Welcome to Seeking Greatness, published by GJ Sequeira.
I’m passionate about developing myself and others, personal wellness, and lifestyle development. I’ve worked as a project manager and engineer in oil, gas, chemical, and natural gas maintenance and construction and have a passion for optimization and efficiency.
In this newsletter, I write about how I’m developing myself and passing on that hard earned wisdom to you. While personal, the applications to other aspects to your life are limitless.
Personal Update - I wrote about what it was like to go into my job in pipeline integrity engineering (with no prior experience!) on LinkedIn, you can read about my experience here.
If you enjoy what you read, please subscribe and share with others
How to separate yourself in the job hunt
Over the past week I’ve collected quite a few links from those much smarter than me on how to improve your job profile.
What’s been consistent in their advice:
Use job descriptions and wordclouds.com to generate the most used words, THEN tailor your resume for those exact words
Add value - Create something that most applications don’t (ie video, personal projects/presentations) that show your interest
Prep for interviews, take notes during, and learn from each by identifying strengths/weaknesses
Always follow up post interview
Do the things that others don’t, and get the jobs that you want
I’ve been applying using these strategies and have continually received application views as well as interviews.
The next step in my progression is to focus on creating value for the companies I apply and really want to work for.
The Power of Video
Social media shows how we prefer information
Facebook is primarily writing
Instagram is highly visual
Twitter is for brevity in writing
and the up and comer Tik Tok is heavy on video
This is the secret sauce no one is talking about.
Reaching out by video, especially in a remote setting, is a game changer when it comes to job searching and cold outreach.
It humanizes an avatar by showing your face, revealing your passion, cadence, and confidence
It forces you to collect thoughts on the fly, as well as craft a personal pitch (useful in sales, job search, socializing, etc)
For the next jobs I apply to, I’m going to experiment with crafting 1 minute videos on why I want the job, how I’m qualified, and who I am.
This accomplishes a few things:
gets me comfortable in front of the camera (more reps)
humanizes a profile (not sure if the tracking systems flag videos in their algorithm)
forces me to determine “Do I really want this job? Or am I just spraying and praying?”
The broader application of this is that I can “review the game tape” and notice my faults when speaking. Similar to an athlete looks at his swing or his stance. It’s the small improvements over time that allow an overnight success and accelerates your career.
Closing
It’s important to do everything in your power to optimize your job search process.
It’s also important to devote focused time to one aspect of it rather than being half-ass in many different places.
You need small, measurable experiments that allow you to determine whether they have worked.
Next week I’ll report back on the outcomes of these changes, and shift to some other topics as I delve deeper into the process
If you want free career help - Teal is offering their 4 week programs at the end of October/early November with code JOBTOBER
Here’s the link for those that are interested
Until Next Time,
GJ