Here's how to land the job you want, even if you don't have all the necessary experience
Interviewing is a tricky business. It’s not just your knowledge or qualifications that clinches the deal for you, but your personality and personal branding, too. Of course, the task of doing an interview becomes even more difficult if you don’t have all the requisite experience for the job you want.
So, should you let go of the chance of getting the job you want just because of strict experience requirements? Absolutely not!
While the famous adage ‘When you can’t convince, confuse’ will probably not work on your resume or your Linkedin profile, not to mention with the recruiter–there are other, better, techniques you can use to do something about it. For example, beefing up your skill set a bit and tweaking your personal branding to project yourself in a more favorable light.
Ways to compensate for lack of experience
Check out the tips below to help you land the job you want.
1. Become more knowledgeable
Of course, you don’t have the skills required for your desired position. What you can do about it is to compensate it by learning and earning, what may be termed as, ‘micro experiences.’ This simply means preparing yourself by reading all about what the job entails through blogs and other relevant sources.
There are plenty of online resources that you can tap, such as VolunteerMatch, Catchafire and Fiverr. While VolunteerMatch provides local and virtual opportunities, Catchafire provides short-term volunteer opportunities and Fiverr lets you list the skill that you want to develop (and you can even make some money in the process). Finishing a graduate certificate of IT leadership can also be one of your options if you’re in the tech industry to help you enhance both your technical and leadership skills. This way you can gain a lot of micro experiences quickly.
For example, if you are applying for a job that reads “Want someone to use Facebook for attracting potential customers to purchase our product on our website.” You have to look for ways to display your product marketing skills. This you can demonstrate by sharing the work of your existing clients (either get their consent or anonymize the work), to flaunt your work to a recruiter.
2. Display your knowledge
The knowledge gained from these sources can be easily converted into experience. And this, you need to exhibit on various platforms regularly visited by your potential employers.
LinkedIn: This is the website most frequented by recruiters. In fact, more than 94 percent of social recruiters are regular visitors to LinkedIn. What you can do is to upload representative images of your work, such as, a screenshot of your best Facebook ad campaign, along with an appropriate caption. The caption can read something like this ‘A/B test conducted with Facebook ad messaging, led to a 30 percent increase in click-through rate that resulted in an increase of 10 percent in purchases
Personal website: In addition to LinkedIn, you must also share your experience on your personal website in a customized portfolio to really stand out and make potential recruiters sit up and take notice. Of course, the presence of your personal site needs to be mentioned on LinkedIn and other online platforms. Your website should contain your captivating career-starting story that should highlight the experience you have acquired for the job you are going after. If you’re concerned about getting a site up and running, it’s actually pretty easy (and doesn’t take much) to get your website up. There are tons of services out there like WordPress and Wix which make it extremely easy and affordable.
Resume: Mentioning the experience you do have in your resume is the crucial part. Additionally, you can tailor the resume to show how your existing experience will translate over to the new role you’re applying for. Know your resume and your personal narrative like the back of your hand, it’s super important to be able to clearly talk about and articulate your experiences and skills during an interview. And lastly, do your homework. Do your homework on the company, the role, the people who work there, the leadership, company news, etc.
Conclusion
If you feel reluctant to apply for a job just because you don’t necessarily have all the requisite experience listed in the job description, you’re doing yourself (and possibly the company hiring) a disservice.
Follow the steps outlined above and make sure you are prepared with clear and concise answers for all the questions that the recruiter may ask and you’ll have that job in no time.