A Porpoise in a Sea of Sharks and Minnows

It's really helpful to see yourself through the eyes of other people.

In marketing, we often do this with structured consumer research conducted by independent professionals who can maintain a clinical detachment while probing the psyche of a target audience. We want to know how customers and potential customers feel when they think about our product, what benefits and attributes they ascribe to it, how it compares to others they might see as competitive, and so on.

We can use the information that we gather from such research to improve our offering—either the product itself (to better deliver on consumer needs and expectations) or the supporting marketing package (more informative advertising, better in-store visibility, alternate pricing approaches, improved customer service and so on.)

It's too bad there isn't an easy way to do that when the product being marketed is you, and the target audience is the all-important prospective employer for whom you're just dying to work.

Perhaps there is a way to get at some of the attributes that others ascribe to you. And the approach isn't that different from what professional marketers do all the time.

They try first to understand not the product, but the customer. In your case, if you can get inside the mind of your prospective employers, you might be able to figure out what image of yourself you need to project. And you'd be able to anticipate their likely reaction to it.

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Michael A. Goodman is a marketing/management consultant and author of the book The Potato Chip Difference: How to apply leading edge marketing strategies to landing the job you want. For more information, visit PotatoChipDifference.com.