Job Application
Job Application Using Marketing
Techniques
If you are
jobseeker looking for a step by step process of
writing a compelling job application that will lead to a
interview this is where you need to
be. You will find valuable job application writing tips and techniques to help you create a
message with irresistible appeal to your target market.
Learn tricks of the trade so powerful they will
put you way ahead of the competition.
The information in this section is unique to
Pro-Active Human Resource Management. It is
for serious job seekers. To be read with
Application Letter-
Advertised Job
which is also invaluable
.
A.
Firstly your
job application is the letter that accompanies your resume when applying for
a job. It is a letter of application, it is not just a cover letter,
It is a job application set out in letter form. It is a sales letter.
Your job
application or any employment related letter, should follow
the same sales and marketing principles used to launch a new product onto the
market.
In job search you are the product and the product does not sell
itself.
Your job application needs to convince an
employer to hire you based on your own uniqueness - what you, the product, can do for him/her
that no-one else will.
He/She will want to know "what is in it for me?" This is a typical buying
response that sales people need to be able to answer, and so will you if you
read on.
This idea is not rocket science, and it has been around
forever. What is probably new to you is that you can apply the
concept to yourself. You need to market yourself in your
job application. You are the product and you need to reach the
buyer - the employer.
Develop a
job search self marketing
plan
A job search self marketing plan
can be based on, product, price and distribution, and products will be sold
based on
features and benefits. This principle can be applied to your job
search activities - to write a resume and in all employment related
activities - cold calling and networking, for example, and especially in a
written job application.
Product:
Your skills,
knowledge abilities, qualifications, experience, attributes, values etc that
make you the person you are.
Price:
Know your
worth.
How much are your skills/experience worth in the job market?
(Salary surveys/research)
Distribution:
Here
you must determine how you are going to reach your target market and write your
marketing or action plan.
See
Employment and Opportunities
and
Action Plan
How do you share
yourself around to people whose needs you can answer?
We looked at Distribution in the "overview of
recruitment methods,"
See
How to Look For Work
Now we look at
promotion through
written communication.
If you can answer the buyer's needs you are successfully promoting yourself
as a product.
Your job application must address the employers needs by clearly defining the features
and benefits of the product - you.
Feature describes what the product
does or is used for.
Benefit is what each of the features mean to the
prospective buyer. What are they getting out of it or what is in it for
them? Benefit is also an "advantage."
As stated, in job search your features are your skills, knowledge abilities, qualifications, experience,
attributes, values etc that make you the person you are. An employer will be asking for all or most of these
if you are targeting the right market / employment areas. (distribution
channels). In your application letter you
must state that you possess them, and then show how they can benefit
/ or be advantageous to the employer.
Outcomes / Results
Benefits can be turned into an outcome or a result when you write both your
resume and your job application.
This concept may be difficult to grasp, however as you read on you will come
to some examples.
In some cases when you have no outcomes to contribute if
you are a new jobseeker or do manual work, for example, you can stick
with just features and benefits.
Most resumes, especially higher level resumes, will just use the outcome
or result without referring to the feature. An outcome usually
involves something that is measurable. For the purpose of clarity,
and as a theory, this section will concentrates on using both features and
benefits. In some cases when you have no outcomes to contribute you can
stick with just features and benefits.
Once you are clear on
features and benefits, and within the limits of your experience, you should try to
find features and benefits when writing resume statements. You may be able
to turn many of these statements into results (outcome statements).
Then you can also use them in your job application. Although It
is not always possible as you will see when you read on and look at the
examples.
-
If
you can't find a benefit or outcome, at least
show how you utilised the skill and to what level.
-
If you have a high level of
skill/experience and your resume has been prepared by a
professional writer,
your resume will have at least 60% outcome based statements.
Use
Newsletter
Archives to see how you can
advance in your career and gain some achievements/outcomes and how to
keep a record of your outcomes for your next resume. You will have them next time you write a resume.
Examples
This is a typical professional management resume benefit
statement that can be used in a job application.
