Today, I realized a lot of products I encounter in life is all about branding and positioning. Professional and personal growth in me is also part of branding my image and positioning my values in this market for recruitment.
Since every individual has different thoughts, emotional drivers, values and beliefs, I need to target a particular group of recruiters when it comes to job searching in the future. To be communicate my ‘brand’ to companies is to position myself in a particular category for my ‘brand’ to be reminded in their minds when it comes to hiring.
In particular, a positioning statement should be tailored to my job description in the future.
Recently, I’ve started reading a book called “Position: The Battle of your Mind” by Jack Trout and Al Ries, and the strategies with many great examples they’ve used is inspiring. Though many of the situations they’ve described are on products, but when I think back, these situations would come across during recruitment as well, when many commerce students are competing for similar jobs. To position myself and stand out in areas that is beneficial for me will results in chances of receiving interviews. What I learnt is how the ‘human mind’ works, to be able to position myself in a category that allows recruits to think of ME first. Rather than focusing on efforts to compete in areas where I suck at (from the examples mentioned that big companies don’t necessary win all the time), I realized that it is better to sell what I’m good at than to improve what I’m bad in. In particular, when Hertz tried to compete with Avis to be the top car rental company, the tactics they used for their advertising is very smart. The idea that Avis knows it can’t beat Herts allowed Avis to tell everyone out there that because they are No. 2 in car rental, they’d try harder” putting the ‘against’ position of winning sales instead of face to face battle with Hertz, telling others that we suck because we’re No. 2.
Many of the examples used in the book teaches me not only about positioning for marketing, but learning about how to position ideas in people’s mind in general.
