The issue of communicating your value is critical to career management. Knowing your value well enough to convey it with strength and conviction has wide-reaching uses. It is effective, no necessary, in resumes, interviews, performance appraisals, creating a 15-second pitch or elevator speech…career growth is almost impossible without it.
Developing a Value Statement
Do you have any idea what your value is or what defines it? The easiest way to understand it is to think of what
you offer that will earn your compensation. Here’s how to arrive at understanding value from an employment perspective:
- Qualify related education and your experience in your area of expertise or in the industry
- Define your area of expertise: a history of cold-calling successes; experience in several mergers and acquisitions; existing relationships with multi-million dollar customers, and so on.
- What qualities do you have that have helped you achieve? Tenacity, focus, people skills, ability to read “body language,” superb organization, ability to read between the lines … hone in on your strengths.
- Quantify your contributions with numbers. How much did you increase market share, did you find ways to save money, how well did you serve clients, did your work improve satisfaction, engagement, productivity?
Unless you can answer these questions, or ones more relevant to your role, you may find job hunting and career management a tough road.
Committing a few sentences to paper will begin this journey, and many revisions later you will have an authentic, succinct, and powerful understanding of who you are and what you offer.
For example, my paragraph might read:
“I offer award-winning resumes and cover letters that help clients land interview, and that have been selected for leading U.S. and Canadian career publications. I am committed to continuing my training, a sort of kaizen approach with ongoing improvements in strategy and technique. Supportive of all facets of a client’s job search, I offer interview coaching and job search assistance. This focus on customer service has resulted in happy clients who refer friends and family. In fact 80 percent of my business is now generated through referrals.”
If I were to apply to a subcontracting position this paragraph would certainly generate interest: the employer would see how the quality of my service leads to further work, and thus would benefit his or her business.
Profits through Performance & Productivity
Conveying your value means you are speaking the employer’s dialect. Address their profits through your performance and productivity, and you are on your way to impressing, big time!
Your resume must show that you can do the job, typically expressed with a list of key words and phrases. But more than that your resume must include accomplishments.
During an interview, the interviewers will want to confirm that you do indeed have the skills that you claimed to have, but more than that they will be determining your value in furthering business interests.
Communicate your value: share stories of how you achieved your qualifications, status, accomplishments, and reputation, and you will wow your interviewer and make the decision to hire you an easy one.
Tags: career advice