(if appropriate to the skill or experience in the criteria)
"Saved $300,00 over two years (Benefit) by renegotiating
building leases for all properties." (feature - negotiating skill
utilised)
However, as we will see further on, your benefit
statement in your job application letter must not be exactly the same wording as in your
resume, but the concept of a benefit statement is the same.
Hundreds of resumes show skills written in one to
three words, and the jobseeker makes the same mistake in their job application. See skills such as:-
Computer skills - Excel and MYOB
Merchandising
Performance Appraisals
Prepared rosters
Repaired and maintained mining
equipment
Attended meetings
Health and safety
Accounts
Stocktaking
Assisted the store manager
Llibrarian duties
Liaison with other departments
Q. What does
this tell the employer?
A. Nothing.
Lets try it again and
expand upon these meaningless
resume / job application phrases using features and benefits.
Some contain features (or tasks which represent your
skills and ability to carry them out) and
benefits. Other phrases may reflect how your skills were used and others have the potential to add a
result or outcome, that is if the applicant can
demonstrate how it benefited the company in measurable outcomes, such as
$1,000 cost saving per month.
This technique might be
too advanced for some jobs, and other applicants may not have this
type of information in their job history.
See the
Newsletter Archive section and find out how to build up
a portfolio of achievements and projects in your next job.
To test benefit statements the marketing method is to say
"so what". Only when the writer satisfies the "so what test" can the writer
claim a benefit.
The statements below are taken verbatim from past
resumes and can be used in a job application as long as they are not in your
resume. Past tense and present tense are retained in original form as many
people were still employed when the resume was written. Further, statements
will vary depending on the level of the job seekers responsibility and
experience. An executive's statements will be stronger and more
sophisticated. A blue collar worker's statements will be different
again. This is just a guide.
AGAIN: Never use the same words
in your job application that you have used in
your resume.
Computer skills - Excel and MYOB
·
Use excel spreadsheets and MYOB accounting
package to organise account and job orders, to save time and increase
productivity.
·
Extensive use of Excel spreadsheets
for opening and maintaining customer profiles. (No benefit statement
needed - as the emphasis is on using Excel unless you have very fast data
entry skills).
·
Apply merchandising skills to constantly
review and change displays to maximise impulse buying and increase profits.
(Current tense)
Performance Appraisals
·
Implemented KPI indicators and conducted performance appraisals
in order to measure performance and identify areas of staff development,
training and discipline.
Note: Here you could have the final benefit or measurable outcome, but
most companies do not follow up and measure these type of changes.
Once again if you want to advance in your career you could put something in
place yourself to give these figures.
See if you can recognise
a feature and benefit.
(These can be used in your resume and job application ).
Prepared rosters
·
Reduced
the wages budget by $120,000 in 2005 by restructuring rosters
to coincide with
high demand periods.
Repaired and
maintained mining equipment
· Repaired, overhauled and serviced a range of mobile and stationary
and heavy industrial mining plant and equipment to ensure proper
performance and safety
to meet company standards.
Attended meetings
· Contributed to
weekly management meetings, and verbally presented
forecasting sheets to the duty managers, in order to assist them to make
decisions on staffing levels and general catering preparation.
Health and
Safety
·
Supervised the storage of
equipment to ensure occupational health and
safety principles were
adhered to in order to reduce risk (and save the
company
money on compensation payments).
Accounts
·
Maintained both accounts payable and
receivable ensuring all accounts paid within suppliers terms and conditions
to avoid excess fees for late payment.
Stocktaking
·
Implemented
stock control for 70 departments, sourcing new product lines to replace low
profit generating items resulting in faster turnover of stock - directly
contributing to higher sales and profit margin by 24%.
Assist the Store Manager in the
office (Present tense)
·
Calculate and prepare monthly and seasonal
accruals for the store manager for purchases between $65,000 to $100,000
each month with 100% accuracy.
Library duties - (This is just one of the "library duties" expanded upon
in this particular resume).
·
Successfully applied for funding to connect
the library computers to the Internet and to purchase new computers to support
the new technology.
