What Will You Bring To The Organisation If You Get The Job
When you go along for a job interview you can be certain that you will get asked a lot of questions. If you are well prepared for interview you will probably handle the vast majority of them well. If you are not well prepared it will be a struggle.
One of the things I notice among accountants and professional people is that they are sometimes a little reluctant to blow their own trumpet or speak positively about what they can offer.
Perhaps this is in part down to generally being quite prudent or buying into some stereotypical image of how accountants and professionals need to be.
Yet here is the harsh reality. If you cannot demonstrate the value you can bring to the organisation in writing and in person, you are going to struggle to get interviews and if you are fortunate enough to get an interview to get the job.
So why is it so difficult to answer this commonly asked question?
The first reason is that people never really sit down and consider the value they can offer. If they have considered it they have never articulated it in writing in a clear and concise way.
Secondly they have no process for systematically collecting examples of times when they have added value. They tend to just get on with things and never make a note of when they added value. As a result they forget.
Yet in all honesty this is pretty easy to fix.
Get yourself a large piece of paper or if you prefer, open up some online mind mapping software like XMind.
At the centre type in the words, how I have added value.
Then start creating branches on your mind map. These branches might include:
Increasing sales
Reducing costs
Improving cash flow
Process improvement
Increasing customer satisfaction
Integrating new acquisitions
From these initial branches you can then start to add some specific examples of what you did, how you did it, some of the barriers you overcame, the skills you utilised and the results that you achieved.
Pretty quickly you will start to create a really powerful visual that you can use when writing an attention getting CV that leads to more job interviews. And when you get those job interviews there will be no nervousness or struggle to articulate what you will bring to the organisation.
Instead you will confidently and competently answer this question and set yourself apart from those other candidates who have not done the hard work to ensure they can articulate what you bring to the organisation.
Duncan Brodie helps accountants achieve more career success. Learn more here.
About the Author Duncan Brodie
Since 2006 I’ve worked with in excess of 8,000 accountants and professionals in workshops, seminars and one to one helping them land their next jobs and become better leaders, presenters and business partners. Before that I spent 25 years in accountancy climbing the career ladder from Payments Clerk to FD. I’m a CIMA Fellow, Certified Professional Coach and Team Coach Facilitator.