To Secure a Job, Market Yourself

People often say what you learn in school has little or no application at work. Being an academic person myself, I do not agree with it. The misalignment between what we study at school and what we do at work is perhaps not real but more of an illusion. In school, we learn about theories. When theory fails to turn out the outcome we expect, often it is not the theory at fault but the one applying it failed to understand the theory hence applying it wrongly.

Today, I am going to share about applying the principles of marketing in managing one's career.

PRINCIPLES OF MARKETING

If you have studied Marketing, you probably have heard about the 4Ps, namely, product, price, promotion and placement. Product refers to the product you are selling, price is the price of the product you are going to sell, promotion is to make known the existence of your product and its feature to attract people to buy it and lastly placement is about where to sell your product making it reachable to your customers. The objective of marketing is to get people to buy your product and often to get to be repeated buyers as they learn about your product as they use it and can recognise your brand.

So how does these 4Ps apply to managing one's career?

PRODUCT

When it comes to job, you are the seller and the buyer will be employers. What are they buying? They are buying your labour service of which is determined by your abilities and motivation. From strategy perspective, they are buying your intangible assets that is your knowledge and ability to apply them to perform contributing to the company's performance and knowledge pool.

Just as you will not buy a product that is not value for money, employers will not employ you if you are not value for money. In marketing, we learn that it is important to know what buyers want so as to produce things that they will buy. In the same way, it is important to know what employers want when looking out for a suitable employee.

A key thing that they want from an employee is performance. As mentioned, performance is determined by ability and motivation from employee's side but a third factor is by employer giving employee an opportunity to perform. So from your part, what you can do to increase your attractiveness as a potential good employee is to increase your relevant ability for the job (can be acquired from relevant education and work experience) and show your passion for it.

For fresh graduates, without relevant work experience is already a disadvantage. Even in getting into relevant internship is competitive. To get in, the first step probably will be relevant knowledge by taking relevant modules. Surely you can read library books to acquire relevant head knowledge as well but you cannot really prove you have such knowledge. Employers usually will only meet you face to face to hear your explanations after seeing your resume. Hence, if you have taken relevant modules, you can note that down in your resume or even attach a transcript (some big companies do request for academic transcript). Your own branding is important too. In a world of information asymmetry, we often rely on brand as an indicator of quality. To employers, that will be the university you are from as well as the grades you attained as there are no other signals that they can really rely on at your stage. But note, some students go for easy scoring modules but employers want relevant knowledge. Some may even test you in interview. No point going for irrelevant modules that are easy to score as even if you get into interview stage, you may not be hired anyway. Perhaps you have real abilities but do not have a good university backing or good grades. What you can do is to ask to work for low wage or even free to show that you can perform. The employer will probably hire  later you as he/she has the information that you can perform.

In selecting a job, do not just consider 'now' but also look in far future of how you can acquire your competencies. As I mentioned that relevant work experience is one way, the type of jobs you do now will affect the job opportunities you have in the future. It is not just a job but a learning opportunity. So do consider that.

PRICE

'Price' in this case will be your expected salary. Consumers always want to buy something that is value for money. If you do not have the ability and motivation that signal you are valuable and you demand a high pay, then you will likely not be considered at all.

It is rather unfortunate that private institution graduates generally tend to get lower pay than local university graduates. One of the reasons is brand image. Singapore Universities are highly ranked in the world. Although top universities may not have the best teaching (as professors are too busy with research quite often and care much lesser about the unrewarding teaching), employers still think graduates from top schools must be much brighter. This may be true but it is also because of a lack of information that they rely on branding of the schools as indicator. This issue only applies to fresh graduates. Once you have sufficient work experience, few really bother which university you are from. So if you are from private institution like I do, do not give up. You can get back on track as long as you are determined.

