Is Your Presentation to Employers Consistent in These 3 Places?

Since employers are looking for specific things from candidates, you may already know to highlight what they care about when speaking with them. Make sure you are consistent in your presentation in these three places:

1.  Your in-person pitch. Think about the top three points you want the employer to remember about you. After identifying these points, make sure you can string them together in a crisp memorable sentence. Yours could be: “I’m an 8th year technology lawyer who trained at [good firm] now in-house at AA [supporting XYZ products that have grown XX% across YY countries since launch] [responsible for all corporate/securities filings and MA] [setting the IP strategy and managing the portfolio, which has grown XX% over Y years].”
2. Your resume. In a brief skim of your resume, the reader should glean the top points about you, so don’t put things in the order that you do it. Instead, highlight what’s relevant, and use the employer’s keywords. It’s not pandering, and they won’t notice you did that.
3. Your online presence. Your LinkedIn profile and firm web page should match your in-person pitch and your resume. I have seen employers cut candidates after they initially like a candidate, but then they go online and see a completely different profile. At a minimum, the top part of the LinkedIn profile where you can do a quick description of yourself should generally match your in-person pitch and your resume.