“A good positioning statement highlights your key strengths, what you enjoy doing and excel in, and what value you’d bring to the hiring company. It should also be something that is easy for you to remember and repeat at any given time. The key is picking out the most important information and delivering it with ease,” says Reed.
Craft your elevator pitch and then practice it until it comes out naturally. Run it by trusted colleagues and friends to refine it. Myers offer this formula to create a positioning statement that will get you noticed. The key components include the following:
Who are you? Are you a software developer, a programmer, a technical support person, a hardware expert, etc. “There are many different shades or subsets in technology,” says Ford. This should be a concise phrase that covers you specificity.
What is your experience? This, according to Myers, can include summer experience, interning experience or any related experience to your field.
In what industries have you worked and what roles have you held? This would be something along the lines of an internship as a software developer, debugging and doing testing on pieces of code or working for a retailer building networks for them. “Whatever it is, tell me what your role and industry is,” says Myers.
What are your greatest strengths? Are you good at problem-solving, leadership, analysis, project management, etc.? These, says Myers, are deliberately nontechnical terms and are more about the person. “Prepare and practice a ’15-second commercial’ about who you are, what you’ve done in the past. I like it when they [candidates] choose three strength words and use them to describe their nature,” says Myers.
What are you looking for? This is all about your objective. You could phrase it along the lines of, “I am seeking an entry-level job opportunity in the game development market” or “I’m looking for a position to leverage my Java experience,” for example.
According to Myers, weaving these items into a four- or five-word paragraph should help you put together a positioning statement that helps a potential employer understand what you are about.