Differentiation—Critical to Your Job Search
In today’s job market, with competition at an all time high for every opportunity, differentiation is critical. Differentiation is your ability to “differentiate” or—make yourself distinct—from all the other candidates.
There are two places where you need to differentiate yourself:
- In your application—so you get an interview, and
- in the interview—so you get an offer.
Every person is unique and this has become the focus on personal branding that has saturated the job search market. For the job search, I suggest taking the concept to a higher level. Knowing your personal brand is not enough for the job search. Each jobseeker has to be able to articulate how their uniqueness translates into value for a potential empoyer.
You ask, “How?”
Many people confuse differentiation with their brand, which include their skills and may also include their experience. However, the essence of differentiation is about your personal attributes. It is your unique personal attributes, applied to the specific problem that you will solve when you are hired for that position that will help to differentiate you. That one concept, expressed clearly and succinctly on your resume is key to getting an interview.
Remember, if you have an interview, the hiring professionals already believe you can do the job. If they didn’t believe that, why would they be interviewing you? So during the interview, it’s important to spend time discussing your unique value rather than talking about your skills and experience. Every person being interviewed for the position has the skills and experience needed to do the job.
Differentiation is at the heart of success for Forward Motion clients. It all starts with the FM Differentiation Workshop..
