How to Land Your Dream Job in 6 Weeks

What does it take to get a job in today’s competitive market? Well, before landing my new gig at Liferay, I talked to 8 different companies, interviewed with more than 2 dozen people, took several different tests employers conducted to evaluate my skills, and wrote 30+ follow-up emails to the people I met during my interviews. I did this all in the span of 6 weeks, ultimately landing the job I wanted most. 

How did I do it? I went "all in" and made looking for a new opportunity my full time job. This meant going against the traditional advice of not leaving your current employer before you have a new job lined up. This was not a decision I made lightly as I still had a family to support and two kids to put through college. However, I knew that I had a very demanding full-time job and there was simply no way to focus on it and the job hunt at the same time. So much to the surprise of my colleagues, family and friends, I submitted my two-week notice and set out on a quest to find my next corporate adventure.

While I was both excited and scared of starting a new career path (especially during the pandemic), one thing going all in did for me was allow me to develop an effective process for marketing myself to new employers. This included:

• targeting the right companies
• increasing my odds of getting an interview
• telling my story like in a way that made me stand out
• following up effectively after an interview
• soliciting feedback to help me get better
• negotiating salary

Even if you don’t have the option of leaving your current employer to look for a new job, you can still use the same process and examples described in this article to find your next dream job.

Create Your “Ideal Companies to Work For” List

There’s nothing like a list to keep you focused on your job search. As you compile your ideal list of companies to work for don’t worry too much about the length of your list. The goal is simply to create the list. 

Once you have your list, you can prune it by doing your own research to see how well its mission, culture and values align with your own. I find the best way to do this is by observing how a company communicates on channels like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

You can tell a lot about a company through their posts and videos. Are they serious, humble, fun, service-oriented? Don’t forget to check on posts from individual employees as well. This will give you great insight into the personality of the company. Going through this exercise for all the companies on your list will help you whittle down your selections to a list of favorites.

You could also shorten your list by removing companies that don’t have any open positions in your field, but if you truly like an organization I wouldn’t cross them off your list because you could be missing out on a great opportunity. For example, a few of the companies I reached out to did not have open positions, but were planning on creating positions in my area of expertise soon. I would have never known that if I had not contacted them directly.

Use Referrals to Get Interviews

Once you have your list of favorites, the real challenge begins -- getting interviews. This is where referrals from friends or colleagues who know the hiring manager can pay huge dividends. 

Out of the 13 jobs I applied for, the 8 companies that called me back for interviews were the ones where I had a referral. The five others sent me rejection letters that thanked me for applying and let me know they would keep my resume on file for six months. Think about that for a second. 100% of my referral companies called me back, while the others did not.

While an introductory email from a friend or colleague to a hiring manager is ideal, referrals don't have to be elaborate to work. I secured two interviews by simply letting a hiring manager know that a mutual colleague of ours had told me about their open position. In both cases, stating my colleague's name was enough to get me a response.

Make Your Message Count

Once you have a referral, you really want to make it count. This means carefully studying the job description to see what the hiring manager is looking for so that you can cover the key points in your initial message. It also means making sure you cover those same points in more detail in your resume. 

Below is an example of a message that I sent a hiring manager after I let her know a colleague of hers had told me about a Content Manager position on her team. I wrote this message after connecting with her on LinkedIn (note, throughout my examples I've changed the names of individuals and have not named the companies in order to protect their privacy):

Hi Tina, thanks for accepting my invitation to connect. I’m reaching out because I have started to look for other opportunities for myself and part of that search involves reaching out to good people and companies I have worked with in the past like COMPANY. 

If you are interested in seeing what I can do from a content standpoint, I’ve attached my resume, which includes various samples. Right now, what I’m primarily focused on is finding and working for a company that empowers its employees and whose mission is inspiring. I also want to work with good people. From my experience in collaborating with COMPANY, your team there could be a great fit. 

Would love to discuss the position more with you and how I could help. I just completed a 4 year stint with HG Insights building up their content and event library, so I know the amount of organization and work it takes to deliver content that communicates clearly and serves the needs of so many different audiences and stakeholders. Would be happy to partner up with you at COMPANY if the fit is right Tina.

