What is Your Marketing Plan?

Recently, I was talking with a friend in Second Life who is an out-of-work psychologist, due to a recent downsizing. I offered to help to her, having helped others and having had outplacement training and experience in job hunting over the past 10-15 years. When I asked her about her marketing campaign/plan, her response was "I am not a product [to be marketed]." I asked if she dresses nicely for interviews. Of course she said "yes." I tried to get her to see that dressing nicely for an interview is a form of marketing herself.

Her response illustrates the unfortunate thinking of a lot of job seekers who "just want to get a job." She didn't understand that job hunting is all about branding and marketing (so that you can get the job doing what you love). While marketing language is most often used to talk about products and companies, WE are now (and really always have been) our own companies/products, working ultimately to make a profit---unless living under a bridge appeals to you.

According to Dictionary.com, MARKETING is "The activities of a company associated with buying and selling a product or service. It includes advertising, selling and delivering products to people." When we are looking for a job, we are marketing ourselves, our skills, and our accomplishments. No one would send a hand-written resume on loose-leaf paper to a potential employer (though having worked at a large copy chain, I can tell you this really has happened), and no one would go to an interview in a t-shirt and shorts (unless you were trying to get a lifeguard job). Yet most job seekers don't spend very much time on preparing the very product they are trying to sell---themselves.

Since job hunting is an activity undertaken to reach a specific goal (getting a job!), we must plan how to market ourselves through crafting resumes and wearing appropriate clothing, but most importantly, we must prepare what to say, what accomplishments and skills to highlight in a cold call or interview, and how to answer predictable interview questions. As the old adage goes, "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail." Maybe it's just me, but I hate to fail.