You should use some of the rules of rhetoric to persuade the hiring manager to hire you. Note that I’ve selected specific rules below that I believe are most relevant to getting hired and then redefined them to deliver job search advice.
Rhetoric Based Rules for Getting Hired
INVENTION: Develop Your Argument
Decide why you are uniquely useful to industries that use your skills. I like to expand Ted Bate’s USP to UUSP: Uniquely Useful Selling Point.
STYLE: Prepare Your Argument
Continuing with the UUSP thought, once you know your key sales point, you need to expand it into your positioning, which is still a UUSP acronym.
- Useful: Describe how you will help your boss and company meet their goals.
- Unique: A lot of people have similar skills, but no one else has the exact same set of experiences, skills, interests and temperament using the same approach that you do.
Your positioning for getting hired must be reinforced and delivered consistently via bio, resume, LinkedIn, interview and even voice mails and emails.
DELIVERY: It’s How You Present Your Argument
You need to present a persona as well as your functional rationale that reinforces your positioning.
- Interview: When selling your UUSP, you also have to sell your personality and likeability using tone of voice, posture, gestures and how you relate to your interviewers.
MEMORY: Help Them Remember You
Over the next day, week, or month, the right person needs to remember you and link your UUSP to their needs.
Being able to do the job isn’t enough to be selected to do the job. You need to be interesting, hopefully in a relevant manner.
- He’s the person who did _________ for _________.
- She’s the one who can ___________ for us.
Repeating a thought from my last blog, it’s important to be remembered as the person who can help the “company, team, and boss accomplish their goals (both emotional and numerical).” Let’s face it: most people being interviewed are rather predictable and therefore boring. We all give rehearsed answers that prove our valuable experience. But that’s not enough to getting hired.
We also need for them to conclude and remember that we’re interesting and good to work with.