Why did the message work? Well, first I referenced Tina’s colleague in my initial LinkedIn connection request. Then I followed up with a message that stated its purpose, indicated why I was interested in this particular organization, and briefly described why my background would be beneficial for this team. I also made sure my resume contained plenty of examples of not only what I had done, but the outcomes. Here are the first two bullet points of my resume:

• Recruit, produce and host Master Classes that help our sales team shorten sales cycles and expand business at key accounts. Grew total registrations 375% in 2020.
• Developed and drove content strategy responsible for converting prospects into buyers, educating analysts and press on our offerings, and increasing visibility for our executive team. Increased MQLs by 3x in 2020, secured coverage in key analyst reports and trade publications, and quadrupled the exposure of our exec team.

The resume also included examples of the work I had done that directly related to the bullet points in the job description. 

While the message I shared above is great for someone looking to transition into a similar role in a new organization, what if you are looking to pivot into a new role? In my case, I was looking for a product marketing position. On the surface, my title of Marketing Communications Manager did not reflect that I had this type of background even though I had supported countless different product launches and initiatives throughout my career.  

Here was the general message I wrote to reflect how my background could serve this particular company:

Hi Joe, I saw you had a Product Marketing Manager position open at COMPANY. I’m reaching out to you because our mutual colleague, Lauren, told me about the position.

Right now, I’m interested in making a career pivot to Product Marketing. I will tell you up front that my background is not in product marketing, but rather in creating compelling content that helps educate prospects, customers, press, and analysts on a company's products and services. I also generate content for demand gen, sales, and customer success to support the buyer's journey.

That being said, I recently had the opportunity to essentially be the de facto product marketing manager for HG Insights’ Market Intelligence platform launch and I loved it (you can even see me at the top of our home page promoting this product). That is why I'm very interested in pursuing a career in PMM with the right organization and leader, if the fit is right.   

Here's a little of what I created to promote the launch I mentioned earlier just so you can get a sense of what I could bring to the table when it comes to content creation. Happy to share more with you as well.

• Market Intelligence Product Page
• Product Overview Video 
• Product Announcement Blog 
• Press Release

Again, I'm not the traditional PMM, but I do believe that I can add value to your product marketing efforts with my content and industry background. Happy to discuss any opportunity with you in person or answer any questions you may have by email in the meantime Joe. Thanks for the consideration and I look forward to hearing from you!

The above message had a small element of risk in that I confessed to not being a “traditional Product Marketing Manager.” But by making a quick pivot as to why my experience was relevant for the role and citing concrete examples of my work, I also clearly communicated why my background made me both a strong and unique candidate. This message helped me land several interviews for PMM positions at different companies.

Interview Like a STAR

When it comes to interviewing there is so much advice online that it’s easy to get lost. You can spend hours writing out and rehearsing answers to specific interview questions and that is fine. But one piece of advice from a professional career coach really simplified the entire interview preparation process for me. Rather than fret over the myriad of possible questions an interviewer might ask and how I might answer them correctly, the coach told me to focus on doing the following:

• Review the requirements for the position
• Write out STAR stories that show how you satisfy those requirements. STAR stands for Situation, Action and Results. 
• Once you have your STAR stories written, make sure to summarize the key points in your resume so that what you say orally aligns with what’s on your resume

He said most people approach their resume and interviews as a “list dump” of accomplishments. This means that many job applicants end up sounding very similar to each other making it difficult for interviewers to discern what uniquely qualifies a candidate for a particular the role.

What you want to do instead is craft a story around your accomplishments that describes a Situation (or challenge) your company was facing, the Action you took to address the challenge and the Results. This not only shows your accomplishments, but also what interviewers want to know most: how you think. 

If you take the time to write all your STAR stories, you’ll be amazed at how easy it becomes to answer interview questions around your achievements in a compelling way. 

Here is an example of a STAR narrative I created that helped me answer questions regarding my involvement in Sales Enablement:

STAR Narrative - Sales Enablement

Situation - Sales wanted to generate more deal expansion conversations at existing accounts and also encourage top prospects to purchase our product for strategic use cases, which would lead to larger deal sizes.   

