Let’s say you sell food to restaurants. All kinds of food. Everything from produce to dry goods to dairy to meat. Your list of items is bigger than the menu at The Cheesecake Factory.
And then let’s say you go into an ice cream shop to see if they want to buy any of your products. You hand them the list of items you sell and wait.
And you see their eyes narrow and the lines on their forehead become pronounced. You hear them whispering to themselves, reading the list, “spaghetti…beef patties….frisee.”
One eyebrow goes up and they hand the small book back. “I don’t have time to go through all of this,” they say to you. And they go back to helping their customers find just the right ice cream flavor for them today.
This is the same thing that happens when you meet someone and they ask what you do or what you want to do, and you say, “Whatever you need!” It’s the same thing that happens when your resume lists all of your skills but never mentions the problem you can solve or how you want to apply your skills, talents, and experience.
Now imagine if you went into the ice cream shop and said, “We have dairy products and fresh ingredients for your handmade ice cream, but we also have tasty non-dairy alternatives that have the texture of cream which would be fantastic for potential customers who can’t have dairy.”
“Tell me more,” our scoop-wielding shop owner says. “I have a lot of people asking for dairy alternatives so their whole family can enjoy a visit to my shop.”
Make it easy for others to help you
We can make it easy on the person asking us what we want to do or on the person reading our resume by narrowing down and being clear about what we want to do. Consider these answers to “tell me what you do”:
Answer: I’m an electrical engineer. I can do all sorts of things!
Better Answer: I am a software engineer specializing in signal processing.
Even Better Answer (EBA): I get really excited about making audio filtering effective and easy for podcast content creators.
Now as the person asking, I don’t have to sift through all your skills to understand what value you add, and whether or not your skills and interests are appropriate for my organization or to an organization of someone in my network.
Crafting the EBA
How do you get to that EBA? Have a trusted friend ask you to explain what you want to do, and when you finish, have them tell you what you were saying when you were most excited. It will be obvious when you hit on an aspect that lights you up. Your enthusiasm will show in your face and in the tone of your voice and the pace of your speech.
Once you have feedback on your interests, craft the EBA so you are prepared the next time you are introducing yourself in a networking situation. Once others hear your EBA, many times they will want to introduce you to someone they know, and many times without you even asking. When you’re clear about what you want to do, others tend to want to help. Other times the person you are talking to won’t have any helpful connections and may not be a helpful connection themselves. In this case, better to find out at that moment rather than spend time trying to connect on this topic when nothing will come of it.
engineer your life
Make it easy for others to connect with you by being clear on what you want to do. Do the pre-work to figure out what that is and have your EBA in mind for your next networking situation. Hint: every situation is a potential place to make genuine connections.