Whether your dream is to be a plumber, the Prime Minister or Ryan Gosling’s professional cuddler (well, it SHOULD be a job!), you can and should use these three key concepts in PR to help you land it!
Know your target audience
When sending out your resume and cover letter, don’t take a scatter-gun approach by shooting them over to every single company listed on seek.com.au.
Target the companies you’d most love to work for, and learn everything you can about them. Start by reading trough all the information on their website, followed by a Google search for additional information. Check out the head honchos on LinkedIn, as well as other employees in a similar position to the one you’re applying for to find out exactly what kind of skills the company values.
Research the marketplace the company operates in, which includes finding out who their biggest competitors are (worst case scenario, you can apply for jobs with them if you get turned down).
And it doesn’t hurt to learn a few facts and figures by heart to throw around when (yes, not if) you get that job interview.
Define your key message
When you know who your target audience is, i.e. the company you want to work for, it’s easy to define and hone your key message.
In other words, it’s time to personalise your CV and cover letter.
With just a few tweaks, you can highlight the skills the company is looking for in your resume, but the majority of your effort should go into writing the perfect cover letter.
And because you’ve done your research, you should be able to easily tailor your cover letter to market yourself as the perfect candidate.
As far as preparing for the actual job interview, apply some practices from traditional media training! Write up a list of common job interview questions (mate, just Google it) and practice answering them in front of a mirror and do a voice recording with your smart phone. It may sound dull, but it’s highly effective as you can practice until you get the key messages you want across.
Work on your brand image
A company’s logo, website and ads communicate what the company and its values are all about. The same goes for all of us, we are, deliberately or not, communicating different things with our appearance!
It may not be fair that we are judged by what we wear and how we look, and although genetics, bank balances and bad hair days can get in the way of us looking like Megan Gale, you should work hard to make sure your brand image is polished on the day of your job interview. First and lasting impressions matter more than ever in our fast-paced world, so think neat but unique!
That is, nicely styled hair, clean and polished nails, spotless and appropriate clothes (suit for corporate jobs, personable style for creative gigs). And don’t forget you express a lot with things like body language and expressions so turn that frown upside down and stop slouching!
So what are you waiting for? Go get that dream job. And if you’ll excuse me, I have a certain Mr Gosling I need to do some very thorough research on *googling “ryan gosling shirtless” *.
Mira Palomäki
