Who are you?

How would you answer this question?

Would you say you’re hardworking, detail-oriented and driven? While those are admirable traits, that makes you the same as probably 50 percent of other people competing for the job. Yes, I know that it still feels like there are plenty of opportunities for those who want to find a job, but for the job you really want, it’s likely that other people want it too.

So, assuming competition for the job you’re vying for, how can you make yourself stand out? The answer is how you position yourself and make this positioning known to others. If you had one sentence to describe your positioning, how would you make it memorable?

How to position yourself

My friend has this as their email tagline: “Ask us about our 99% retention rate.” That’s a pretty memorable line for someone who works as a recruiter. One of the highest costs for an employer is employee turnover. If you have managed a team before, you would understand that it takes anywhere between six to twelve months to fully get a recruit familiar with the inner workings of a company. However, in today's market, most employees stay in a job for less than a year. This becomes a very high cost for companies; thus, a recruiter with a 99% retention rate would be music to their ears.

If you are a salesperson, would you say you have ten years of experience and have worked at several reputable companies? You would need a better positioning than that. For example, positioning yourself as a salesperson with a 95% deal closing rate for deals valued at over $10M would have your phone ringing with job opportunities. Of course, you must have such credentials to make such a claim. The idea is to determine your strengths and shape your brand and positioning. Or, maybe you’re great with small business owners, and the job you’re applying for provides a service for this target audience. Knowing this, you would want to brand yourself as a small business owner sales specialist.

If you sell online courses, you want to showcase your students' success, much like a university would highlight its successful alumni. Maybe your interior design program graduates establish studios with their projects featured in international magazines.

Make Your Positioning Known to Others

Once you determine your brand and positioning, you must make it known. If no one knows about your brand and what you’re great at, it doesn’t help to grow your career. In today’s connected world, you could achieve this in a few ways:

1. Rewrite your LinkedIn profile to highlight your brand and key strengths

2. Rewrite your CV to highlight your brand and positioning, and include work experience that supports your claim

3. Start a blog about your expertise

4. Build a social media presence to establish your role as a topic expert in your field.

In conclusion, you need to find your niche by leveraging your strengths. Don’t try to be everything to everyone because you end up being nothing to anyone. Managers and business owners realize that every person on their team serves a purpose or role, just like on a sports team; even the star isn’t excellent at everything. Someone who positions themselves as the best salesperson is unlikely to be great at administrative work. Someone who touts their superb organizational skills to create another four hours of productivity in your schedule could be the world’s best Executive Assistant. Still, I doubt they would also have exceptional sales skills.

Knowing where you excel and actively branding yourself has other advantages to supercharge your career; in addition to helping you filter out the jobs you would be great at, the knowledge will also attract the right opportunities. Companies who are recruiting ask within their network for potential hires. What if, one day, they were looking for someone exactly like you?