Value That Employers Will Pay for

Written by Danny Iny Jun 07, 2009 www.jobsarticle.com

Think back to times when someone has tried to sell you something. If they were a good salesperson, they were able to concisely and convincingly demonstrate to you how their product or service can have a positive influence in your life. It probably didn’t even really feel like you were being sold they just told you about some amazing value, and created the opportunity for you to buy.

Selling yourself to an employer should be about demonstrating that same kind of value: taking stock of your skills and strengths and highlighting the positive impact you’ll make for the organization you're applying to. Your contribution to a company is a service that you are marketing this is where you get to be the entrepreneur, because you own the means of production that is yourself.

To do this effectively, you need a solid grasp on your value proposition, and everything you bring to a prospective employer needs to strongly reflect it. A value proposition, to put it simply, is how the sum of your strengths will add up to a package that will benefit your employer. Ultimately, your value proposition needs to communicate to the prospective employer that you can help them.

In order to get anywhere, you first need to have an idea of where you're going. This is where you get down to brass tacks and research your potential employers to learn what they're all about. This needs to be done for two reasons. The first reason is to make sure that the company you're going for is right for you. Assuming the company is a good fit, the second reason is to help you create your pitch. How can you tell a potential employer what you can do for them if you don't even know what they do or need? Go through the company's mission statement, their history, their projects section, who works there, where they worked before in short, try to build a strong understanding of what the company is all about.

Profiling your employer is about more than just analyzing their business, though. You also need to know about the wider industry, and what tasks, issues, and challenges they might be facing. For example, if you’re applying to a non-profit, then understanding the non-profit world will help you find where you can add real value. If you want to be a restaurant manager, it’ll help to know about the world of food suppliers and distributors. In the end, it's all about making sure you're in a place where you can make a real contribution.

Ultimately, the reason for hiring you is to make things easier for someone else. Who is that person? Maybe there’s more than one who are they? These people are your stakeholders, and they’re the ones whose problems you need to show that you can solve. What are their problems? How will you make their job easier? Put yourself in their shoes, think of what you'd like to hear in their position, and match that with what you can actually do.

There are two types of benefits that you bring to an employer, and you need to cover them both. There are the tangible, concrete things that you do, and there are the emotional benefits that you bring to the employer. Think of a receptionist. Tangibly, the receptionist answers the phones and greets clients when they enter the establishment. Emotionally at least if they're a good receptionist they allow their employer to rest easy and know with certainty that things are going well on the frontlines. To really pitch yourself well to an employer, you have to find and communicate the tangible and emotional benefits that you’ll bring the employer.

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