You Are A Solution

Several years ago, I lived in Atlanta during the last big economic downturn (the dot com bust may ring a bell).

I decided to use my marketing skills for a local job networking group and I volunteered to teach a job search class for a group of managers and professionals who were out of work and very, very scared.

Many of these people had lost six-figure jobs and had mortgage payments to match their previous incomes. Did I mention that they were scared?

The one lesson I taught them was that they were all solutions to some problem.

Employers do not hire in order to give someone a job. They hire people in order to solve problems. So what someone in search of a job must do is understand and articulate what problems they were very good at solving.

That became our class mantra: "What problem(s) are you VERY good at solving?"

It took a while for most of these folks to break free of their corporate jargon or to articulate this beyond their previous company or industry cultures. What I urged them to do was to see themselves not as job applicants but as walking, talking, breathing solutions.

These solution statements had to be slightly generic enough to be transferrable across industries, but specific enough to position the person as unique and valuable.
Only when they made this mental shift could they convince employers that they could solve certain problems if this individual was hired.

Think about your product or service. What problem is your company very good at solving? Don't make this bland and generic (Case in point: is a Dallas law firm that claims they are the firm to hire "when the results really matter." Who hires a law firm when the results don't matter?).

Right now, two political candidates are running for President and they are both busy articulating how they are both solutions to problems. In a very real sense, they are running for the office of "Solution in Chief."

Can you afford to do any less?

COPYRIGHT © 2008, Charles Brown
Add to Onlywire
Add to Technorati Favorites

0 comments:

Newer Post Older Post Home

Blogger Template by Blogcrowds