Take Charge of Your Career

November 1, 2005 By: Tina Cary

With recent investment by the Department of Labor, geospatial sciences are becoming a hot career choice. Is it time you took charge of your spatial career?

Simply put, you are the marketing director of your career. And in marketing, you need to understand your customers' needs as seen from their perspective. Regarding job searches, the person who is doing the hiring can be considered the customer, and his or her perspective may be quite different from yours.

Consider the tale of the mayor and his wife out for an afternoon stroll. They pass a construction site and each becomes engaged in conversation. As they resume their walk, the mayor says, "Who was that?" and his wife says, "That was Joe Smith, my boyfriend in high school." The mayor says, "Oh, if you hadn't met me you'd be married to a construction worker?" and she says, "No, if I hadn't met you, he'd be the mayor now."

Marketing the Product — You. In marketing, we talk about the four Ps — product, price, place, and promotion. Let's look at each of these in the context of the job search and career development. First of all, the product is you. The first and most obvious aspect of the product is your ability. If you are a recent graduate, the interviewer assesses your ability by asking such things as what school you attended, what your major was, what grades you earned, and what software packages you have used. Though the use of the past tense may suggest that the product is finished, that doesn't have to be the case. You can always take a short course, learn another software package, or undertake another project. If you have been in the workforce for some time, your employment history and accomplishments are key.

Show Them You Mean Business

In addition to ability, you as a product include other desirable attributes such as willingness, manageability, discretion, and ethics. And the factor that we've been evaluated on since kindergarten, "plays well with others," counts for a lot too. When I was a new hiring manager, I thought that ability was all I had to look for in a job candidate. I soon learned, however, that even ability, willingness, and manageability are not enough. A job candidate who hears "you're overqualified for the position" may want to consider whether that expression is a clue that the interviewer, though convinced of ability, is not convinced of one's willingness and manageability.

Attire, grooming, manners, and style of speech are attributes of the packaged product that is you. These elements all provide you with the ability to express your respect for the opportunity and your self-respect. Someone who wears business attire, is well-groomed and polite, and speaks in complete sentences without a lot of slang gets a more positive response than someone in very casual clothes with dirty fingernails who continues to talk on a cell phone while the hiring manager is trying to conduct the interview.

The second of the four Ps, price, means a lot more than just your salary, or even your salary plus benefits plus a share of overhead (the desk, computer, electricity, and so on). The amount of time the hiring manager must spend directly supervising you or consulting with the human resources department or soothing co-workers are very real costs, and the interview is your opportunity to provide evidence that you will be a low-maintenance employee.

The third P, place, may bring to your mind the location of the job. In the context of marketing, place means where the buyer can make a purchase, and it includes the 24/7 time aspect as well as location. For a job search, this suggests having an Internet presence — a Web site, a blog, and/or activity on relevant list servers. A blog, for example, will help you sell yourself by illustrating your communication skills and perhaps your discretion (though this is not a word commonly associated with blogs).