Increase Job Search Success with a Personal Marketing Plan

Chris Wodke

http://www.summittrainingpublications.com/

I recently attended the Crossroads Career Network meeting. The featured speaker was Robert Bachman.  He presented a two step process to generate interviews. The first step was to devise a personal marketing plan.  This information from the marketing plan can be used to write your resume and to determine the companies and contacts to receive your marketing letter. I will write more about how to use the marketing letter in the next article.  The plan consists of the following key sections:

Contact information
            This would include your name, address, city, state, zip code, phone number, email
            and networking page.  Keep email and networking pages professional. Potential

employers will look at you web page or network page.

Objective
You must be clear on your job goal so you can market to the right companies and positions.  Your objective should be attainable based on your credentials and experience.

Career Highlights

List a couple of bullet points of your accomplishments. These should be on your resume and part of your elevator speech. These are the things you would open with when asked by an interviewer to describe yourself.

Strengths/Excellence

List three to four of your key strengths or competencies related to your job search.
            Check these against the required skills for positions you are targeting.

Position/Responsibilities Sought
This is the role you are seeking in your next position.  Be specific. If you want a manager or leadership position list that here.

Target Companies

List the attributes you are looking for in your next organization.  Important attributes would include company size, location, market position, product type and work environment. List anything about the work environment that is important to you.

Potential Contacts

List the decision makers or network contacts you will need to make contact with

To meet your career objective, you will need to make good use of research and your network to find the right people.

Here is what Robert’s marketing plan looked like:

SAMPLE PERSONAL MARKETING PLAN

Name

Address, City, State, Zip Code

Phone, Email, web page or networking site

Objective:  Project Manager or Lead Engineer position with a manufacturing company in Southeastern Wisconsin.

Career Highlights: My expertise is in project management and engineering management in a manufacturing environment with a focus on design for manufacturability, systematic process improvement and problem resolution through root cause analysis.

Areas of Excellence/Strengths

Systematic Process Improvement

Award winning public speaker

Design with customer focus input

Customer Service product training

Responsibilities Sought

Project leadership role

Role as a “hands-on” contributor as well as team leader

Target Company Attributes

$20 M or greater in sales

Located in Milwaukee/Waukesha area

Structured goal oriented environment

Focused on customer retention

Defined Strategic growth

Desired Contacts: Engineering Managers/V.P’s, CEO’s

Target Industries & Companies

Process Control	Instrumentation	Power & Components
ABB-Automation	Astronautics	Cooper Power Systems
Eaton	Badger Meter	Waukesha Electric Sys
Professional Control Corp	Sterling	DRS Power & Control
Johnson Controls	Criticare	Ark-Les Custom
Husco	Smiths Medical	Curtis Industries
Schneider Automation	Aqua-Chem	Electronic Cable Specialist
Rockwell	Envirex/US	Brady
Unico	Fleck Controls	Xymox

Once you have your marketing plan written you can begin to seek out contacts at networking events and through your own social network. The next step will be to compose and send out marketing letters to your targeted companies. More about that in the next article.

Thanks to Robert Bachman for his permission quote his material.  You can contact Robert at robachman@wi.rr.com if you have any questions or comments.

The Crossroads Career Network meets the first Monday of each month at Hales Corners Lutheran Church in the Fellowship Hall.  Located at

12300 W Janeville Road

in Hales Corners. Networking begins at 6:30 followed by a speaker and breakout sessions.  For more information email:hel.crossroads@gmail.com

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