Selling Yourself: But Really!

By: Ira Allen

It comes as no revelation to most that getting the job you want requires that you convince somebody that they should want you to do that job. But what, exactly, does selling yourself mean?

Well, there are about a billion books on the "successful job hunt" out there (most of them, for some reason I don’t quite get, on sale in airport bookstores—are people who travel that much more likely to change jobs?). But this is a short article, and makes no pretense at promising you "the success you deserve." I mean, who am I to say whether you deserve success? Maybe you do, maybe you don’t. I sure the heck don’t know.

So, what I do want to offer here are some tips gained not only from my own job-hunting experience, but also from coaching many dozens of people on their resumes and cover letters. I think what everyone I’ve worked with has struggled with most—as have I—is tone. There’s a good reason for this: we’re writing to and for people we don’t know! Thus, the questions, "Is this formal enough? Is this too formal? Should I put this first, or would it be better to start off with that?" are common (and good) ones.

Of course, there isn’t a set rule about how to order things or the proper tone to take (and be wary of those who tell you there is; there’s a good chance they’re taking their personal experience and turning it into a universal principle—sometimes that does work, but often it doesn’t), but the very act of asking such questions is already a step forward. From here, you can imagine the attitudes that are likely to prevail at the company to which you’re applying: do they highlight their commitment to customer service on the website? Make sure to note in your cover letter that thank-you letter from the grateful client whose elderly mother you helped locate—during your lunch hour (well, only if that really happened).

But then that does bring up the problem of tone. You surely don’t want to say, "One of the things everybody loves so terribly much about me is my constant attention to the needs of customers—even to the detriment of my own health and well-being. One customer wrote . . ." On the other hand, though, there is certainly such a thing as being too modest, saying in the interview, "Well, I just sort of was bumming around Africa," when in fact you were teaching computer skills to children in rural Senegal (people actually do say these things).

So, then, what’s the right tone to take? Well, here the answer may sound a bit contradictory. Because it’s not, after all this, actually so much about your tone. That is, focusing on how you come across to others—while truly important—is secondary. If you want to strike the "right" tone in your cover letter or interview, you need to have already sold yourself to yourself. This is where having supportive friends to talk things through with comes more than a little in handy.

To take the examples we’ve been working with so far, you need to be able to see that the time you spent doing aid work in Senegal helped you get a better sense not only of the kinds of day-to-day struggles many people face, but also of the kinds of innovative solutions they come up with—solutions from which you’ve ended up learning a lot. And then you’d get more specific (and do make sure to get specific; nothing impresses less than generic, general statements about yourself and the world—kind of like this one). Or, with the first example, you need to see for yourself that what your customers appreciate is their sense that you are genuinely responding to them, that you’re not just "doing your job," but are actually interacting with them. And that you’re like that because you really enjoy being able to help make people’s lives a little easier.

What I’m suggesting here, then, is that you come up with a story that links your experiences and your values with your goals, a story to explain—and sell—yourself to yourself. A true story. Talk it through with a friend, and only then start thinking about how to sell yourself to the people who are going to hire you. If you can honestly sell yourself to yourself first, after that, it’s only a matter of mechanics, of figuring out how to fine-tune your story of self to fit with other people’s needs and expectations. And, incidentally, this will also help you avoid applying for any jobs that don’t really suit you—one of the biggest reasons for rejection letters! A strong, realistic story of self will give you the basis for a successful application for a job that really fits. After that, the number of factors you can reasonably control gets much smaller . . .