Pitch yourself - Effective Self Marketing

A three hour seminar on effective self Marketing was conducted by the Bill Faust in the Nice campus on October 31. Mr Faust is a Marketing professional with 20 years' experience spanning from advertising agencies (DMB&B to Bates Dorland) and client companies (Marketing Director, GE Insurance Holdings) to other senior marketing roles worldwide. He is a regular guest speaker at many of the worlds leading business schools; The London Business School (UK), MIT (USA), IMD (CH), RSM (NL), IESE (ESP), AGSM (AUS), VUW (NZ), EDHEC (FR), Vlercik (BEL), Oxford SAID (UK), Judges Cambridge (UK) to name a few, to talk about Effective Self Marketing. The seminar focused on identifying and evidencing what you are employed for. Understanding the needs and motivations of the buyer, fitting your competencies and transferrable skills to position yourself in the most attractive package/brand to the buyer (employer). Mr Faust's methodology is a three step process. Step one is to write a long CV that runs into tens of pages covering all the events your social, professional, academic life. This will be solely for your eyes, but will help you identify your core competencies. He called this his Career DNA Bank. The events to be written in the format - Objective, Action, analysis, and Results. The second step is to concentrate on the Analysis and Action of all the events and identifying your competencies. He stressed upon this as a fool proof way to differentiate oneself from the other candidates in the market applying for the same position as you. How you do it and not you have done will speak about your skills says Mr Faust Step three is the easiest. It is to segregate your skills in different compartments after detailed analysis of your actions. Having a bank of your transferrable skills and competencies will help you to pull out the best examples to demonstrate/ provide evidence to your would be employer that you are the best candidate to be hired. In the last part Mr Faust gave examples and how he went about differentiating himself in his career. He had various stories from a colourful professional past to share with the students to illustrate how one could accomplish all he was talking. It was a good seminar and allowed the students to see employment and recruitment process in a different light in the times of serious competition in the market place. The Strategy Director of London Business School, Graham Hastie says  "Doing the preparation as the Fausts suggest is one of the best investments that you can make in your career progression" In 2006 Bill co-authored the 2nd edition of the international best seller Pitch Yourself, which is available for at the EDHEC Library or can be purchased at leading booksellers and online.