What are you passionate about? What would you be doing if today was your last? Those were a few of the questions posed to us at a PwC “Brand Yourself” workshop I attended a few weeks ago. The experience of this workshop came back to me when I was reading Ryan’s post “The Truth of Marketing Yourself”. In this post, Ryan discussed the importance of not presenting an artificially perfect image of ourselves, but rather an honest impression of who we are, with our strengths and our flaws and consequently finding a job that truly suits our personalities.
As consumers, we scrutinize marketing tactics and advertisements for authenticity – our interviewers do the same to us when recruiting. In the PwC workshop, the campus recruiters ended the workshop by commenting that when we are talking about our passions, our faces light up and our excitement is evident in our voice. That is the authenticity that they look for, the genuine interest that colours our conversation that makes one candidate stand out over another.
Ryan utilizes the STP model in suggesting that we segment the jobs available on the market, target ones that complement our interest and position ourselves. I would like to take a different approach on the STP model in a way that reinforces comm 202. When applying for jobs, I tend to end up with a variety of jobs that I am interested in, reflecting the different sides of my personality. For example, some may be community-initiative positions while others are corporate analytical positions. In terms of STP, we can segment the different sides of who we are to determine the various jobs that are compatible with our personalities. We can choose which jobs to target by considering level of interest, chance of success, etc. We can then position ourselves to a particular job by determining which qualifications/experiences are applicable (comm 202!). While we are presenting ourselves differently for different jobs, it is still who we are and therefore genuine.
Someone once said, “Rather than striving to do your best to meet expectations, you should be your best self, in every situation.”