Set Yourself Apart From the Job Search Crowd: How a Value Validation Project Can Give You the Edge

If you want to differentiate yourself from the myriad of job applicants barraging employers with resumes and cover letters, read on.

When job hunting, you want to:

1.??????Differentiate yourself—Recruiters and hiring managers get tired of the bland, vanilla, “Sea of Sameness” they encounter from job applicants. They want to know what makes YOU different from all the other applicants.

2.??????Show how you can provide value—How you can help them, how you can provide value is what they care about. They have specific problems they are looking to solve, opportunities to capitalize on, and results to achieve. They are looking for someone who can help them with these.

3.??????Demonstrate how great it would be to work with you—Hiring managers are also studying you through the lens of “What would it be to have this person as a direct report and a member of my team?”

One of the best ways to achieve all three goals is to demonstrate—either before, during, or after the interview—the kind of value you would bring.

“Demonstration beats presentation every time”

I heard this powerful bit of advice years ago in an I Love Marketing podcast, where the co-hosts, Dean Jackson and Joe Polish, talked about how entrepreneurs and consultants would be much more successful getting clients if they showed potential clients their ability to help—by helping them before they even become clients—rather than told them they could help them by giving them a sales presentation or through sales copy.

Job seekers can benefit from the same advice.

Rather Than Try To Persuade a Potential Employer,?Demonstrate The Value You Would Provide

?How can you demonstrate to a hiring manager the value you would provide as an employee, rather than just perfecting your ability to tell them you would be a great asset?

To do this, you want to put yourself in a hiring manager’s shoes.

What’s on their minds, both generally and specifically?

In general, they are thinking about the problems they are accountable to solve, revenue they need to generate, and opportunities they are paid to identify and then capitalize on.

What do they need?

They need high quality people to help them achieve their goals, and they need employees who show initiative, have a “How can I help you?” and “How can I provide value?” mindset.

They are also impressed by employees who have a self-employed consultant’s mindset who sees their supervisor as a valuable client that they only get to keep as a client if they understand their needs and deliver the results their client needs.

What don’t they want?

They don’t want to spend all their time sifting through resumes and interviewing people.

And they don’t want to make a bad hire.

What does this mean for you?

It means you can differentiate yourself from other job applicants by showing how you are the solution to their problems and someone who will be laser-focused on helping them succeed.

You can do this through demonstration, rather than simply through persuasion.

Austin Belcak has a great term for this.

He calls it your “Value Validation Project” (VVP).

Your Value Validation Project demonstrates to a potential employer how you would provide value if you were hired. It also gives them a sneak preview as to what kind of an employee you would be.

Belcak tells the fascinating back story behind the Value Validation Project idea, which involves a former roommate who used the concept to land a job at Uber. This happened back when Austin was trying to switch careers and was struggling to get a job with a high profile employer in a different sector.

His savvy roommate recognized that if he wanted to work for a company that was founded on disrupting an industry, he needed to be disruptive. He needed to NOT follow the typical “post and pray” job search approach that most grads used.

Rather than just post his resume on job boards and respond to job postings and pray to hear back, his roommate?explained to Austin his unorthodox approach:

“I ended up sourcing feedback from everyone I knew who rode Uber regularly. I sent them a quick survey – what did you love, what did you hate. Then I consolidated the results, found patterns, and built out a deck. I found as many emails as I could at Uber and I sent it to everyone. They must have thought I was crazy, but it worked.”

In this example, his roommate not only demonstrated that he was an “out of the box” thinker—something valued in Uber’s culture—but also that he would be the kind of employee who focused on providing value…not just on what the employer could do for him.

As Vince Thompson, founder, chairman and CEO of MELT, a U.S. sports marketing and branding agency, advised in a recent podcast interview with?Virginia Franco on Resume Storyteller, job seekers need to think of the application process as a “job audition.”

It’s a chance to demonstrate what you can do on the job, rather than just talk about what you would do.

In the interview, he tells the story of a young man who reached out to Vince. He had lost his job marketing?tickets for Atlanta-based professional sports team because of COVID.

Rather than simply talk about his experience, he shared how his tactics for selling tickets during the pandemic could translate to him providing value to Vince’s business.

Impressed with the young man’s creativity and initiative, Vince told his team “I like the way this kid thinks. Call him up!”

Everything Matters

Both examples also illustrate an important guiding principle and mantra I encourage job seekers to embrace: “Everything Matters”.

Everything matters when it comes to the job search.

Every action, every interaction with potential employers and their representatives, whether trying to get an interview, in the interview, or after the interview, matters.

It all communicates something about you and what you would be like as an employee.

The Value Validation Project clearly says something different about your level of initiative and focus on providing value than those taking the traditional route.

How Do I Show I Can Provide Value?

That obviously depends on your field and the type of job you are interested in.

In his article Value Validation Projects: A Deliverable That Will Land You More Jobs [12+ Examples] , Belcak gives examples of projects real people created, as well as sources you can use to gather information to help you generate ideas that are relevant to a particular employer.

Here’s another example from an interview prep coaching client, Rich Knox, a senior-level marketing professional, who jumped on the VVP concept.

What follows is a Q&A around his experience with the concept:

Q:?What was your reaction to the Value Validation project, including how that might be something you could use?

A: The idea of differentiating myself as a job candidate has always been something I thought was important to the process. Sometimes that differentiation is due to past job experiences, sometimes it’s due to a particular skill one brings to a job, or even a particular relationship. The Value Validation concept is another great idea for differentiating, and the particular anecdote you shared of a UX (user experience) example sparked an idea for me based on some recent experience I’d had.

Q: What made you choose the particular idea you came up with?

