Applying for a specific role?

1) Is the role actively being hired for?

You want to find roles and titles that are actively being hired for, a lot. The more jobs available, the more you can apply to. And that means you can land more interviews, receive more offers, and have more freedom.

2) Do the role's responsibilities align with my past experience?

Your past experience and expertise should lend themselves to the responsibilities of the role you’re applying for. Although they may not line up completely, a correlation is needed.

3) Can I tailor my resume to display my competence for the role?

This is the key to landing multiple offers. You want to write your resume to make it line up with the responsibilities of the role you’re applying for.

Again, although they may not line up completely, it’s important to cater past experiences (without lying or embellishing) to include the parts most relevant to the recruiter or hiring manager.

4) Are the role's responsibilities uniform across companies?

This point is key to landing multiple offers. It’ll let you apply to each job with the same resume, and increase efficiency in the application process — while improving your chances of landing multiple interviews.

5) Does the role allow me to drive quantifiable value for the company?

When you’re able to drive (and communicate that you can drive) quantifiable value for a company, your leverage in negotiation increases exponentially.

Companies don’t hire out of the goodness of their heart. They hire to solve a problem, or make more money. Communicating that you accomplish one or both of those missions for them, and putting a number on it is crucial.

As a general rule of thumb, you want to ask for ~20% of the value you’ll drive. But, as always, that number changes with leverage.

Check out this post for more info on how to accomplish this.

The point is this…

Your answer needs to be "yes" to all of these questions.

This'll let you apply to multiple jobs, land multiple interviews, and negotiate with higher leverage.

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