Overcome Objections before they are: Hacking the Career Growth Process

Changing jobs, progressing your career, moving to a new company...rarely do you move for essentially the exact same job.

You're often looking to;

- Advance your career

- change industry

- take on a higher lever role

- move to a role that will allow you to grow more

- shift careers

So with that in mind - your current and existing experience doesnt always make you an obvious choice on paper.

Hiring managers, recruiters, whoever is screening the role- they're looking for the person that shows evidence they can confidently come in and perform the responsibilities of the role already.

This is the obvious choice.

Not always the right one, or the best person for it, but it's the obvious one.

If you're not the obvious choice on paper, how do you avoid being overlooked for it?

One way is to anticipate and then address their potential objections against you and overcome them!

When I challenge this to the less obvious choices out there, they often respond with "Get me in the room and I'll show them why I'm good for it."

Unfortunately in this fast paced and competitive market, you're not even going to get a shot in the room, you might not even get a phone call from them. You'll be overlooked and rejected from the process without a thought in favour of the more obvious options.

Re-think your CV.

Re-think a cover letter if you use one.

Following up your application with am email direct to a hiring manager as well? Then use that message to overcome the objections there.

Reframe your experience to focus and highlight areas of your experience that draw direct parallels to their requirements.

Some obvious objections I see all the time;

In-house Product Design roles overlooking agency based designers.

Typical assumption for rejection;

- lack of execution, all concept work

- limited iterative experience, once projects delivered, agency moves on

- limited long term vision with product design

- limited exp scaling design and products

- limited access to users

- limited in depth UX exposure

Experienced graphic/visual designer moving into Product Design role.

Typical assumptions for rejection;

- limited UX knowledge

- UX work is only conceptual

- hasn't designed visuals to be interacted with

- hasn't worked through sprints or fill SDLC

- communicating with engineers?

All of these objections can be overcome, and none of them make you a "bad" designer or "not right" for the job! But like so many aspects of the world today- we take shortcuts and make assumptions in an attempt to make faster decisions.

Get ahead of the curve and beat the assumptions at their own game. Address them in your initial touch point and don't be overlooked. How will you compete against the more obvious choices out there applying to the same position?

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I'm Jared Tredly! From Brisbane, Australia to New York City - I've been building design teams for the last 9 years working with some of the most talented designers on the planet! VP's of Product Design, Design Directors, Hands-On super star Designers, Creative Directors and beyond. I've built some incredible teams who have been part of designing products that have literally changed the world.