The most important thing is they have to change their mentality. They have to remember from the very beginning that they have become a sales person. That they are the product, but they’re also the sales person. And they’ve got to create an entire marketing strategy to be successful. They can’t just throw out a bunch of resumes and hope that people will come. They have to do the marketing research. They have to do the needs assessment on their customers. They have to do their own product assessment and make sure they’re packaged well. It’s all about selling themselves.
So with that in mind, absolutely the first thing they need is a really good template resume. I say template, because everything they send out their resume, they should reconsider how it looks and who they’re sending it to. Are they using the right words, are there key words that they’re customer’s looking for that they need to make sure is on, are on the page, on the resume. Is it clean, is it consistent, is it professional. Is it concise, is it going to grab their attention. They really need to look at that resume and see, if it takes all their talents, and in 50 seconds or less, says value proposition, this is why you want to talk to me. Because I’m going to solve your problems this way.
That’s what a sales person does. They solve customer’s problems. And so if you’re now in a sales cycle, and you’re the product, you’ve got to find out what your customer needs and make sure you can fill that need. Or else you’re not going to be successful.
In addition to that, you have to, from the very beginning, have to understand who you’re references are going to be. And you’ve got to talk to your references, make sure they’re good references and then be organized, ready to talk about those references. They will probably also want to just get organized in general about how they’re going to capture all this information and control the process as they go through it. Create some sort of a log that they could say, I found out about this job opportunity from this person. I sent my resume on this day. I directed to this person. And keep in control of that process all the way through it. And Excel spreadsheet’s the best thing to create for that.
Other resources they can have is if, if it’s appropriate to them, a portfolio. And especially the students in promotions, a portfolio of the flyers they’ve created to promote bands or parties or concerts. Information about money they’ve raised at fundraisers that they’ve been in charge of and done things with. Anything that can be evidence, proof sources of their ability to be successful. That they need to have that ready to go in a portfolio and ready to show to somebody once they get the interview. So those are the first things I would start looking at if I were a student.
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