Action - By joining forces with sales, customer success and demand gen, we created our “Master Class” series of webinars which were designed to address the big problems company leaders were looking to solve such as market sizing, resource allocation, territory planning, and finding their best new opportunities. During the course of these events, we intelligently showed how our product could help business leaders tackle their toughest challenges. We did this in the context of the discussion so that it flowed and did not seem like an over the top product demonstration. 

For the master class, we worked with Sales to figure out topics that resonated with our key accounts. We then developed a promotion action plan that consisted of both traditional demand gen, and also personalized invitations from SDRs, Account Execs, and Customer Success team members to encourage multiple registrations from key accounts. 

We also created a plan to encourage additional engagement with our content and further follow up after the event, including the development of targeted microsites for ABM outreach.   

Result - Results exceeded our expectations. For example, 481 people registered for our market sizing master class and more than 70% of the accounts that showed up were key accounts who wanted to learn more about the high-value use cases we were discussing in our class. 

Sales and Customer Success drove 35% of the registrations, and 38% of the people who attended requested our follow-up “Free Market View Analysis” offer. This helped us increase our average deal size.   

Additionally, 25% of our key accounts had more than 6 people registered for the event which made it easy for sales to have deal expansion conversations with existing accounts.

The above story was well received by my interviewers and it was one that I found myself telling over and over again whenever the topic of sales enablement came up.

Focusing on STAR stories allowed me to create a bigger picture view of my accomplishments that also included detailed examples of the solutions I implemented and outcomes I achieved. By building a library of STAR narratives for myself, I also stopped fixating on how to deliver the right answer to specific interview questions -- something that could make me sound robotic. STAR gave me a framework for telling my story in a natural, intelligent and engaging manner so that I could stand out and connect with my interviewers.

Be Prepared for the Salary Question Early

Every company I talked to began with a recruiter interview. And one way or another, every recruiter asked me what my salary expectations were as a way to make sure I was within their budget range. If you’ve done your research, you may roughly know what a position should pay and may be tempted to state this number when asked. But by doing that, you could be selling yourself short, especially if the company had a higher number in mind. 

When it comes to salary discussions, it’s best to respond to the recruiter with something like this:

Well, I’m sure your company has a budget range in mind for this position. Are you willing to share what that budget range is with me and then I can let you know if your range is in line with my expectations?

In my interviews, I discovered that every recruiter was more happy to provide a budget range for the position and continue the conversation once I indicated whether or not the salary range matched my expectations. 

Knowing the range is a very useful piece of information because your understanding of the role you’re applying for will become much clearer as you progress through the interview cycle. And with a better understanding of the position requirements, you’ll be much more informed when it comes time to negotiate your salary.

Ask Questions and Send a Strong Follow-Up email

It’s always helpful to learn as much about the company you’re interviewing with so that you can ask your interviewers thoughtful questions about what their goals and challenges are, and how your role will help them achieve their objectives.  

Remember, the interview process is a two way street - you are interviewing them as much as they are interviewing you. Additionally, by actively listening and taking notes you’ll be in a much better position to send a strong follow-up email that:

• provides a quick summary of what you discussed
• describes how you can help them solve their challenges
• and cites examples of how you’ve done this in the past for previous employers 

It seems like common sense to use the follow-up email to reinforce the value you can deliver, but, as an interviewer myself, I’ve received a lot of generic “thank you for your time” emails over the years. To me, that’s a wasted opportunity. Your follow-up email is the perfect vehicle in which to highlight, once again, why you are the perfect candidate for the role. It also shows your ability to listen, think through issues and offer solutions.

Here’s an example of a follow-up email I wrote for a Product Marketing position:

Hey James, great talking to you today about COMPANY, the position, and what your goals are for this year. Since use case centered content is going to be a big part of your outreach strategy, I am going to share a few samples of things I've done that I think we could do at COMPANY as well. 

• Account Scoring ebook (attached) - I wrote a series of articles and social posts around Account Scoring, which I eventually converted into this ebook that included screen shots of our platform as well. I did the same thing for the ICP use case, which you can see here.
• Product Launch - Here are some of the elements I created for our market intelligence product launch:
• Product Overview Video (just look for me at top of page)
• Product Page
• Webinar - me having fun with CRO of Vanillasoft. Since you are interested in creating a podcast, I figured I'd share my ability to host some of this stuff for you. At HG, I recruited, hosted and produced all our webinars.
• Video Testimonials - though these aren't always easy to get for the reasons we talked about, once you have one or two good ones, it's amazing the impact they can have. I interviewed Barry for this video. 

