The Most Important Mindset Change for Your Job Search & Career Success

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Contrary to my habits, this article will be a rather short one as I want to share what I believe is the one most powerful mindset change for both Career Management and Job Searching.

This also ties up to a lot of discrepancies and paradoxes in both the recruitment and promotion processes currently being used. Indeed, doesn't it sound strange that job hunters send dozens if not hundreds of resumes without getting invited for interviews while employers keep talking about the hardship of finding (and retaining) talent?

In between candidates and employers stand the ATS which is commonly blamed for it all. In fact, the ATS is not the problem but points to what exactly is the underlying problem:

We focus on experience over potential.

Let me say this again - we focus on experience over potential.

There are many issues with this approach. First, it disregards soft skills. Soft skills are catalysts and enablers. Take two graduates with the same technical background and performance in school: once in the workplace, one may perform much better than the other and bring much more value to an employer. What makes such a difference in performance when technical skills and knowledge are comparable? Soft skills. For example, one of the individuals may be a great leader or appreciated by customers and thus bring repeat business. Or one may be an excellent project manager and delivering on time and on budget while the other employee might be technically superior but behind in terms of execution, leading to delays and additional costs. Those differences in both the performance and value of employees are all down to soft skills but our recruitment and promotion approaches are still mostly focused on experience and technical skills.

In the fast pace era in which we live, it's also easy to understand that current knowledge, technical skills and experience is less valuable over time than a candidate or employee who has a strong ability to learn, up skill and adapt as well as lead others through change - especially as markets shift and technology evolves at speed of light.

Now this may seem like it's on employers and companies to shift how they recruit and promote - and yes, this would definitely be great - but what can YOU do NOW about this?

The solution is very simple in my view and also a massive game changer: Take the lead in shifting the conversation from experience to potential.

Here are ways to do this:

1. Use networking in your job or promotion application process. The usual application process going through online applications and the dreaded ATS will mostly screen you based on your actual skills and experience. To incorporate your potential into your job search approach, it's important to leverage other channels that you put you face-to-face with key people and create opportunities to be seen for both your experience and your soft skills. This is an important game changer for anyone who is disadvantaged by the ATS because they have a different profile or additional challenges in their profile (career break, career transition, zigzagging career path, etc.). This also gives you a better platform to make the case for your potential as opposed to being strictly considered for your hard skills and experience. For more information about the job search process and going beyond the ATS, have a look at the article "Job Searching in the Era of Social Media: Why You're Not Getting Traction & What to Do About It"
2. Reframe towards potential: Are you asked in an interview if you have experience? Take it on you to reframe the question and answer as if you had been asked "Why do you think you have potential?". The same in your resume. If you think you can do it, don't hold yourself back because you don't check a box on the list - go and show them why you think you can do it! This can namely be done through the use of a more expanded summary section where you shape the narrative and can include soft skills and showcase how your skill will bring value int he role.
3. Know yourself so you can articulate how your (soft skills) contribute to your performance: This is also the reason why I consider personal branding as a self-discovery journey. Ticking the box by saying "Yes, I've done that", "I'm certified" or "I have 3 years of experience in xyz" is much easier than showing potential. Explaining our potential on the other hand requires us to know ourselves very well and to be able to articulate what we bring to the table by explaining what soft skills allow us to make things happen and how we make them happen. It's all about knowing yourself and knowing yourself well enough to be able to talk about it confidently and convincingly to showcase your potential.
4. Go full circle in explaining transferable skills: It's also on the candidate to not just say "I have X experience or Y skills" but to connect the dots and showcase how an otherwise unrelated experience or skill would add value in a new role. There are a lot of talks about transferable skills but very little emphasis on the importance and onus on the candidate to articulate how this connects to the role they are targeting. Most people present themselves "in a silo" saying "I have this experience or skill" but fail to go further and showcase how this contributes to their potential to take over a new responsibility or role or how this can be leveraged to add more value in the role.
5. Create opportunities to showcase your potential as opposed to only saying that you believe you can do this. This is what I call creating "Airtime". Basically it's you don't just say what you can do but but actually show it. This is a key piece in the context of branding yourself as a professional and also a game changer for those who aspire to change direction in their career or move a step up and fill an experience or skills gap when they can't do so by "ticking the box". What does this look like in practice? Create strategic conversation where you can show how you think, identify trends or problem-solve. In networking in particular, this is the kind of conversation you want to have with people - you want to avoid saying "I have a strategic mindset" and rather start a conversation where they get to experience how you think and the solutions you propose. In job or promotion applications, this can take the form of "proposals" instead of applications. Analysing a company's problem and proposing solutions, identifying opportunities and ways to seize them. Stretch assignments, strategic volunteering, personal initiatives are great ways to showcase your potential and LinkedIn is a great tool to give visibility to your actions.

For more on leveraging potential over experience in the context of a career transition, check out the article "Why You Shouldn't Call it a Career Transition: How to Successfully Reinvent Your Career" for more detailed tips and strategies.

Overall, the above suggestions all tie up to your branding and how this is proactively leveraged in your job search or career management approach. It's primarily about knowing yourself and understanding how you operate your magic and then being able to put it forward in a confident and convincing manner. If you would like to explore in more details what are your success catalysts and how you can showcase your potential so that your job search and career path are not pulled back by your experience alone, feel free to get in touch - I'be more than happy to help you launch this amazing journey to implement and leverage branding to propel your career prospects! You can Book a Discovery Call here to explore private coaching options or check out the the new Laser Branding Package which combines the Branding Success Toolkit with video tutorials and materials as well as a 90mins private coaching session in which I will help you get all the pieces of your new brand together and show you how to leverage it to succeed! You can check it out here.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Catherine Leduc is a certified NLP & RSCI coach, speaker, and author of multiple online courses on job searching and career management and brings 17+ years of experience in senior consulting roles in strategic planning & marketing in the pharmaceutical industry. She has been the go-to person for job searching and career advice in her expat circles for over a decade before deciding to launch as a Career Coach. Her approach is focused on a strong strategic marketing background, extensive experience building and managing multi-disciplinary & multi-cultural teams across the World, and special attention to addressing mindset issues that often stand in the way of reaching our goals.

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