Market Yourself!

Market your way to a new job

Personal Marketing Plan – Planning your success

It is never easy to start your job search, particularly if it is a long time since you last searched for a new role. It is so easy to get it wrong through lack of preparation, not knowing where to look for opportunities, having a poor CV, not preparing for interviews well enough or simply not undertaking enough activity.

To be fully effective in your Job Search you will need to develop your Personal Marketing Plan. This will include deciding what you are looking for as well as preparing your CV and getting ready to launch yourself onto the market.

Step One
You need to prepare your CV to ensure that it is in a usable, friendly format to make the right impression. There is no such thing as a perfect CV so don’t try to write one! Think carefully about who will be reading your CV and make it easy for them to find information – what do they want to know as opposed to what do you want to tell them.

Step Two

Deciding what you are looking for; if you do not know then it will be much harder to find it! You need to analyse carefully what you want from your next role and define your criteria:
• The role itself
• The sector you wish to work in
• The type of company – are you a large or small company employee
• The location – decide if you are going to commute, travel or relocate
• Your salary expectations – set a minimum basic salary and minimum benefits package

Step Three

Finding more about your strengths and weaknesses, what you enjoy in a role and what you don't. It is likely that you will be asked questions on your ability and experience at interview so this will help you to prepare. It will also help you with Step Four

Step Four

Prepare your 30 second commercial. Imagine you have 30 seconds to tell a prospective employer what you do and why they should employ you – what would you say? If you are a Manufacturing Manager you might say:
' I am a manufacturing manager in the plastics sector and have ten years experience etc'
or you could say:
'For the last ten years I have helped my company to maximise their manufacturing efficiency and profitability by identifying areas of improvement and developing their processes, helping to take them to number one in the plastics sector'

Which do you think sounds better to a prospective employer and which makes you sound different from everyone else?

Step Five

Implementation; finding the right routes to market to ensure that you are on the radar for all suitable job opportunities. This will include building your off-line profile (through networking and contacting the search firms) and on-line profile to ensure that search firms find you.
Historically around 18% of the workforce changes job every year so there are still plenty of opportunities out there................

For further career advice or If you would like to discuss any aspects of UK or International Search please feel free to call me on 0121 456 7640, or email me at ph@intersearchuk.com. I look forward to hearing from you.

Market Yourself!

Author: Stephanie Jones

About the Author:
More About the Author >>> | My other pages >>>

Page Views: 1738 | Page Ranking: 52
Popular Tags:
Personal Marketing Plan - career guidance

Last Updated: Mar 23rd 2009

Ask Stephanie Jones a Question >>>

Category: Careers [More Categories]

Article Comments / Questions

No comments have been added to this question.
Comment on this Article