Anyway, that's just a sample James - you can find more examples of the stuff I've done on the last page of the attached resume. 

I think we'd be able to do a lot of creative things there at COMPANY. Also, the fact I know this industry pretty well and have written about it for 4+ years would really help me hit the ground running in this Product Marketing position if you feel the fit is right. Looking forward to talking to you again soon about the position, any of the samples I sent, and next steps. In the meantime, good luck with all the interviews!

The reason I was able to write such a detailed follow-up email after my initial interview with the above company was because I asked the hiring manager questions regarding his plans for the department and the type of approach he wanted to use in communicating with potential customers. My follow-up also got me to the final interview round. 

Prepare to Take Tests

The job market is competitive. Out of the 8 jobs I interviewed for, 5 of them gave me tests to perform. The tests you get will vary depending on the position you are applying for, but here’s a couple of examples of the tests different companies gave me:

Test #1 - Objections Handling

This test centered around how to handle a perceived product shortcoming.

PRODUCT Y is primarily used for authenticated B2B experiences. It lacks

the sophisticated content management, personalization and digital marketing

features required for advanced B2C scenarios.

Focusing on this caution only, please:

1. Prepare a response for someone in sales to use if they are asked

about this caution

2. Share a very high level explanation of the process you went through

to prepare your response. It can be informal, in the form of a written

explanation or a bulleted outline -- basically just document your steps

Example: I went to [this page] and saw that you emphasized ______, so I

concluded ____. Then I did _____, and ____, etc.

Notice that this test not only asked me to formulate a response to the objection it also asked me about my thought process. Another reminder that most interviewers really want to know how you think.

Test #2 - Uncovering Your Marketing Philosophy

One interviewer set up a second interview with me and asked me to come prepared to discuss the following questions:

1. Tell me about a company’s marketing/brand campaign/ you love, and why?  

2. Once one common practice in marketing that you disagree with, and why?

3. What do you think you’d like to accomplish in the first 90 days of this role?

See how the first two questions ask you about “the why?” These questions are just another clever way to illuminate how you think. The third question helps the interviewer uncover how you think too, while also getting a glimpse into how you prioritize your work. 

One thing that is nice about this type of test is that you have time to think about your answer. In my case, I not only thought about the answer, I also wrote summaries of my answers in an email and stated that I could get into more detail in our follow-up interview. Here was part of my answer for the first question in which I answered the question and clearly stated why I liked this company’s marketing approach:

Metadata - I like the simplicity of their messaging especially on the home page. They clearly tell you what their product does and why the way they do it (their differentiation) is better than what's out there now. But perhaps the thing I like most is that they are not afraid to show and demo their product without gating the demo behind a form fill. If you look at most SaaS companies, you'll see that they gate their demos, which is annoying for a prospect who is simply trying to gather information. If you believe in your product/content and in your ability to help your audience, don't make them fill out a form to get your stuff. Let them see it and then they can decide if they want to talk to you. 

Other tests I received included rewriting customer case studies and writing a customer email in support of a product launch. Feel free to message me on LinkedIn if you want to see examples of these.

Again, the tests you will be asked to do vary depending on the position. The purpose of this article is not to tell you what the answers are, it’s just to make you aware that testing candidates has now become a common practice and you should be prepared for that. 

Although job tests may take additional time, you do have the advantage of consulting your network of colleagues for guidance and feedback. It’s also a great way to deepen your relationship with your interviewer by asking thoughtful follow-up questions, which also show how you think and tackle problems. 

Ask for Feedback to Get Better

Not every company I interviewed with offered me a job, but being turned down gave me the opportunity to solicit feedback from my interviewers. Specifically, I asked for what I did well and what I could do in the future to be stronger. Getting advice like this was invaluable and helped me get better in other interviews. 

Here’s an example of the message I wrote to solicit feedback from one particular interviewer:

If you get a few moments one day, could you tell me what you thought of me as a candidate in the interview process? For example, did you see me as a strong candidate, are there things I should add to my repertoire/resume, etc.? It's just been a long time since I've interviewed like that and I want to know, based on your experience, how I compare to other candidates so that I can make sure I stand out in future interviews.

