How to land a job like a marketer, without spamming HRs

Marketers today are supposed to be good with data, creative with their ideas, and refined with their words but when it comes to marketing themselves, they somehow don’t seem to use any of this.

Landing a job after all is a marketing exercise.

This is the only underlying thought of this entire piece. This will not only make it easy to approach the process with familiarity but also look at it from a different perspective.

First thing first, your ad

While we as marketers get all crazy when brainstorming an ad for a company, then why is it that most of our resumes look like this;

Over the last couple of years, I have screened over 1,000 resumes but hardly anyone goes out of the box with their resume apart from using some of the new age themes that you might find online.

While creativity is important, the concept of it is the crux. To give you an idea, this is what my resume looks like;

Once you have the concept right, you could hire a freelance graphic designer to get it executed. Think of it as an investment while shall reap returns in the future. You can also try and go a little overboard with something like this.

Scan the code to take the Hiring Manager to your portfolio website.

A resume with concept and creativity can increase your chances of an interview by over 86%. While I just made that number up, adding a number to your ideas makes it sound more authentic. Similarly, when drafting the key pointers in your resume, don’t just like the key initiatives you took, but also state the quantitative results.

This gives an indication that you are also focused on measuring and optimizing results and not just doing the task at hand. For a marketer, results could be an increase in the CTRs for your ads (Click Through Rates) or an increase in the conversion rates with a new funnel.

The last recommendation is to try and limit your resume to a single page. While you might want to keep every brag-worthy achievement in your resume, it is better to keep it super focused on the type of job that you intend to apply for and keep it limited to the most cherished achievements.

Reach out to your Target Audience

While portals like Linkedin can help you identify companies that are hiring for a relevant role, the only problem is the influx of applications that an HR receives from these portals owing to the easy application process. Thus while you might still want to apply through these portals, you should try and get hold of the Linkedin profile URLs for the HRs hiring for these roles.

Now with the help of Apollo.io chrome extension you should be able to get the email address of the HR and write personalized emails as to why you think you will be best suited for the job. I agree this could sound tedious and believe me it is as well. That’s why I recommend keeping it limited to only jobs that really interest you.

To keep it super-nifty you refer to my article on GMass and create an automated pipeline of emails. You should be using a mail tracking software to track opens and clicks on your resume to test your cover letter which goes as part of the email body. Since most HRs are also looking for candidates, your emails should ideally get opened most of the time, unless there is something critically wrong with your deliverability of these emails.

I would suggest sticking to Gmail to send out emails to ensure high deliverability. If you are still not being contacted by the HRs, it simply means either your role is not aligned with the job responsibilities or you need to work on making your resume stand out more.

You can go out of the way to understand why your resume was not selected in case of rejection. This can help you align with better jobs.

Converting interviews

Now that you have been called for interviews, the same principle follows. “Strong Start and comprehensive explanations.” Remember the interviewer sitting on the other side is most probably also an employee going about their daily routine and looking for something that stands out in it. So here is to your creativity! Change your video background (in case of an e-interview) to the logo of the brand.

This can not only cut through the noise but can put you in a high recall. or do an audit of the brand to highlight key issues to be addressed and focus the conversation around that. Be it an interview, one common question is to give a career brief to the interviewer. Thus you should prepare it well in advance. Take a piece of paper and mention the key events in your career and then link those dots together to weave a story. Not fiction but a story about you.

Think of it like you auto-biographical summary and those carefully chosen key points will determine the course of the remaining interview. So be careful to plant the right hooks. Common questions your brief should answer;

• What did you do throughout your career and
• Most importantly why

And when you narrate, be a narrator. Relish the story and be interested in telling what you want to say and the interviewer is bound to pay attention. Stop in between your narration to gauge if there are any questions, some of the interviewers would want to intervene in your stories. After a couple of interviews, you might start to feel monotonous telling the same story again and again but remember those who are listening to it are most probably listening to it for the first time. And remember, we humans love stories!

A good story is

• an experience
• Show your lows and highs
• Highlights stories of challenging environments and you stood victorious
• What makes you who you are
• How self-aware are you

While you are crafting your story, it is easy to get overboard with fiction.

I am never telling you to lie, but to think through your life events and I am sure you will find some pseudo inspirational content. But still, if you are clueless as to where to start, then head over to your Linkedin feed and I am sure you will find a couple of posts to get inspiration from.

Remember, all this helps only if you are capable of doing the job in the first place. There is no alternative for cracking the technical interview. There are a couple of blogs for every technical interview that you can read to brush up on your knowledge of the required skills.

Negotiating your way in!

Once you have cleared all the interviews, HR will most probably close your salary negotiation. In the negotiation, it is important to be calm and relaxed. Even before you start the discussion, your salary expectations might have already been noted by HR. This is a good place to give a salary bracket with the lower number to be what you are actually expecting out of the job.

This way anything that comes in that bracket will be over and above what you expect. And don’t fret about saying a bit number. This only shows that you are confident in your skills and value your time. If the HRs say that your expectations are above our budget at this point, they are only kidding as to why would they waste their time on you if your expectations were higher than the budget. So stay firm on your expectations and propose a better figure. In most cases you should be able to meet the lower end of the bracket you proposed earlier.

You can add ESOPs or any variable bonus on top of it to fit into your expected salary bracket.

Until now, these strategies have not just helped me but a lot of my friends to land their dream jobs and settle into a career of their choice. Post the digital marketing boom, we now have countless marketers claiming to know everything, but very few cut through the noise. These strategies will not only help you crack more job opportunities but help you approach the job hunting process as a marketer.

If you wish to learn more about the latest growth marketing strategies, you can visit https://ankitbagga.com/blog.