To use your accomplishments most effectively, it will be necessary to analyze them to determine which are the most special strengths, or Key Talents, you have to offer an employer. To package yourself properly, you must identify those Key Talents which are the features of your character and personality responsible for the Accomplishments that are the highlights of your career. They are the best qualities you possess as an executive and a manager, and the qualities which will make you look better than all of the other candidates competing for the same job.
What follows is a list of words describing strengths generally attributed to executives, managers and leaders.
To be successful, a good salesman must thoroughly analyze and understand his product. Now that you are a salesperson, you must present your product (YOU) in its most favorable light.
In doing your analysis, follow these steps.
Step Number One
Head the list with those words that describe you. Don't be shy. You possess many of the characteristics mentioned. Go down the list and circle EVERY talent which you feel you possess to a high degree. You should be able to circle half, and maybe more, of the words that describe you.
If your work experience is limited, think of the talents that helped you during your scholastic years. Which KEY TALENTS underscored your successes in athletics, in student politics, or in off campus activities? Those talents are the same factors that will lead to your future successes in the business world.
Step Number Two
Prepare a work sheet that you can use to analyze your accomplishments. Use a lined pad of paper and run the numbers from 1 to 25 down the left-hand side, each numbered line to represent one of your accomplishments.
Step Number Three
Now examine your first accomplishment and ask yourself which talents you made use of to achieve it. On the line next to accomplishment No.1. write in the talents you employed to accomplish whatever you did. For example, a manager's first accomplishment might read:
Directed efforts of 1,200 supervisory and line personnel improving productivity 30% while reducing turnover 50%.
Which talents did the manager utilize to achieve those excellent results? He might write on line No. 1:
Administration, Initiative, Leadership, Production skills, Problem solving, Perseverance, Motivational skills.
The same person's second most important accomplishment may have been:
Negotiated purchase agreements for raw materials and purchased parts, saving lead time and $450,000 annually.
Which words might go on line No. 2? Perhaps the following:
Determination, Negotiating skills, Resourceful, Costing skills, Aggressive, Purchasing, Decisive.
Five, six, eight, or more talents probably support each of your accomplishments. When you have finished analyzing each of your 25 accomplishments you will then have a work sheet crowded with words. You will have recorded between 150 and 200 instances of talents you called on at different times. As you might expect, several of your greater talents will repeat many times.
Step Number Four
From all of those words on your work sheet, on a separate piece of paper write down the ten to twelve talents that contributed most frequently to your accomplishments. Those are the strengths you have been drawing on most heavily. Those are the Key Talents that have contributed to your past success, and those same abilities are the ones that you will use effectively in the future.
Step Number Five
Now, think long and hard about those ten to twelve talents you have used repeatedly and from them select the six, seven or eight talents most instrumental in the greatest successes you have enjoyed. These abilities are the qualities that make you unique. These are the major selling points you should stress when you offer your services to your next employer. These are the strengths that served you well in the past and the talents that will make you a valuable and productive person on your next job.
These strengths, these abilities, need to be woven into your resume, your letters and your personal presentation.
You have now made a major discovery about your value as an executive and a manager. The six or seven Key Talents you have identified are the words you might want on your tombstone by which future generations will remember you.
If you were a package on a supermarket shelf, your Key Talents would be the words on the label. Your Key Talents are the essence of what you are selling. They are the most powerful selling points for your product: YO U.
How to Use Your Key Talents
How will you use this list of Key Talents you have now identified? You will use them in all your written and spoken communications and presentations. You will feature them in your resume. You will weave them into all your letters soliciting job interviews. You will emphasize them during all your interviews.
In Your Resume
For example, as an advertising executive you may have identified the following characteristics as the most significant in shaping your career:
Persuasive, Communication, Enthusiasm, Resourceful, Aggressive, Creative, Motivational.
All the above talents should be included in your resume's Qualifications Statement supporting your objective of an Advertising Manager's position. Your resume might read:
OBJECTIVE: Advertising Manager
QUALIFICATIONS: Strong communication abilities supported by enthusiastic and persuasive application of word skills and other motivational techniques during twelve years of increasing responsibility in aggressive and creative promotion of consumer goods.
In Your Correspondence
Your Key Talents should be featured in every letter you write to solicit a job interview. These skills are your salient selling points and your most powerful job hunting ammunition. Use them.
In response to any ad, the above mentioned advertising executive will want to weave the same points into the first two or three paragraphs of his letter: He is an excellent communicator. He is creative and resourceful. He approaches problems with enthusiasm. He knows how to motivate clients and the client's customers. He should emphasize that he is aggressive in pursuing goals and that he understands and knows how to implement the fundamental purpose of advertising which is to persuade a prospective purchaser to buy the advertiser's products. It should not be too difficult to express all of the preceding points in a convincing manner. After all, your main Accomplishments were all based on your repeated use of your greatest strengths, your Key Talents.
In Your Interviews
You have read how to use your Key Talents in your written materials. However, of even greater importance is the way you should refer to these strengths during your interviews. A key tactic for controlling job interviews - and the more you control them, the more successful they will be - is to develop a Thirty Second Speech to answer the question, "Tell me about yourself."
Once you have prepared your Thirty Second Speech, you will use it in every interview. Even if the interviewer doesn't ask you, in so many words, to tell him about yourself, at your first opportunity you should volunteer the Thirty Second Speech anyway.
Sticking with the advertising executive, his Thirty Second Speech might sound something like:
"The many successes I've had during my career in advertising have depended to a great extent on my ability to tackle problems with a combination of enthusiasm and aggressiveness. I have a creative and resourceful mind. This, coupled with my ability to communicate effectively with people at all levels, has enabled me to put together several teams and motivate them to produce promotional and advertising programs which have succeeded through their persuasive impact on the different levels of trade between the manufacturer and the ultimate consumer."
Of course, the advertising executive will have to work on this speech so that it will sound natural and conversational. He will practice his speech over and over and rehearse it with a friend until the words are spoken in a convincing manner and sound as if it were the first time they were being uttered.
The Key Talents are all in there. These are his greatest strengths and he wants to introduce them into the interview as early as possible. The only things he wants to focus on in his job interviews are the superior abilities he is offering and how those abilities can benefit the interviewer and his organization.
