Every Saturday morning, stallholders set up for business in Hoxton Street, selling household goods, bric a brac and the kind of end-of-the line clothes that you will only ever find in markets like these.
Walking through the market this weekend, it occurred to me that there were lessons to be learned from the stall holders there, especially if you are thinking about your career or initiating a job search. Looking for work was very like running one of these stalls – the competition for attention, the importance of visibility, the attempted differentiation through product mix, presentation of goods and style of engagement.
What did I find out from my research on Satuday? Here are five Personal Branding lessons for the Job Search, courtesy of the market traders of Hoxton Street.
1. Be Well Positioned
It doesn’t matter what you sell or even how good the product is. If you are not well positioned in your market, you will simply not get enough traffic to your slot to give you a decent chance of success. Before you set out your stall, it is essential that you find your place in the market – look to the position of others, the position of brands and aim for a spot where the traffic is thickest and spends most it’s time.
Lessons For The Job Seeker:
Conduct rigourous self analysis and comprehensive market research before you begin. You need to know where to position yourself in relation to others and discover the spaces where recruiters, hiring managers and allies in your niche spend their time. That’s where you need to be spending yours.
2. Be Different
You must differentiate in some way in order to effectively compete for attention. The market stalls that were successful all had unique features – they stood out from the crowd whether through sight, sound or smell. In the case of one ridiculously successful Jerk Chicken stall, it was all three. These differentiators had the effect of stopping the flowing crowd. Stalls without that initial ‘stopping’ factor lost traffic, potential customers and revenue.
Lesson for the Job Seeker:
You have to grab the attention of the recruiter, quickly and before any kind of deep analysis. Think about what your ‘stopping’ factor might be – what it is that would make a recruiter stop what they are doing and look at your profile or CV? Then make that factor the most prominent piece of your job search strategy.
3. Look Busy
Nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd. The stalls that were busy, stayed busy. By being there, other people were essentially providing tactic endorsement for the products the stalls were selling. Once again, different stall holders had different techniques – some offered free samples, others actively engaged with the hesitant, making the first move, and doing so with a smile. Not everyone so engaged stopped to buy, but that wasn’t the point. The objective was to manufacture a kind of ‘social proof’ – tapping into the subliminal ‘looks busy / must be good / got to get a piece of this’ vibe.
Lesson For Job Seekers:
Keep visibly active on the job search. This doesn’t mean chronic Facebook overshare, but people need to see that you are doing things out there. Let people know you are going to interviews, working on your CV, doing market research and so on. Remember, crowds are attracted to crowds.
4. Focus On What You’re Good At
All the stalls had a theme. The most successful ones were clear on what they were about. One stall sold only pillow cases. Another, highly successful stall, sold only ladies footwear. It’s counter intuitive to think that by restricting what’s on offer will result in greater sales but setting a limited choice clears away the browse only time wasters, and actively targets potential buyers by delivering solutions to preconceived needs.
Lesson For The Job Seeker:
Be clear on what your most trade-able assets or skills are and focus on these. Have faith there is a market for your skills and work hard to bring yourself to that market.
5. Have A Great Product
Great product keeps customers coming back. Without it, you cannot build customer loyalty, much less cultivate advocates and evangelists for what you do. The aforementioned Jerk Chicken stall converted me, and here I am selling their Jerk Chicken for them. This could not have happened without the quality that they put in and I’m not necessarily talking about highly priced ingredients either. I’m talking about having pride on what you do, emotional content in that skill that you think others will pay money for.
Lesson For Job Seekers:
You need to be good at what you do and it’s easier to be good at something you actually enjoy doing it. You already know what this is, so do yourself a favour and build it into your career. And iff you are already good, get better – Gladwell’s 10,000 hour rule applies.
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