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The #1 question I hear from job seekers every day is, “How can I stand out?” Are you wondering the same thing? How do you set yourself apart from the other candidates, show that you are the one to hire, and get the job offer? Here’s what you need to know: It isn’t always the most skilled candidate who gets the offer. The one who gets the offer is the one who does the best job of communicating with the hiring manager. Can you effectively communicate what he or she needs to know to feel comfortable hiring you? It doesn’t matter how good you actually are at your job— if you can’t communicate that effectively through the interview process, then you’re not going to get the job. Good communication is the real key to standing out and getting the offer. Here’s what I mean: As a recruiter, I’ve had candidates (who I thought were fantastic) go into the interview and fail to communicate well. The hiring manager would call me later and say, “I just don’t know about this person.” And I’d say (very nicely!), “Are you kidding me? John has X, Y, and Z that you asked for, so what makes you say that?” And they’d say, “He just didn’t seem like a good fit.” The

www.CareerConfidential.com Page 2 The hiring manager is your future boss, or your boss’s boss—the one with the power to hire you.

problem wasn’t personality or cultural fit—I’d already screened him for those things, because I knew my client companies very well. The real problem was that John didn’t communicate his skills properly. I knew he had them and John knew he had them—but the hiring manager couldn’t see it. John didn’t communicate what the hiring manager needed to know in order to feel comfortable hiring him. Why is communication so critical in this process? Two reasons: 1) The job search is a sales process. The psychology of the sales process is always the same, no matter what is for sale. In this job search, that’s you. You are the product. The hiring manager is the...