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One of the first things
you’ll need to do is to take a fresh look at your accomplishments
and skills.
TIP: You
are marketing a product – yourself – and you need to know your
competitive
strengths. |
The
goal of self-assessment is document your accomplishments and lay
the groundwork for your marketing material – resume, cover letters,
elevator pitch. There are many methodologies, but one that is very effective is called PAR – Problem Action Results.
(It is also sometimes called SAR Situation, Action Results.)
The
process is simply to review your career and select 6-8 problems
you have solved that showcase your added value to a future employer
and then write a few sentences on three topics:
- What the problem
was
- What actions you
took to solve the problem
- What results came
about as a result of your actions
Try
to quantify these results numerically whenever possible
Here is an example
of one of the 6-8 problems analyzed for a marketing exec:
Title: Create new
identity for ABC Company
Problem:
ABC Company acquired
New Networks and needed to
a. Change market perception
of the company
b. Increase it's awareness
in the enterprise market for networking
- ABC had less than
5% awareness in enterprise market,
- New had 27% and
Established Inc. had 65%
- ABC was perceived
as a Canadian firm without any viable products for the enterprise
market
- ABC’s century-old
culture was highly resistant to change, especially to rapid
change
Actions taken:
- Developed a range
of brand identity options, from minor changes of existing ABC
identity to entirely new "look and feel"
- Conducted customer
and employee research to determine viability of each identity
- Gained agreement
with senior management on new corporate name (ABC Networks) and
brand identity. Implemented a consistent brand identity across
multiple, autonomous business units and geographies
- Gained acceptance
for rapid change via presentations and broad-based communications
- Developed online
standards and tools to support employees and external vendors
in implementing the brand identity and messages in advertising,
branding, web, collateral, communications and product design
Results:
- Defined and launched
two-pronged brand identity in 9 weeks in a culture that had failed
to fully implement a consistent identity previously. The benchmark
for such work was 26 weeks, set by Lucent.
- Phase one graphically
linked the New Networks and ABC identities together to give existing
customers a frame of reference.
- Phase two introduced
the new company's name and logo
- Achieved 80+% compliance
with new brand identity across four autonomous lines of business
and all regions within six months of launch
- Increased awareness
7-fold – from 5% to 35% within 18 months
- Developed comprehensive
branding strategies for mergers, acquisitions and spin-offs -thereby
decreasing time required performing marketing analysis in acquisitions
or spin-offs by 75%.
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