Imagine the role of a corporate recruiter...
She has more than 70 resumes to review. And, she’d be grateful if a few of them would jump out at her and scream “I’m exactly what you want!”
What would she be looking for?
What are the “must haves” and “nice to haves” on her list?
That’s what you need to figure out. When you have identified a job that you’re interested in, you want to become an “expert” on what the recruiter is looking for. As an “expert”, you would know it well enough to be able to teach someone else about it.
How to start?
Review similar job descriptions and talk to others who are doing, have done, or are managing people doing the job. Use your own experiences and look online for information about the job.
What to research?
- Beyond the basics such as responsibilities and job requirements, know the following:
- The exact deliverables/services will you be tasked with delivering
- Areas measured for future performance reviews
- Challenges to being successful on the job
- Understand the job requirement intangibles, such as relationship building, customer service ability, influencing, or problem-solving abilities.
All this information and insight will help you determine which successes and what activities and metrics will be most important to include and emphasize.
With this information, you will know the “language” of the job. You will “sound like”, on paper, someone who is doing the job already. The recruiter knows what she wants. Your job is to give her what she’s looking for so you get called for the phone screen. And then, knowing the “language” of the job you’ll make a great impression in the interview process. The research you do up front will benefit you through the whole interview process (and even onboarding when you get the job). Time to get started.
