A cut above the rest!

A Cut Above The Rest!
By Beverly Terrill (c)2006

Do you have any idea how many people apply for jobs in the auto racing industry everyday? I don't know the stat but I read a story about a guy who showed up for a job as a tire changer for one of the lesser known teams and found 300 others dying for that same job. This is good and bad for teams. The jobs are coveted no doubt and they have a large pool to choose from. Applicants come from all over the country. Did the guy hiring miss the best candidate because so many applicants overwhelmed him? The down side for you is, what if you were #150 in that crowd of 300? When all those applicants file through how do you stand above the rest?

The fact is that if it is the tire changer job, you can show your work at the interview, which is a little different from other jobs. But if you are given a couple of minutes, with everyone watching you, how can you possibly show your talent in that amount of time and under that much pressure?! The answer is you can't. What if you got up that morning and smashed your hand in the car door? My point is that in addition to any hands on demonstration you might give, it will never represent a total picture of your abilities.

So what do you do to stand out and create an impression? You have to write about, talk about and show proof of your accomplishments. That's right - not just skill set, actual accomplishments. I recently went back to work after a 2-year absence for a company that I worked for previously for 15 years. All my experience had been at this one company. The interviewers were also long time employees of this company and knew the job descriptions of the positions I had previously held. What they didn't know was that I had been very successful! For example, as a customer service representative, I helped clients with software issues. But instead of saying I had technical expertise in trouble shooting blah blah software, I gave my phone stats and my quality survey scores. That's what was important to my managers. Every person on the CS team can troubleshoot software, but a true measure of my performance was the statistics. Now to parlay that to the tire changer; don't say on your resume, I can use an air gun. Every person who changes a tire can use an air gun! But you say that you worked on a team that consistently had pit stops of 18 seconds when the average for other teams were 21 seconds. Or don't say I'm 6 ft and weigh 250 pounds, tell them how often you work out and how much you can bench press. By the way, state that in your cover letter or interview. There's no place on the resume for weight, etc, but if its relevant its perfectly fine elsewhere.

I'm not saying don't list all the experience you have or all the tools you can use, but also list accomplishments that you are proud of. If I have an ad that says, "must be able to use jackhammer" and every resumes says "can use jackhammer", how do I know who's the best candidate? But if you say I have used a jackhammer for 20 years working on NC state highways, then I know without a doubt you can use a jackhammer.

You need to practice using your accomplishments in place of your skills so that when writing your cover letter or speaking in an interview you do it automatically. It will go a long way to put you a cut about the rest.