A: One of the employers I was applying to was a start-up with a complicated and somewhat technical value proposition. It was clear from doing my research that there was an interest and expressed need within the organization for clarifying and simplifying messaging related to that value proposition--both internally and externally. In my work at my previous employer, we’d landed on a concept called a “brand manifesto”, a one pager that served as a device to explain and inspire through a creative and poetic approach. I thought that would be of value in this case.

Q: Once you came up with that idea, what were some of the considerations for how to broach the topic with your prospective employer?

A: I realized that with this particular employer that it would probably be best not to propose a manifesto right out of the gate. I needed to get to know them first and confirm that the idea of a manifesto would be a topic of interest. As it turned out, another more appealing opportunity materialized and I ended up accepting another job offer. However, I really believed that the employer could benefit from using a manifesto, so as a volunteer project, I offered to draft one for them after my initial interview, even though I had taken the other job. They were intrigued and grateful and said “yes please, we’d like to know more and to see what you come up with”.

Q: How was your Value Validation project received?

A: They loved it and planned to review it and consider putting it, or a revised version to use. As I mentioned, I’d already accepted another job offer, but I’m quite sure that this effort did demonstrate strong value and, had I pursued the opportunity, would have helped set me apart from the other candidates. And you never know when paths might cross in the future, so in some ways it was paying it forward.

Q: What are your takeaways from this process that could be of benefit to other job searchers?

A: First and foremost is to realize that you need to differentiate yourself, and if you’re just starting out you can’t necessarily rely on past experience or a deep set of relationships. So, I think a Value Validation effort makes a lot of sense, particularly for less experienced candidates--but also tailored to the situation at hand. As part of this process, it’s important to read the situation and determine the type of value validation that would be most helpful and appropriate (drawing on your strengths and their needs).?It’s also important to determine for yourself at what point in the process to present or propose your Value Validation effort. In my case, it was after an initial interview, but in some cases I could see it being presented after the initial application and prior to the first interview, or even as part of the initial application.

It’s also a nice opportunity to size up the needs of the organization (do your research!) and demonstrate your insight to their needs, as well as demonstrating your skills--which can help them realize you’d be a great fit.?

Other Value Validation Project Ideas and The Rationale Behind The Choice

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When we discussed possible VVPs for this employer, my first thought was for Rich to review the company’s website and rewrite some of the more scientific and challenging-to-understand content, since one of the most important roles of the position he was applying for was to translate rather arcane scientific concepts into everyday language.

As we discussed this, we refined the idea to him first asking the co-founder who was going to be interviewing him if she was interested in the specific idea of a brand manifesto to address her concerns.

Notice how doing that, versus Rich just picking a couple of concepts he was interested in tackling, increases the chances that Rich would actually provide value, and…since Everything Matters…it would demonstrate he possessed a key attribute of an excellent marketing professional: he takes the time to understand what his customer or the marketplace cares about, rather than just be a “solution in search of a problem.”

In the end, as Rich described above, he decided to go with the manifesto, because it met a need that had been validated.

One More Example of “Demonstration beats Presentation” and How To Treat A Job Interview as a “Job Audition”

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In an interview with Jay Shetty on his On Purpose podcast, best-selling author and social psychologist Adam Grant provided another example of how to demonstrate your ability to provide value versus trying to convince an employer you could.

Near the end of the interview, Jay Shetty asked Adam Grant if he had any advice about how to get better at judging someone’s potential when hiring talent, because this was an issue Jay was wrestling with.

Adam responded by saying how Jay could spend hours asking a candidate questions designed to ascertain whether an applicant had the skills and would be a good fit or…he could ask for work samples such as having applicants:

1.??????Make a list of five podcast guests Jay needs to have that he never heard of and see how interesting the people they come up with are.

2.??????Critique Jay’s social media posts and identify the one thing that Jay should change moving forward and one thing he’s done occasionally done that he should be repeating more often.

3.??????Read Jay’s current book and create a pitch for the next book Jay should write.

Notice how these assignments would give Jay Shetty firsthand evidence of the applicant’s creativity, ability to think strategically, knowledge of the position’s specific domains, and the applicant’s ability to comprehend Jay’s vision, brand, and values.

With these examples, and those in the above mentioned article by Austin Belcak, let’s get you thinking about how you can create your own Value Validation Projects.

To Put This Into Practice

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1.??????Read Value Validation Projects: A Deliverable That Will Land You More Jobs [12+ Examples] to prime your brain for ideas.

2.??????Gather intel on what your would-be employer is focusing on by studying their website (especially their Media Page), their social media, and the Linkedin posts by their leaders, and those of the hiring manager.

3.??????Take this information and filter it through these questions:

a.??????What is the organization trying to accomplish?

b.?????What are they most proud of (both related to who they are and what they’ve accomplished)?

c.??????What challenges are they, or might they be, facing? (both the employer and the hiring manager)

d.?????Given the above, what problems could I help to solve that fit my profession and how I am positioning myself (i.e. your value proposition)?

4.??????Come up with a list of possible problems you could help solve or opportunities you can help to identify or capitalize on, and pick one based on the value it would provide, how do-able the project, and how well it fits in with your value proposition.?Alternatively, if your goal is to differentiate yourself after the interview rather than to get your foot in the door, choose your top three ideas and offer them as choices at the end of the interview and let the hiring manager pick the one that he or she would find most valuable.

5.??????Brainstorm your VVP ideas with creative friends, both within and outside your profession. Often the best ideas come from outside a field.

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About the authors:

David Lee is a career coach and interview prep specialist at the career counseling and outplacement firm Heart At Work Associates, who especially enjoys working with professionals seeking to identify a career path or change career direction.

Rich Knox is Senior Marketing officer at the Island Institute—he enjoys working with organizations to translate internal mission impact into easily understandable outward facing communications.