Employers want to know, "what can you do for me?"

Physician Executive, Sept-Oct, 2006 by Anna Navarro

The central question in most employers' minds as they meet with a job candidate is: "What can you do for me?" If you can't answer that question, chances are your job hunt is going to stall out. Tom's story is a good case in point.

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He was a cardiac surgeon who was burned out on patient care and stressed by declining patient volumes resulting from new, non-invasive cardiac procedures. He needed to do something different, but he wasn't sure what.

He wrote a resume that pointed to his accomplishments in a number of different areas from management to research to marketing. He networked with many people in a variety of fields, including insurance, pharmaceuticals and health care management.

The people he met with were very pleasant and seemed to genuinely like him. When they asked him what kind of a job he was looking for, he indicated he was flexible and felt he could contribute in any number of situations. Everyone promised to call if they heard of opportunities. He also replied to a variety of want ads and Internet job listings. His theory was that keeping his options open about the type of job he wanted would improve his chances.

But after a year of intense effort, he'd made zero progress. He came to see me in utter frustration. He wanted to know what he was doing wrong.

My diagnosis was that Tom hadn't addressed the foremost question in every employer's mind: "What can you do for me?" He was bright and personable, but he didn't convey strength, commitment or passion about anything in particular.

To be successful, he needed to get clear about several things: What kind of a job he wanted, what employers want from people they hire for that type of position and what he could do for them.

I explained this was key to positioning himself in an appealing way to employers. Otherwise he ran a high risk of being seen as a nice guy who didn't have much to offer by way of helping employers solve their problems or meet their goals.

Tom quickly grasped the point I was making but said he had no idea how to go about figuring out what he wanted to do or how to appeal to employers in a specific field.

Plan of action

I explained that we could unravel that mystery by doing three things:

* Determining what was important to him in a work situation

* Translating what was important to him into a specific career goal

* Launching a targeted job search campaign

After some discussion, he agreed to the plan of action and we embarked on the work.

Our initial step was to determine the job characteristics he needed for his work to be satisfying. We examined his personal and work history, his natural and acquired skills, preferred working conditions, financial needs, passions, life priorities and a variety of additional variables. From this we distilled a very short list of the 15 things that were most important to him.

Some very interesting insights emerged from this self-investigation. He wanted a leadership role, enjoyed working with financial issues and was good at connecting with people and negotiating. One of the things he had most enjoyed was managing the design and building of three different homes over a period of 16 years. He thought of that as a very satisfying hobby.

We brainstormed 11 different careers that might potentially fit, and he began systematically to explore them by reading and talking to people in those fields. His research was oriented to finding out how well the field matched the 15 things that were most important to him. He also sought information about what employers valued in people they hired.

After investigating four ideas in depth, he landed on the target: becoming a deal-maker for a real estate development company specializing in health care facilities.

The research served a dual purpose. First, he figured out what he wanted to do that would make him happy and meet his financial needs. Second, he learned a great deal about how to position himself to appeal to employers in the field.

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Having this information made it easier to write an effective resume. He was able to highlight those aspects of his background that were most relevant to employers.

He emphasized that his surgery background would be very useful to health care real estate developers. He also emphasized professional experiences that demonstrated his capacity to connect and negotiate with people, like representing his 12-surgeon practice group in selling its services to hospitals and working out the fee and service agreements.

He devoted significant space in his resume to his experience in managing design and construction. These were all aspects of his background that were relevant to the job he was seeking. If he had targeted a different field, chances are he would have focused on other aspects of his background.

Targeted approach

Taking this targeted approach helped him in other ways as well. Instead of networking with people in a variety of fields, he concentrated his efforts on people who were involved in health care real estate development. Though he only knew a few people in the field when he started, he used his medical contacts to access others in the field.