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Particularly in an economically sluggish market, candidates more than ever need to reduce their “self-interest” and increate the perceived benefit / value-add to their perspective employers.  Here are 3 simple ways:

1. Pretend You Already Have the Job – what is your 30-60-90 day plan if you got the job tomorrow?  Give it some thought, send a well thought out plan to your perspective employer and start delivering, start researching, start meeting key industry people in preparation of getting that offer.  What’s the worst that could happen – you learn a ton and meet some interesting people?
2. Add Value Not Noise – I wrote in Relationship Economics that way too many people confuse vibration with forward motion!  Very few employees care about busy work – make your comments, suggestions, recommendations, value-add; if it becomes noise, it will get lost.  How are your ideas about how to do the job – any job, not just better (incrementalism) but different (innovation)?  How are they unique to you as the only person who can do the job at that level?  How will you raise the bar and make the manager, the team, and the organization look good.  Don’t tell me – show me!
3. Make it Quantifiable – make your value-add quantifiable!  Unless you’re making them money or saving them money, you’re overhead and in a tight economy, very few smart companies can afford overhead.  Show them how they can get a Return on Impact on their investment in you and this position – make it quantifiable and highlight the key assumptions you’re making.

What are you seeing in the market from creative candidates?

I read an interesting comment by Travis Van on Beyond the Hype blog on Tweeter postings and how silly you can look in describing the mundane functions – does anyone really care what you do between the bathroom and the kitchen?  So, I’m doing a couple of experiments on Twitter:

First, those of you who know me, know that I’m a huge believer of trying to add value in every interaction – as such, I’m “tweeting” interesting URLs, engaging website or research papers I’ve read; a contrarian perspective on a specific topic, invites to interesting events, etc.

The second experiment is asking a series of questions around the productive uses of social networking apps such as Twitter.

Two fundamental challenges:

1. I’m getting zero responses to the content I’m putting up; this is quality stuff people.
2. I’m not getting a whole lot of answers to my questions!

As such, I’ve arrived at three conclusions:

1. I’m missing the point on Twitter – maybe what I’m doing between the bathroom and the kitchen is more interesting than a presentation on slideshare.net which really makes you think about our water conservation challenges in the decade ahead, or the Brand Gap!

2. I need to ask better questions?  This one is a life-long mission; not sure it can be addressed in 140 characters!

3. I’m following the wrong people?  Technorati has authority; eBay has Feedback Score; even LinkedIn has InMail Feedback Score – what’s the credibility / relevancy metric on Twitter again?  How do you rank the really interesting tweets vs. the completely useless ones?

In Relationship Economics (Wiley, 2008), I wrote about return on influence and credibility by association.  Can’t help but to wonder what your tweets or the people you’re following say about you?  If you agree that we are all products of the advice we take, here is one for you: take more stock in thinking before you tweet and with whom you engage online, similarly to those you would off-line.  This incongruence is one of the reasons I’m writing about the demise of LinkedIn!

Lastly, I know the World is Flat, but can we create a language filter so my entire Twitter page becomes content that I can actually read?