Stories about being in the right place at the right time are all right and luck does play a major part in one's fortune, but you have to make that luck. A famous adage says, "Luck is where preparation meets opportunity." Marketing yourself well helps create that opportunity.
So what really is marketing yourself and how do you go about it? What are its benefits and how do you market yourself to your contacts? When you are marketing yourself, think of yourself as a product and think of your strengths and attributes and think of what they will bring to your prospective workplace.
By marketing yourself you are presenting yourself as a more attractive candidate. When any of your contacts hear of an opening that suits your preferences, the first person they will think of is you. You will be the first to hear of any emerging opportunity, because your efficient marketing has registered on their minds and they will think of you first.
The frame of reference isn't a complete product description of all you are and all you have to offer; it's the tightest, most abbreviated version of you that is still able to sketch a market identity. It's an essential first step, not the last word. When someone on the commuter train tells you, "I've been Director of New Product Development of a billion-dollar multinational chemical manufacturer for 10 years," she's inviting you to pigeonhole her in terms of generic categories. Her frame of reference tells you she's in a line management job, not a staff job; that she's in chemicals, not pharmaceuticals or consumer products; that she has functioned long and successfully in a large, bureaucratic organization; and that she's an experienced manager and not a freshly minted MBA.
Suppose, however, that she was in the running for a new position where every one of her competitors was basically like her: an experienced new product development director in a major corporation. Now the question becomes: What traits, features and accomplishments distinguish her from other, similar people? In this context, her answer to a "Tell me about yourself" question demands a much greater level of detail. Without some intensive, structured self-assessment before the job search begins, and before networking commences in earnest, you cannot hope to present a clear, confident, and controlled rendition of "Me, the Product."
Ask Not What Others Can Do for You
This is a good time to clarify who's responsible for what in the networking process. Through networking, you can acquire information that will help focus, clarify and reality-test your career or job search objectives, but you must understand that it isn't the duty of networking contacts to substitute their judgment for your own self-analysis.
The initial responsibility for figuring yourself out is yours, and you should come to your networking contacts prepared to say, in effect, "I've done my homework. I'd welcome your thoughts on whether this is realistic and, if so, how I might best translate my objectives into appropriate employment." This is not the same as saying, "Gee, Charlie, I'm utterly lost. What should I do with my life?"
There are a number of approaches to conducting a detailed, objective vocational assessment. You can stand in front of your bathroom mirror and shout, "Mirror, mirror, tell me true, what in God's name shall I do?" You can buy any of a number of self-assessment books or one of the increasingly popular software programs that will work you through a series of questions or exercises intended to get you to look systematically at your strengths, preferences and weaknesses.
Such solo approaches are subject to two major problems: (1) "garbage in, garbage out" and (2) over idealization, sometimes called "kidding yourself" or "reinventing yourself". Both of these forms of distortion can be diminished by enlisting some form of outside help such as a cool-headed spouse or a significant other, a trusted friend, a support group, or a professional career counselor to serve as an objective sounding board.
The self-assessment process can be entirely subjective and qualitative, or it can include administration and feedback from a variety of standardized instruments that measure everything from intelligence and personality preferences to interest patterns and operative value systems.
Assessing your worth both from your point of view and your eventual employers starts with understanding what you have to sell, which is your particular mix of skills and abilities. From there on, your personal qualities will determine whether you'll enjoy a certain kind of job or work setting and whether a particular employer will be comfortable and will feel a sense of rapport with you.
Getting enough distance from yourself to develop an objective personal perspective isn't an easy task. A lot of components combine to determine your individual mix of personal qualities: your gene pool; your social, religious, economic milieu and the values and biases to which you were exposed while growing up; major life events, either positive or negative; your role models; the expectations of your family, friends, peers and colleagues; your operative values; and your own unique biography. Without umpteen years of psychoanalysis, it may seem impossible to get a handle on all that makes up who you are.
How can your assessment information be organized and presented for the best possible communication to networking contacts and potential employers? In response to "Tell me about yourself-in detail," too many people lump distinctly different kinds of attributes together in a kind of undifferentiated hash. You'll be far clearer, and feel far more in control, if you learn to keep your ingredients separate.
