Some examples: You think of yourself as industrious. Fine, but present yourself as someone who will "stay at the desk until midnight if that's what it takes to finish a project." You think of yourself as an organized person. Fine, again. Present yourself as somebody who can "keep things on track no matter how hectic the going gets." Know what you can offer and what you can do. Present these qualities in the context of what you think your would-be employers need. That's the basic principle at work here. It isn't so much what you have going for you that will get you hired; it's your ability to make your would-be employer believe that what you have is what he or she needs.
It Starts with Credentials
The first thing most companies want to know about you is what you've already accomplished -- Your track record; your credentials. In most job situations, for better or worse, nothing will have more bearing on whether or not you get hired.
It's easy to figure out why this has to be. Put yourself in the shoes of the person looking to fill a job. There is no pure science of hiring, no way of ever knowing for sure if the candidate is going to work out. Hiring somebody is a judgment call. Some executives call it a craps shoot. You hire the person you think is the best prospect, and you expect to be wrong some of the time. Indeed, one of the most troubling problems in industry today is the vast amounts of time and money wasted on the training and breaking in of employees who don't pan out.
So, if you are sitting on the other side of the desk doing the interviewing instead of being interviewed, you're looking mainly for assurances that the person can do the job. And what could be more reliable indication of this than the fact that the person has already done this job, or a similar job, and done it well?
Credentials, keep in mind, represent what you've done, not what you think you can do. Any job you've actually held is a credential, although not necessarily a credential that will mean something in a specific job situation. Advanced degrees are credentials. So are licenses. Anything concrete that in and of itself indicates you've done something can be seen as a credential.
The importance of credentials will vary enormously from job to job and from company to company. Generally speaking, the bigger and more bureaucratic a company is, the more important credentials become. Using credentials as the prevailing criteria in hiring reduces the need for people to make decisions based on intangibles. It gets people off the hook. A personnel executive who works for one of the major weekly news magazines admits that no matter how good a writer a candidate may be, he, as the personnel executive, is reluctant to set up interviews for that candidate unless the writer has already "proven himself' somewhere. "If I recommend somebody without great credentials and this person doesn't work out," he says, "I'm under the gun to justify the decision. But if the person has credentials, I can always say, 'Well, he or she looked great on paper.'"
So how do you get around credentials if you don't have them? In some cases, you don't. You accept the fact that in certain situations, if your background doesn't meet the specifications a company has set down, your chances are slim-regardless of how well you might in fact be able to do the job. You're in the same position as a highly intelligent high school student who's having trouble getting into college because of a poor performance on the SAT exams. You look elsewhere.
Often, though, you can get around the credentials bind. First of all, learn to differentiate between a hard and a flexible credentials policy. If a job ad calls for an "absolute minimum of five years experience" in a particular job, you can still get a hearing if your background is reasonably close to this. But you have more flexibility when the requirements are somewhat vaguer-using terms like "strong" or "extensive" experience.
Falsifying credentials is never a good idea. Apart from the inherent immorality and illegality of it, credentials are the easiest thing to check up on. If you lack credentials but feel you have the ability to do a particular job, it is best to be scrupulously honest in your resume, and then call attention to your ability in the covering letter.
But, again, a credential has to reflect accomplishment. Let's say you're applying for a job as an advertising salesperson on a magazine. The requirement here is "at least two years experience on a magazine." You've just graduated from college so you have no experience, but you sold space for your college newspaper.
You could say, in the letter that accompanies your resume: "I know I have the ability to sell advertising space." But this is not a credential, it's a claim. You could also say: "I sold advertising space for my college newspaper for two years." This is a credential, but not a very strong one. Or you could also say, assuming it's the truth: "In the two years that I sold advertising space for my college newspaper, ad revenues increased by nearly 100 percent." Now that's a credential.
The rule here is simple. When you are coming up with a list of your own credentials, and certainly when you're presenting those credentials to a would-be employer, be as specific as possible and stress the accomplishment aspect of each credential.
One last point credentials hold more sway with larger companies than with smaller companies. But if you can gain access to the ultimate hiring authority in a large company, you'll have a much stronger chance of getting some credentials waived. Sometimes it's worth a shot.
