The online job description is explicit. They want skills you know you have. But you have no evidence of applying those skills on the job.
How frustrating! when you know you can do the job, but you have no idea of how to convince your potential employer. It’s a cinch that other candidates will submit resumés that honestly claim they’ve done what the job description calls for. But what about the rest of us? We need jobs, too.
Try this: Go to the job posting, copy the skills from the job description, then cut and paste them into your resumé. Done. Now what’s the worst that can happen? You get the interview but fail to convince your interviewer that you have the skills they want.
The up side will compensate for your rejection. You’ve chalked up more interview experience, which eventually translates into interview confidence. With so few jobs available today, you need every advantage you can get when it comes to beating out the mob of other candidates vying for the job you want.
Why It Will Work
Most likely you do have most of the skills called for in many job postings. If only because you’re looking for jobs in your field, whether you’ve recently lost a job or you’ve just left school. Required skills in job postings intimidate for a reason—to scare away the faint of heart. Nobody wants to hire anybody who lacks confidence.
Whenever I’m asked if I can handle this or that kind of writing, I always say yes. Almost as quickly as I jerk my knee when the doctor taps it with the little hammer. In fact, I probably have, over the years, written just about everything—from one-word product names to an 80,000-word novel, with songs, poems, and plays in between. What is there I can’t write? Try me.
If you haven’t “done it all,” as they say, you can and should assume a can-do attitude even if you’re just starting out as a writer of words, illustrator of pictures, programmer of databases.
Need help? Keep in mind the world’s most successful dropouts: Henry Ford, Richard Pryor, Bill Gates, George Eastman, Sir Richard Branson, Steve Jobs, George Bernard Shaw, Michael Dell…
What You Can’t Fudge
Requirements like degrees, years of experience, certifications, specific training. Anything that, if you claim, you have to lie.
When you see a list of such requirements and you don’t have any of them, of course, you need not apply. If you have some of them, you might apply but don’t expect an interview. If you have most, apply, but be prepared to convince your interviewer that what you have in experience, self-education, or other initiatives precludes the need for the requirement.
No, it may not be an easy sell, but it’s worth a shot. If your interviewer sees and likes enough of your other qualities, they may overlook a gap in the requirements list. Case in point: My first professional job required a degree I did not have. I must have impressed the interviewer, because when I had to admit I did not have the paper, he prompted me with, “You graduated from the school of hard knocks, right?”
What You Can Fudge
The rest is easier to sell. Let’s call them the soft skills.
The individual will lead cross-organization teams, effectively planning, communicating, and driving change through the execution of projects in alignment with the overall program strategy. Leads problem solving and decision making to drive project delivery through strong collaboration and influencing skills. Communicates plans, status and issues related to project status and execution concisely and broadly across all functions and levels of the organization.
To demonstrate that you will come to the job with these kinds of skills, you’ll have to tell stories with lots of details. Your job in telling each anecdote is to convince the interviewer that you’ve confronted the challenge, such as “driving change,” addressed it, and effected positive results.
If you haven’t dealt with the actual, on-the-job situations the interviewer is looking for, reach into other job situations that apply. Every job has some form of “execution of projects in alignment with the overall program strategy.” By spotlighting strategy alignment in an unrelated job category, you not only show that you can align a strategy, you demonstrate that you clearly understand what it means to align one.
Even if you have to tell how you managed to wash and dry the white Siberian huskie you were babysitting for a neighbor after you accidentally stained most of its coat with tomato sauce the day before the dog show. If nothing else, you’ll prove you can deliver something many candidates don’t bring to the table—practical creativity under pressure.
The Secret Ingredient
In order to to sell what only you know you can do, though, you have to first convince yourself. That done, you’re halfway to your first paycheck.
