The MicroTrain Blog

"Finding a job in this economy is impossible."

How many times have you heard someone use an excuse like this when discussing their career?

It’s true that during periods of high unemployment (8.7% in Illinois right now) it’s difficult for even qualified applicants to elevate themselves above the glut of other applications. Coupled with the fact that many companies are scaling back their full-time staff in favor of hiring part-time employees and contract consultants, the picture looks grim indeed.

But there’s hope! You can turn the economic downturn on its head and use it to your advantage by using your interview to make the financial case to hire you.

What’s Your ROI?

When it comes down to it, the key to acing your interview is to convince the employer that hiring you is a fiscally responsible move. Doing this means you’ll have to offer them a positive return on their investment (ROI). In the business world, ROI is king, especially in this economy.

The best way to demonstrate a good ROI is to talk about your record of financial wins and cite specific examples of when you’ve been able to save a company time and/or money. As soon as you start speaking specifics, people start noticing. Even better, examples like these will demonstrate your ability to manage people, money, and processes without citing forced, job-seeking rhetoric or clichéd platitudes.

The question applicants should ask themselves when they’re deciding on experiences to highlight in an interview is whether their positive effects are quantifiable—that is to say: can you put a hard number on the money you’ve saved a company? Verifiable facts are far more impressive in an interview than vague impressions and explanations. If you can’t support your claims with facts, it might be time to reevaluate their value to your argument.

Express Your Impact                                         

When I help job-seekers prepare for interviews, I always ask them a series of key questions to help identify their financial contributions. By answering some of the questions below, you’ll be better prepared to effectively highlight your financial impact to an organization.

• How many people did I oversee/work with?
• How many partners were on this project? 
• How big was the budget? 
• How many calls per day did I make?
• How much money did the organization end up saving due to my actions?
• How much staff time did the refined process end up saving the company?

With some thorough company research and a little preparation, you’ll be able to use your answers to the above questions to synthesize the actual cost savings you’ve affected on your previous employers.

Armed with these numbers and a little charisma, you’ll be surprised how easily you can turn a negative situation into a positive one. Remember, the economic recession hasn’t just affected job-seekers; employers are also looking for any and all available means to streamline their organizations and save money. All you have to do is show them how to do it.

Master vs. Custom Resume

Your resume is such a complicated document that, as soon as you finish the first draft, it’s tempting to just breathe a sigh of relief and start sending it in to employers.

That’d be a big mistake.

If you’re serious about your job search, you should customize your resume every time you apply for a new job. In doing so, you can both accentuate your compatibility with the position and increase your chances of getting past the Applicant Tracking System software many employers use to filter out “incompatible” applications.

The new resume builder on the TheProfessional.me guides you through the process of creating a master resume, with all of your professional experience, skills and education, and then customizing that resume for specific job applications.

Master Resume

The first thing you’ll need to do is create your master resume.

Your master resume is the toolbox from which you will construct and customize later resumes. It contains your entire work and education history from your first day on the job to the present day. Don’t worry if some of the elements don’t seem particularly relevant. You just want to collect your entire job history in one place, so you’ll be able to find it quickly when you need it.

When you finish with your master resume, you might be surprised by its length. This shouldn’t concern you, though, because employers should never actually see your master resume. To apply for a specific job, you need to create a custom resume.

Custom Resumes

Custom resumes are tailored to specific job leads. They contain only the skills, experience, and education that are relevant to that specific job, and even go so far as to incorporate key words and phrases from the job post. You should customize your resume every time you apply for a new job.

TheProfessional.me makes it easy to create a custom resume. While viewing a specific job, click the Create a Custom Resume button to jump into the custom resume builder where you’ll see both your master resume and job lead on one page. From there you can customize your master resume by selecting and/or changing any of the components of your resume.

At this point it’s essential to make sure that every piece of information on your custom resume is relevant to the job posting. If you don’t know why a piece of information is on your resume or how it will help you get the job, chances are you should remove it.

When you finish tailoring your custom resume to the job posting, all you have to do is download it and attach it to your application. Just make sure to proofread your resume a few times and even have a friend or two look it over before you send it in. 

Click here to start building your master resume now!