Former Amazon recruiter Lindsay Mustain has several key pieces of advice she gives to job candidates. First, “nobody hires you to sit there and keep the seat warm,” she says. So when crafting your resume and the answers you give during a job interview, think about “the result of the work you do” and be specific when giving examples.
Did you increase sales by 30%? Help the company triple its revenue? Give 42 presentations to the C-suite every month? Say that.
You’ll also want to be clear about what tasks you took on, especially as they relate to the job you’re applying for. Mustain, now the CEO of career coaching company Talent Paradigm, remembers an instance in which forgetting that critical component could’ve cost one jobseeker a pretty significant package. “His job offer with stock options was worth seven figures,” she says.
Here’s what happened.
‘I have zero clue what this person does’
While Mustain was working at Amazon, an applicant sent her a message on LinkedIn. He said he’d been applying to jobs at the company and no one was calling him back.
He was a former Top Gun commander, he wrote, as well as a former White House aide to two presidents and a Harvard alumnus. “This might be the most qualified person I’ve ever heard,” Mustain says she thought.
The problem was, despite these impressive achievements, Mustain still felt that “I have zero clue what this person does.” He didn’t include his specific at-work accomplishments or the kinds of tasks he took on in previous jobs. It wasn’t clear that he had the experience Amazon needed for any role.
Show ‘what you bring to the table’
Mustain decided to hop on a call with the candidate to get a better sense of who he was as a worker.
“I got on the phone and it turned out he did last mile transportation for supply chain slash fulfillment,” she says. That is, he was responsible for the last leg of shipments. As “the largest fulfillment operation in the entire world,” she says, Amazon might’ve been the perfect fit for him.
And, as it turned out, she remembered hearing someone talk about last mile transportation in a recent meeting. She knew it was a background the company was looking for.
After asking multiple questions and realizing the relevance of the man’s work history, she put him in touch with the right human resources personnel and he landed that seven-figure offer.
When you’re applying for a job, reference the work experience that makes you the right candidate for the position. “You need to know specifically what you bring to the table that makes the company money,” says Mustain. That’s true whether you’re writing your resume, on the phone with the recruiter or farther along in the interview process.
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