Preface
My new year's resolution for 2016 is to be more giving. Five months in, it appears that the most help I've provided is to people on their job hunts. So I'm writing here to generalize the thoughts I give.
If you're someone I know and you and I are talking careers, I'm not writing this to replace the contact I have with you. I'm just hoping it helps more people, too.
This will be a short series of posts. I previously wrote about Supply and Demand, as a means of helping you frame your career management and negotiating jobs.
Don't Make My Mistake
Many students, myself included, came out of school wanting to show our flexibility. Somewhere along the way, we're invariably told that we can and should do anything.
This is nonsense. Beginning in your schooling, your individual experiences will be distilled into a small number of short phrases that actually describe you.
In my case, the list of actual phrases read as follows, in 2011:
- Japan expert / Speaks Japanese
- Video game industry expertise
- Business Analyst
- Statistics
That was it. Sure, my resume showed other things, but my resume sucked back then. We'll cover that in an upcoming post.
These phrases describe what you can do, starting right now, as evidenced by exactly one of two things:
- Existing work experience (this includes internships)
- Academic credentials
And that's it. Anything else you may wish to use to apply for a job, such as an online course or a passionate desire to learn a subject, doesn't count.
Specialties Are These Short Phrases
Your particular combination of short phrases is your set of specialties. This set evolves over time, and like a bonsai tree, you can prune certain ones or let them grow.
I listed my specialties coming out of grad school, but that was 5 years ago. In 2013, my list looked like:
- Japan expert / Speaks Japanese
- Experience working in Tokyo
- E-commerce industry experience
- Adobe Certified Expert in Adobe Analytics
Compare the two lists, and you can pretty accurately guess what happened, even if you've never met me. The true story is that I met a Japanese e-commerce company, they liked a combination of 3 out of 4 of my specialties.
They took a Japanese-speaking statistician with a business bent, and turned him into a Japanese-speaking analytics pro. I have to admit that the company's decision made a bit of sense.
Mix and Match
In 2015, the list evolved a little to look like:
- Japan expert / Speaks Japanese
- Adobe Certified Expert in Adobe Analytics
- Experience in a consulting firm
- Experience in e-commerce
- Expertise in video games
By 2015, I began to pick among previous experiences and present the best combination of them to fit the job I wanted. Video games had been out of circulation for a few years, but it was perfectly OK to pull that back out.
Be Rare
There are not too many people who have Adobe certification, speak fluent Japanese, and have US work authorization. This has worked in my favor.
Having a rare combination of specialties limits the number of companies who want you, but the ones who do will really want you. This results in higher salaries, better retention (i.e., raises), and a higher profile to leap from should you decide to move on.
This Will Be Your Resume and Your Interviews
Your specialties will form the backbone of your next job application, and your resume will be a part of that. We'll do that next time.
We'll write a resume that shows momentum, and then use that to direct the conversation in interviews.
Thanks for reading. I'd like to hear what you think. Tweet me at @blakerson.