Interviews How you can stand out in the eyes of recruiters

One of your key goals, if you are looking for a new job, is to build sufficient visibility for yourself professional visibility. This involves three critical elements. Individually, each element is powerful. But together, they provide an unparalleled alignment of effort and result.

What does your digital profile say about you?

First, you need to develop a clear and compelling digital profile. A resume is important, a personal website is incredibly useful and digital presence on a professional social media network such as LinkedIn is powerful.

Your goal with such a profile is to enable others looking for someone of your calibre to find you easily, to be impressed by what they see and to have this digital presence eventually match up to the person they meet face to face. Digital presence is something that takes time to build but once the effort is afoot, it is an investment that brings returns time and again.

Do you have a network and what impact does it have on your work?

Second, you need to build a large and relevant network around yourself. A small network while relevant cannot provide much impact. A large network that is ill-thought out or unaligned with your goals cannot provide you the support you require.

So this means that an effective network requires thoughtfulness and planning. A network built up through face to face interaction takes a lot of time and effort. But what about a digital one? The rules of engagement differ slightly because of the platform but the overriding goals are still very much the same.

Have you spent time developing your body of work?

Third, you need to develop a body of work that showcases your experience and expertise and brings it to life cohesively and coherently. This digital portfolio is a tangible representation of your life’s work.

If there isn’t one you can point to, then you need to evaluate how you can bring your work to life in a way others unconnected to you can see and appreciate. This may not be the easiest thing to do when you’re first starting out. But it is worth your time.

Why? The reason is simple.

Your ability to develop this work that can span months or even years, is ‘Show, Don’t Tell’ in action. This is a technique writers use to allow a reader to experience the story through action, thoughts, words or feelings rather than description. You could describe to your reader how you have over 15 years of experience in strategic workforce planning. Or you could prepare a set of slides to guide a young HR manager about how to begin a workforce planning initiative.

When you do less telling and more showing through your work, the reader can come to the conclusion themselves - rather than being told what to think. This is powerful. It can take a little longer to achieve the same effect but the showing brings everything to life. It makes it vivid and allows the reader to connect the dots themselves.

So how do you stand out in the eyes of recruiters? Here are three things to keep in mind.

Pay special attention to how you create your brand in digital and analog ways.

I call the face to face arena, the old school way of things, the analog way. All things, big and small, can create an impression. In the analog world, these impressions are smaller and more contained based on the relationships and interactions we have. But in the digital world, everything has the potential for amplification. That can be good at times but also negative.

When you are creating your brand, you’re looking to forge an impression and over time, this becomes your digital footprint. Some of us are not always so careful about our digital footprint which can come back to haunt us later. Not everything can be easily erased, explained away or made sense of.

Think about what you want others to understand and appreciate about you so that is reflected in your effort.

This is not always easy to do. Everything is moving at speed today. There is far more to comprehend and do than there used to be and many of us struggle to keep pace. If you rush to keep up, that’s exactly what you will be doing - keeping up. On the contrary, you need to slow it down, look inward, be guided by your own motivations and goals and trust your gut. Therein lies the distinction between doing what’s important and what’s urgent.

Digitise your efforts so that it supports you 24/7.

Set up processes and systems so that every effort can be captured, replicated and amplified. This is part of the charm of social media - the ability to capture, to replay, to spotlight. Attention spans getting shorter, it is not wrong of you to repeat, to reinforce, to replay. What’s important is to do it well and be focused on the value you’re creating always.