Personal Niche Marketing

Jennifer Fry
Careerminds Consultant

The current job market, while on the upswing, has seen incredible numbers of professionals looking for work, and that has meant incredible numbers of applicants for the same positions. Competing for a job can be tough no matter the circumstance, but imagine how competitive it gets when 1,000 job seekers have applied for one position. Professionals in career transition need to figure out a way to really stand out from the pack, and while some may decide to use creative resume materials– video resumes, online portfolios, etc.– others may choose to market themselves by identifying their professional niche or specialty. (Both tactics are equally valid, by the way.)
The idea behind marketing your specialty can be thought of in the same way as niche marketing for a business: find something that makes you unique, that can be related to your career or the position you’re after, and sell it. It doesn’t even need to be something that’s obviously related to your field– maybe even better that it’s not. It takes a lot of skill to relate an interest in sports to a career in law, compared to relating that same interest to a career in journalism. The former may involve keeping a blog that compares the efforts of the blogger’s favorite football team to that of a defending lawyer in a tough case, or discussing the back and forth of soccer match to the back and forth in the courtroom, while the latter may simply imply an interest in writing sports-related stories. That isn’t to say that an interest in a specific realm of journalism is bad, just that it isn’t as “special” of a specialty as that of this hypothetical lawyer.
A recent conversation with a public relations professional revealed another great example of a professional finding his specialty. A friend, also involved in PR, is a major cinephile, and has started writing a blog about movies that he sees. Apart from acting as a publicist for a film star or working for a production company, what do movies have to do with public relations? Well, this particular professional decided that the characters he saw in some of his favorite films needed some PR help, so he focused his blog on offering PR advice to movie characters. This practice displays a number of impressive qualities: creativity, first and foremost, attentiveness, dedication, critical thinking, communication skills, and the list goes on.
If either this hypothetical lawyer or real-life PR professional found themselves in a job interview, their more obvious skills and experience would make them qualified candidates, but their specialties would make them unique.
Think about your own personal interests and passions, and no matter what they may be, consider how those can be incorporated into your professional interests. Get creative, and your niche will surely help you stand out from the crowd.

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Careerminds provides scalable, strategic solutions to organizations seeking affordable, web-based outplacement services. Using a Web 2.0 e-learning platform that delivers affordable, online career transition services, Careerminds provides a high-tech and high-touch blend of on-demand career transition education supported by senior-level career consultants to help displaced workers reenter the workforce quickly.