Market Yourself

It is very important that you can show that you are a good fit for a job. Sometimes the person who gets a job may not be the most skilled, but they may have been good at promoting themselves. Here are some tips to help you market yourself.

Create your "elevator speech."
An elevator speech is a brief summary of an idea for a product, service, or project. It is called an elevator speech because it can be delivered in the time span of an elevator ride (say, thirty seconds or 100-150 words).

The term is typically used in the context of an entrepreneur pitching an idea to a venture capitalist to receive funding. Venture capitalists often judge the quality of an idea and team on the basis of the quality of its elevator pitch, and will ask entrepreneurs for the elevator pitch to quickly weed out bad ideas. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_sources)

A variety of other people, including entrepreneurs, project managers, salespeople, evangelists, job seekers, and speed daters commonly use elevator pitches to get their point across quickly.

Example of an elevator speech:

• “My name is Jane Doe. I have two years experience as an office assistant. I also took classes in project management at Whatever College. I have worked in customer service most of my life. I'm looking for an administrative support position. I'd really like to work for a medical company. Do you know of any jobs in that area?"

 Create your own elevator speech by using the Your Elevator Speech (pdf).

Be prepared and organized.

• Use the Organization Tools (pdf) to keep yourself organized during your job search.