Are you in job hunt mode?
Maybe you recently lost a job or expect cuts to your team. Perhaps you’re seeking new opportunities that fit where you want to go professionally or personally.
Does anyone enjoy job hunting regardless of the circumstances?
A successful job hunt requires you to market yourself. Given your profession, you already know the model — create compelling content that attracts a target audience of new employers.
But it’s not as easy as it seems. You must condense years of knowledge, skills, and experience. Then, you must get your carefully crafted profiles in front of recruiters and continue to position your expertise in the marketplace. Only then can you stand out from the other candidates competing for the role you want.
In an Ask the #CMWorld Community livestream, Work It Daily’s J.T. O’Donnell and Together Digital’s Amy Vaughan shared what recruiters want and the disruptive ways to get on their radar.
Update your job search tools
First, revisit your résumé and LinkedIn profile. Ensure they’re updated, consistent, and precisely targeted to the roles you seek.
If it’s been a while since you last looked for work, you may need to relearn the rules of a productive job search.
Application tracking systems are used by 97.4% of Fortune 500 companies and many small- and medium-sized businesses today. The software can create more accurate candidate profiles and match them to applicants’ work history details.
To accommodate this tech review, optimize your résumé with keywords used in the job posting to improve your application’s chances of moving to the next stage.
Pay attention to formatting and information trends to surpass the digital gatekeepers. Your résumé should be easily skimmed, results-focused, and tailored to the role.
In a related discussion on CMI’s Slack channel, Headstart Copywriting’s Susan Varty shared a résumé template for the current era.
Shown in the image below, it separates information into clear sections:
- About: Introduce yourself, mention the role you seek, and describe your qualifications in a relevant way.
- Career highlights: Craft active statements summarizing the accomplishments you’re most proud of so recruiters can skim the copy and understand who you are and what you can offer.
- Work experience: Rather than list your roles, describe how your work has helped previous employers achieve their business goals.
J.T. says your LinkedIn profile should align with your résumé. “Recruiters pay attention to the résumé and LinkedIn work history section. The information that appears there should be identical. Otherwise, they may be confused about which version is accurate,” she explains.
Stand out with a disruptive job search approach
Amy says recruiters spend only a few seconds reviewing the résumé and cover letters that reach their desks or inboxes.
Given that, J.T. says, demonstrating your personal motivation to do the job for that employer can give you an advantage. That requires conducting a disruptive job search that conveys a relevant connection between your passions and career intentions to employers who stand to benefit.
This intentional and storified approach should work well for content marketers because you already practice it. It also circumvents the gatekeeping systems by giving you a more relatable connection to prospective employers.
J.T. summarizes the disruptive job search process:
- Pinpoint the work you’re most passionate about: Think carefully about the kind of work you want to do, not just where you want to do it. What lights you up? What do people come to you specifically for? Your answer serves as the centering principle for your candidate story.
- Create a list of company targets: Don’t apply for every role that matches your skills and interests. Find 10 to 20 that would genuinely benefit from your unique perspectives and specialized focus.
- Get clear on why you want to work for each company: Saying you hear they’re a great place to work and offer great benefits isn’t enough to prove you understand the business and its goals. What about them have you learned is different and special?
- Make a personal connection: Think about what you can bring to the role at the company. Be specific to illustrate your knowledge of what they do, who their customers are, and how you can contribute to the business outcomes they want to achieve.
- Craft the details into a cover letter: Create a cover letter that speaks to your unique understanding of the business and the distinct value you can contribute. “When you can get that story into someone’s hands at an organization, you’ll be amazed at what can happen,” J.T. says.
(Net)work your story into a job
But you don’t have to wait for a job posting to attract prospective employers’ attention. “People need to meet you and see continuity in what you say and do,” Amy says.
To make this networking and marketing more productive, make the most of your LinkedIn activity. In March 2024, LinkedIn got rid of “creator mode” and opened up the opportunity for all on the platform to use its features.
- Write an about section: Craft your story briefly, highlighting what you would discuss in a cover letter to attract the right attention.
- Create and share relevant content: Think about your specialization areas and speak about them regularly in your LinkedIn feed. Creating new content (or reposting your content on other platforms) on those subjects showcases your expertise.
You can also curate and add commentary to third-party news, articles, videos, and other relevant stories. It shows you’re in touch with what’s happening in that space and have something of value to add to the conversation.
Be sure to post consistently – J.T. recommends at least once a day – to build an audience of followers.
- Incorporate personal passions into your work persona: Attracting an audience with your thought leadership content can help you rank higher on LinkedIn searches and gain the attention of more recruiters. However, since just about any job applicant can position themselves as an expert, Amy suggests taking an extra step to stand out from the pack: Cultivate a personality brand.
If you’re a regular CMI reader, you’re probably familiar with the reasons to build a personal brand (and if not, I’d highly recommend reading Ann Gynn’s definitive post on the topic). However, a personality brand is a bit different.
As Amy explains, job searchers often struggle to associate their passions outside of work with the work they want to be known for. However, tying together those interests in stories can make a person more memorable to recruiters and others who can help advance the job search.
Amy explains what this looks like for her brand: “I talk a lot about groundedness, nature, and empathetic leadership. To me, those things are all tied together because I like to be very grounded in how I lead and very calm in how I approach difficult work situations. Or maybe you are an endurance athlete, and you can build a connection on how your love of endurance sports goes hand in hand with your strong work ethic.”
This personality brand content can make your networking feel more organic. “If you’re reaching out to people in your network just to get a job, they’re going to sniff that out,” Amy says. But if they know you because you’ve shared a relatable story or something of value, they may be more willing to connect with you and help with your search.
Use your content marketing strengths to prove your value to employers
Job hunting is never easy. However, with a more precise job search approach, stories that demonstrate your unique expertise, and ways to create a personal connection, your employment status will change soon. Losing a job never feels good. But with a more precise job search approach, stories that demonstrate your unique expertise, and ways to create a personal connection, your unemployment status won’t last long.
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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute
