Gary Wills WORKSEARCH: Selling Yourself To An Employer

Not "selling" in the traditional sense of having slick, manipulative patter, razzle-dazzle responses for every time you're told "no" and 87 high-pressure closes. Those tactics and techniques have been abandoned by all but the most backwards salespeople today (in most industries, anyway).

By selling yourself, I mean thinking first about the employer's needs and expectations and figuring out how you can create value for their organization. Selling yourself means tapping into the employer's aspirations and reducing their anxieties. It's communicating as vividly and credibly as possible how the employer will be better off by having you as part of their team.
 

Every day, thousands of bright, capable people go on employment interviews without having put any thought into the needs of the organization they're looking to join or how they could help that organization deliver value to their customers. They get all dressed up and walk right in to the organization knowing little or nothing about it -- what they do, what they need, even who their customers are.

You may have done this yourself. I know I used to. Sometimes we still got hired, somehow. But times have changed. Competition is fierce, and the top 5 percent of interviewees are much more knowledgeable and well-prepared than ever before.

The old approaches of winging it and hoping for the best, memorizing a half-dozen responses from interview books, or even enumerating your skills don't get the job done any more. Usually they just lead to a blown opportunity ... with a lot of effort spent in getting past all the hurdles leading up to the interview wasted by a lack of preparation for the key face-to-face meeting...