Liaison with other departments
·
Relationship
building with other relevant company personnel for
communication of
competitor activity, credit, inventory management and
market intelligence.
The next step is to incorporate
these marketing techniques into your resume or job application / employment letter.
How to write and set out an
employment / job application
Plan your
letter. Begin outlining your
letter with the end in mind.
The most important step in writing
job application letters is in the planning. Know what you want to accomplish and keep this
in mind. Your goal will be different for each type of letter. It
was stated in
Job Application - Letters, each
recruitment method will require you
to communicate in writing to using vastly
different employment or job application letters.
As stated, you need to be clear on:-
Go through this exercise on paper and ensure it
answers all these questions.
Research
Before
you can write your dynamic job application letter you must research the company so that you
can clearly see how you can write your job application letter to meet their
needs.
By conducting research into the company the applicant can also give
examples of any other experience, knowledge or skill relevant to the job that has not been advertised.
This is called "value adding
See
example
letter
in Sample Job Applications which takes you step by step through the
process of planning and writing your letter
for an advertised position.
Any formal business letter,
whether it is for a marketing letter or job application, has a beginning, a middle
and an end.
The
beginning of the job application
Begin with the end in mind. What is your goal of your
letter?
The beginning of the letter (if for an advertised position), is used to state the
position you are applying for and is reserved for the impact statement - the opening statement
or headline sentence.
In
a cold calling or networking letter it will include a reference to the
person who introduced you to the reader, or the reason why you are writing.
The middle of the job application
In marketing, this is the "interest" section. This section is used to address the employers needs and
demonstrate that the applicant has all the criteria the employer requires.
Don't be put off if you haven't got all the criteria. (See further on). Personal attributes
play a big part in the selection process.
This
can be up to three short paragraphs or
preferably, about 5 bullet points. If you are writing an application letter in
response to an advertised position, the length depends on how
many criteria
the employer has requested. Spend a lot of time making this information short and
precise.
Cold calling and
networking letters must demonstrate how they can contribute to the organisation
and this can only be determined after researching the company.
The end of
the job application letter
In marketing terms, the
end of your application letter is the
desire statement. In sales terms you now want to close the sale.
To do this you, the applicant, should have built up sufficient interest so
that the buyer (the employer) will want to meet you
to (the desire) to see if you are what the company needs, and ultimately will make a job
offer. This is where you can "add value" to you job application.
Note:
In job search the goal is to get an interview so the applicant
still needs to ask for an
interview in their job application letter or a chance to meet face to face.
Go to
Application for
an advertised job
for more information on the beginning the middle and the end.
Do not
be put off if you do not has 100% of the employer's criteria. Providing you
meet at the very least 75% of the criteria and are prepared to learn
the skills they require, have a go. Attributes and references
can often influence the employer. Further, knowing about the company
and being able to relate to these skills you do not have will assist
you to address them in the job application letter. You will see how they fit into
your job and you may have done something that requires the same type
of processes or knowledge.
Develop a plan to write your job application
Analyse
what you have. Can any of this combined information be summed up
into an
opening statement
(see below) Your benefit statement is probably in your resume if it is
outcome based. As stated earlier, the middle of the road jobs may
find this task a bit more difficult. Work with what you have.
Once again, don't repeat the resume.
In order to
produce a winning application letter that will land you your dream job,
you need to read all 5 sections on letter writing.
In addition to this section, these are:-
Recommended Resources
As stated, there are many resources you can use that show you how to write an effective job application
letter. This skill will not be wasted and may be considered as professional development. Some
application letter writing software you may like to own is
Amazing Cover
Letters Creator. If you are
writing a lot of letters this resource will suit you. These letters must be customised,
and this is a feature of the software and can be stored into a template as a lot of
the information is generic.
A
Killer Secret To Get Your Letter
Read
Jimmy Sweeney reveals the secret technique to getting your
job application letter read by the employer/Recruitment Manager. This cover letter
technique, when used properly, practically guarantees that he or she will
stay with you till the last line of your cover letter, article, or report.
http://www.proactivehrm.com/JobSearch/Marketing_Techniques.html
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