Do You Impress Potential Employers?

Do you impress potential employers? No one will hire you to just give you a chance.

It doesn’t matter if you are hard-working and dedicated, unless you own the skills and applied knowledge needed for the employers’ positions. A lasting impression is sustainable if there is a pattern of project completion and/or successful business accomplishments.

Employers want the job done in spite of obstacles, personality conflicts, or bad hair days. The blog, America’s Job Exchange’s article, “What Do Employers Want?” stated, “A good employee gets the job done. A great employee gets the job done in spite of everything – including shifting priorities and schedules.”

What does it take for a job seeker to impress? Besides having a great resume, cover letter, and impressive portfolio, here are some other important attributes:

1. Impress employers with a wide range of collaborations and projects.

Presently, the workplace excels when employees create and embellish their projects and deepen existing expertise along the way. Job seekers who show creative solutions while partnering with departments and businesses, establish core competencies attractive to future employers. Even more impressive is offering a range of diverse work relationships across various global cultures.

2. Impress employers as quick and perpetual learners.

Job seekers who quickly absorb large quantities of content in short periods of time, and demonstrate they can quickly create value from ideas, impress employers. This often comes from significant amounts of reading and writing in your niche, and from finding new ways to apply the knowledge, often creating something from nothing.

3. Impress employers with soft skills.

Everyone has attributes and virtues that employers will find attractive. Do not discount attributes and virtues such as  patience, tact, and commitment to customer service. Interviews are tests that can expose shortcomings such as impatience, or an inability to handle conflict. Other soft skills such as communication fluency, courtesy, flexibility, integrity, and interpersonal skills are still “gold” and will stand out in a crowded field of candidates.

4. Impress employers with initiatives that reduce costs and save time.

You know that numbers on your résumé catch the eye of the reader and demonstrate your accomplishments. Employers also want to see step-by-step actions that make project goals attainable. By clearly explaining project strengths and weaknesses you can demonstrate  how your actions contributed to project cost/time results.

5. Impress employers with observations and evaluations.

While interviewing candidates when I was a manager, I gave a short explanation of how our department worked. After the explanation I asked the candidate what he/she learned from the explanation. I could successfully assess a candidate’s ability to assimilate blocks of information  in a short period from what the candidate learned from the spiel.  This told me much about the candidate’s learning ability, and signalled whether he or she was the right fit for our call center area.