I am approached regularly by executive job seekers who have been facing a challenge in their job search & wondering what is holding the potential employers back to at least review their profile & initiate an interaction. After communicating with lot of C-suite role seekers, I could observe the gap in their communication strategy which is playing spoilsport.
An effective communication is not a value add but a necessary requirement & reasonable expectation from an executive level professional. Senior folks need to present their worth across multiple levels at various platforms. The following are key communication strategies that every executive job seeker should consider as “ must haves”:
1) Build & nurture online presence
Creating an online presence is very vital since it is an important platform to communicate your value & decide what kind of people should look at your content & profile. I always advise top executives to evaluate their brand & quality of online presence by conducting regular google search on themselves, keep monitoring & replacing off brand content with relevant one. Top search results lists platforms which that you have populated. These shall include,
- Robust LinkedIn profile
- Career executive biography
- Media links/stories that you have contributed to
- Social media accounts, blogs & articles
- Personal website
You can increase your visibility & potential interest in your profile by clearly aligning your communication with your personal brand.
2) Developing professional career tools
During job search it is important to have a resume, cover letter, thank you letter, executive biography & LinkedIn profile ready & handy. Preparing these career tools that communicate your value & strengths goes a long way in successful job search. A strong resume can be a deciding factor in landing up with an interview. To ensure resume makes measurable impact, clearly articulate your achievements with evidence why you are the best fit for the role. Depict your ability to evaluate company’s pain point & bring sustainable solutions in written form.
Improve the quality of your written communication through crisp & shorter content points clearly mentioning action taken & the end result. I always advise my clients to clearly articulate such crisp yet informative content across all career tools. I have seen many instances where executive job seekers have provided a professionally written resume, but since the cover letter has not been upto mark hence resulting in rejection for initial round of interview. My advice is to keep job search communications comprehensively prepared so as to avoid the risk of getting overlooked for the interview.
3) Professional face to face interaction
Delivering personal value & brand in a verbal interaction needs a dress rehearsal & one cannot assume that being at executive level you have expertise in job search communication. Direct interaction is often put to test during interviews & missing out some important information/ milestone can cost you a lost opportunity. During verbal communication, speaking strategies plays a very important role & small alteration in the way you speak can be a make or break situation. You should make concerted efforts to develop a common ground so that you appear to be flexible in your communicative approach. Companies hire senior folks to lead different challenging projects where strategic communication is the key. Therefore refined communication strategy both before & during your job search can assist you in creating a strong ground for your candidature.
In case, you want a personalized consult on communication strategies to adopt during job search, pls. feel free to connect.
