I needed in a Personal Assistant.  The only concern she showed was for herself when she said "It would be nice to only work for 1 boss."  That statement shows NO interest in our company needs -- only her own.  Naturally she was not called for an interview.

In the past when I began studying the art of marketing, I read many reports and articles that were directed toward helping people find the perfect job. I found many of the skills taught in these articles could actually be used as marketing ideas for building my own company.  Below are a few places on the internet that provide good job search skill information:

http://hotjobs.yahoo.com/careertools
http://www.lifeworktransitions.com/tips/tips1.html
http://www.statistics.com/content/jobtips.html

or go to any search engine and type in the search words "job search tips" to find a lot more.