27.

Identify Your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

“Unique selling proposition”—USP for short—is a marketing term that will help you define the unique qualities of your brand (versus the competition). Your USP may be only a matter of how you're perceived, but given that some people believe perception is reality, that's okay. Is one brand of beer “better” than another? Depends on who you ask. What's important for the beer company is that the consumer perceives that it is.

When you're marketing your brand, what the people in your industry think of you—your reputation—is sometimes all you need to get the work. I've hired people because other people I trust have vouched for them; the interview simply confirmed what I was predisposed to believe.

In an interview, you need to convey your USP—the combination of qualities that separates you from the competition—to help explain why I should hire you.

The question is, then, how do you identify your USP? That's where your résumé comes in. Your résumé is really the script for your pitch, and identifying your USP is really just a residual benefit of having crafted a résumé that really represents what you offer. The first thing to look at—always—is, who is your audience? Then ask yourself, what does your audience need you to be? Highlight the key qualities that make you you in the marketplace.

When I had a consultancy in digital media doing marketing and business development, some of my clients asked me to create company descriptions to post on Google and Yahoo!. Those sites required descriptions as short as 10 words. My first response was, “I can't possibly describe what this company does in 10 words!” You may feel the same way when you're trying to reduce your résumé to a few words. Guess what? You can. Now go through it again and eliminate any extraneous words.