In judging how much pay to expect, you can rely on market salary surveys and see the market rate as a gauge. If you believe you are really capable and can convince the employer, you can ask for higher than market rate. If they are convinced that you are really talented that many employers are after you and that they have the budget, they are likely to be willing to give in to you. If you feel that you are on the losing end, you can minimise the risk of getting even lower pay by being more specific about the amount of your pay. For example, instead of saying $2,500, say $2,450 or $2,550. This will minimise the salary range in the mind of the employer. This is called anchoring bias in psychology. If you give a round figure, the range in the mind of most people will be wider but if you are more specific, it will be narrower. This means that should you say $2,500, that range may be $2,000 to $3,000 in which you may risk getting $2,000 (unlikely to be near $3,000 end if you are not confident of being seen as highly valuable). If you say $2,450, that range may be $2,300 to $2,600. So you can end up getting $2,300 rather than $2,000 as an example.

PROMOTION (Useful as Job Search Tactics)

'Promotion' is about making yourself known. Look at those companies trying to sell their products. You can see their product advertisements on TV, Cinemas, newspapers and even on buses! Often they are targeted also. In a food magazine, you will see food being advertised rather than furniture. This is because people who read food magazine are interested in food! For yourself, it is about increasing your reach to the right employer. There are many areas.

LinkedIn is a good tool. Firstly, the job advertisements are targeted. Meaning if your profile is all about HR, all job advertisements that you see in LinkedIn are HR jobs. Secondly, employers when they post job advertisements, there will be top 20 candidates that will automatically be matched based on what they put in their profile. Employers can also do search for skill set to find people with relevant skills. I find LinkedIn one of the best recruitment tools as a HR practitioner. So do not ignore it.

Other than LinkedIn, you can also use job portals like JobsDB, JobStreet, JobCentral and Monster.com as examples. You can look for jobs there but also can update your profile and make it searchable by employers. When I look for jobs, Monster.com seems to be the medium where most employers saw my resume and called me for interviews. Even reputable companies like Philips Electronics called me up for interview 3 years ago from Monster.com!

You can also go to potential employers' corporate website under their careers page to look for jobs.

You can also look at trade magazines (e.g. HR Asia for HR jobs).

You can also approach recruitment agencies like Recruit Express and Kelly Services. They are free to you but not to employers (which can be expensive). Employers if cannot find candidates and urgently looking for candidates will likely look for them. This is because they are likely to have greater pool of candidates (people go to them, employers also go to them, its like a melting pot).

Consider also about networking or career fairs. You never know that through conversation with a potential employer (or even a stranger you do not know that happened to be a hiring manager or HR), you may capture his/her attention and he/she may invite you to an interview! This is a form of sales promotion.

You can also try walk-in. But frankly speaking, I get very annoyed if people come uninvited unless I am desperate for a candidate cause they disrupt my work.

Referral is a very good tactic. Firstly, if you are referred, it means someone knows you and hence your quality is known. Also, you get to bypass many people, sometimes even before a job vacancy is known to public! Secondly, if someone of high position referred you, HR will likely give more attention to you.

You can also send in a 'cold' email asking for job opportunities!

These are all promotion methods but the content is often your resume! Look at advertisements, they do not dump lots of information but only say what is important and capture attention. That will be the same for a good resume.

The best is to do all the above but there may be time constraint and hence you will have to do targeted promotion. Go to places where your desired career will be located.

PLACEMENT

Placement is not so applicable in this context as you are not a stationary product on a shelf at specific location. Nevertheless, something relevant is consider the location of work. Look beyond your own country and that will increase job opportunities. Instead of waiting for employers to come to you, go to them.


The 4Ps do interact with one another. They come as a package. Do not treat them in isolation. For example, where you plan to work (placement) will affect the salary you get or can expect (price) and your salary is also dependent on your own competencies (product) and how you deliver such signal and message in your resume and interview (promotion).

My next entry will be sharing how I screen resumes back then as HR. Perhaps from there you can see how you can increase your chance of being short-listed by drafting a good resume.