Use This Sticky Job Search Marketing Hack

At the very core of great marketing lies a simple truth. Focus on the one thing that resonates most with your customers and build your campaign around it. Rinse and repeat. Then do it again. This is the message at the core of the most important job search marketing hack.

Out of the thousands of possible messages, this message should be the one that connects with them on the deepest emotional level. 

Find their “button” and keep pressing it. Your messages will stick. Possibly forever.

Permit me a random digression, but for me, “a finger of fudge is just enough to give your kids a treat” consumer slogan has lived the longest in my memory. You know, the British advert with the little boy playing conkers. Google it. 

The fudge (chocolate bar) was a reward for good behaviour when I was a young child. Whenever I feel like giving myself a little pat on the back these days, somehow eating a fudge brings back those warm and pleasant memories. It is, indeed, just enough.

Sticky marketing works, and that goes for personal marketing too.

Job search marketing 101

If you say the right thing to the right person (maybe in a few different ways), they will remember you for the right reasons. For longer than you think.

Now, you might consider that a job search is so immediate that being remembered isn’t essential. Still, when you are competing with other candidates who have different (and maybe even objectively better) skills to offer an employer, you have to make sure that your core message will resonate with them. From the moment that they read your CV for the first time to the moment when they are deciding what salary to offer you.

A strong and sticky core message that underpins your value proposition will provide your new “fans” with a memorable reason around which they build their case for employing you. It is a job search marketing hack that is easy to suggest, but tough to accomplish.

Hiring decisions are not made in isolation. Those involved will likely have to justify why they are explicitly selecting you.

If your core message is unambiguously strong (and sticky), they will find it easy to justify paying you a little more than they would like, look forward to your first day, and remain your advocates for those tricky initial months as you settle in.

An interesting school of thought considers that the recruitment process does not end when you sign your employment contract. So many people never quite settle in their new jobs. There is great value in seeking to subtly influence your new colleagues similarly. 

If your message worked for your boss, it would probably work for them. Show them how you can make a difference to them and take every opportunity to demonstrate it in practice.

If you do this, you will not only survive those first few months; you will thrive.

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This blog is shared with Job Seeker Duetists. 

Written by former recruitment ghostwriter Paul Drury (not AI).