And here is the great feedback I received which I used to edit my resume and also expand my list of STAR stories:

Across the board, the team definitely thought you would be a great colleague and content contributor. Obviously, some here thought you could step into the role right away, or we would not have kept progressing you in the process, so please know that we were impressed by you. I also learned a lot by speaking with some really interesting PMMs over the past few weeks.

Since you asked, here are a few thoughts:

• Interviews > Your conversations with us and ability to quickly analyze our business challenges were very good. Great job. 
• Content Marketing Value > My former Sr. Content Manager, First Name, is an example of someone who stepped right out of a content marketing role with us and into a product marketing role. Note that he had never really handled those duties in a formal sense previously, so that was obviously a case where a company values the ability to create engaging content over concentrated PMM experience. I think there are a lot of companies that will feel the same way about you.
• GTM experience > I suspect that you have contributed more to go-to-market successes than you realize. I would encourage you to look back, document all the things you have done, and re-package them on your resume as you apply to PMM roles going forward.
• Access to product usage metrics > A lot of PMMs we interviewed position themselves as people who help the product team analyze usage (existing product engagement) to identify customers who might be churn threats or upsells, in addition to traditional content marketing or GTM gurus. I would encourage you to get access to whatever metrics you can in your current position and get a little experience working across the teams adding value. It's a differentiator.

Most of my interviewers gave me some good responses, but the above example was by far the most helpful one and it really helped me fine-tune my approach.

Having exchanges like the one above was also a wonderful way to connect with new people on a deeper level. During the course of my interviews, I had several conversations that ranged from 30 - 90 minutes. That means I got to know 26 different people and bond with them in a way that I hadn’t even done with some of my former co-workers. That’s priceless regardless of whether or not the employer offered me a position.

So if you’re on the fence about asking your interviewers for advice, don’t be -- it’s a great way to identify how to step up your game for your next round of interviews, forge new relationships and expand your professional network in a meaningful way.

Close the Deal

While doing everything I’ve described in this article doesn’t mean you’ll automatically get a job, following the advice will definitely help you stand out as a candidate. It will also ensure that you progressively get better with each interaction you have with prospective employers. But most importantly, it will eventually lead to a job offer. Or, better yet, multiple offers!

So once you have an offer, should you accept it or counter it? That’s a question only you can answer and it will depend on a number of different factors such as your experience, the requirements of the position, benefits package, and how confident you are in your ability to make an impact. If you followed the advice earlier in this article and asked the recruiter for the salary range for your position, answering this question becomes a little easier. 

With salary knowledge you can determine if your offer is on the low end, midpoint, or high end of the range? If you have years of experience in a similar role, you should feel more than comfortable negotiating for the highest salary in the range. If you’re more junior and don’t feel confident asking for more, there’s no shame in that but don’t be afraid to ask for a bit more if you have the skills. 

If you need a little encouragement to ask for a higher salary, remind yourself that getting an offer means you’re the company’s top choice. Typically, hiring managers want their top choice and are more than happy to spend a little more if it means getting the candidate they want most.

Conclusion

There’s a lot that goes into applying for a new job. To recap, you need to:

• Create your list of ideal companies
• Use referrals to get interviews
• Write your STAR narratives
• Send strong follow-up emails
• Be prepared to take tests
• Solicit feedback to get better
• Negotiate your offer

For me, the last few weeks have been an exhilarating and enlightening ride. Admittedly it’s also been a bit exhausting. As I mentioned in my intro, you don’t need to leave your current position to embark on a job hunt sprint the way I did. But for me, the advantage of doing it this way was the level of focus I could apply to my job search each day. It's this concentrated effort that let me fine-tune my process, build new relationships and ultimately land my dream job in just 6 weeks. It's my sincere hope that these tips help you do the same.

If you’re currently looking for a new opportunity and end up using any of the tips I described in this article to land your next job, I would love to hear about how you did it. And if you used any other techniques that fellow job hunters may find helpful, don't be afraid to leave your advice in the comments below.

Also, feel free to contact me if you’re curious about any of the examples I cited or would like to see others. I’m happy to help, share and provide feedback where I can. 

Happy job hunting!