Selling Yourself Short

because you'd rather not be selling yourself at all

You've delivered all the deliverables yet an act of mammon has left you wondering how you will shake out in the new, improved management structure. It's seven years since they invited you to take the job. Scanning the recruitment horizon it seems that everything has changed and you aren't going to have an easy ride. What do you do?

Most people start by trying to bluff, to bluff even themselves. "Once a manager, always a manager" is the biggest self-deception that they rely on. Surely I won't have to start all over again. Most people start by tentatively putting out a pompous CV that reflects to a seasoned recruiter their doubts, fears and even their resentments. What they tend to get back is 25 rejections and one inconclusive interview with some dubious box number recruiters who don't really have a job.

At this point they may become vulnerable to cheap, outdated and recruiter-centric advice about how to improve your job application style or expensive advice about marketing yourself to a supposed open trough of "unadvertised job vacancies with top companies". Some consider franchises or setting themselves up as consultants. A lot of people intelligently consider re-skilling themselves or repositioning themselves for a career shift but they don't really know what or how and there isn't much realistic advice available.

Meanwhile, they continue to flail about with an application style that doesn't work and an underlying emotional subtext that reads between the lines as: "this one's a potential loser who hasn't adapted to a changing world."

If any of this is you now there is a remedy but it is not a push button solution. In order to build back your own confidence and potency as a candidate there is a shedding process to go through. Simply tweaking your CV according to some supposed perfect formula may improve your hit rate but not the basic message you are giving out. Starting that MBA you always promised yourself will frighten the bank balance to give you some ammo but the payback is in the longer term. "Recolouring your parachute" according to some outmoded and hugely over-optimistic self-improvement technique may rightly strike you as a lot of hot air that fails to address your reality.

Career change, like life change, is a transition of maturity that you already have the tools to make but as yet may lack the method. You have a value and it can be communicated in an accurate, structured and well-pointed way that promotes you to recruiters.

Step one is to look honestly at where you are now, ruthlessly isolate the rubbish in your product offering and admit that you need a damn good rebuild. Here at CV Services we address the issues in a positive but realistic way that supports you in marketing yourself in all your glory for a new Summer of career development after your Winter of discontent.

These topics are covered in greater depth in CV Sage with examples and exercises. Take a look!